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Just Connect

08 Feb 2010 by Peter Barrett

I was given a book for Christmas entitled The Wild Places by Robert MacFarlane. He tackles the question ‘Are there any genuinely wild places left in Britain?’ by embarking on a series of beautifully described journeys, spending nights out on cliff-tops and remote beaches, deep in snowy woods and ancient meadows, as well as bathing in icy rivers and waterfalls.

During one of his reflections (while high on the ridges in the Lake District in the middle of the night) MacFarlane talks about our estrangement from the dark – through artificial lighting – as a great and serious loss. “Star-gazing gives us access to orders of events … which are beyond our capacity to imagine. It is unsurprising that dreams of humility and reverence have been directed towards the moon and stars for as long as human culture has recorded itself … the blinding of the stars is only one aspect of this retreat from the real. In so many ways there has been a prising away of life from place. We experience, as no historical period has before, disembodiment and dematerialisation. The almost infinite connectivity of the technological world … has exacted a toll in the coin of contact. We have in many ways forgotten what the world feels like.

“We have come increasingly to forget that our minds are shaped by the bodily experience of being in the world – its spaces, textures, sounds, smells and habits … the feel of a hot, dry wind on the face, the smell of distant rain carried as a scent stream in the air, the touch of a bird’s sharp foot on one’s outstretched palm; such encounters shape our beings and our imaginations in ways which are beyond analysis, but also beyond doubt. There is something uncomplicatedly true in the sensation of laying hands on sun-warmed rock, or watching a dense mutating flock of birds, or seeing snow fall irrefutably upon one’s upturned palm.

He quotes the mountaineer Gaston Rebuffat: “Night has been banished, so have the cold, the wind, and the stars. They have all been neutralised: the rhythm of life itself is obscured. Everything goes by so fast, and makes so much noise, and men hurry by without heeding the grass by the roadside, its colour, its smell … but what a strange encounter then is that between man and the high places of his planet! Up there he is surrounded by silence.” Rebuffat wrote these words in 1956.

Because of the recent heavy snowfall, many of my colleagues simply worked from home. But when they did get back to the office many of them remarked that they were quietly going ‘stir-fry crazy’ sitting at home, responding to emails and telephone conference calls. There was something reassuring about being physically present with their colleagues (despite all their annoying habits), something about belonging, touching base. It struck me that apart from our lack of connectedness with the physical environment, which MacFarlane effectively articulates, we still desire physical community – and for those who live alone, some days work can sometimes be the only form of community they get. Generous, for me, is partly about having a sense of local place – and connecting with that place in a variety of ways, including welcoming others into our group. This might get risky.

I was leaving work one Friday evening two weeks ago and as I said good night to one of my colleagues, she asked me what I was doing for the weekend. I rambled on a bit and then remembered I was going out with some friends that night to a Poet’s Café event, which had an open mic session. Did I want to keep that quiet? I decided to spill the beans. She asked me if I was going to participate: I said I was. Did I have my own material: I said I did. (You have to think about this conversation happening in the context of a very IT/engineering, male-dominated, hierarchical culture – poetry is not cool!) In the end she turned up with her partner to the event. I had a very nice surprise when I walked into the venue and saw them both. (I think she enjoyed it as another work colleague caught up with me on the following Monday and mentioned the event and asked me if she could come to the next one!)

By all means, go for a walk in the rain in your local forest and just experience the elements (MacFarlane has certainly got me thinking – and walking). But what about the people you see at work every day – are there ways we can be more welcoming and inclusive?

You can read Andrew Motion’s Review of The Wild Places here

Flickr photosource – thanks Pink Sherbert

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