Jini Reddy - Wanderland: a search for magic in the landscape

In loving memory of Mandy Thatcher,
my cherished friend.
May your spirit soar.

Contents

A heartfelt thank you to my publisher Jim Martin for believing in me you gave me the freedom to write the book that I wanted to and that has meant everything to me.

Im grateful to the whole team at Bloomsbury and in particular my editor Alice Ward, for her patience, enthusiasm and kindness.

My gratitude goes to all whove been a part of my journey Im indebted to you for your time, your enthusiasm and encouragement, your insights and your company.

For all those whove buoyed up my morale when it has flagged, thank you and I hope to return the favour one day.

A very special thank you to my local library, Wimbledon, for providing so much inspiration on your shelves and for being such a wonderful place to write quietly.

I am forever grateful to my mother, Sandra, for her love and support. And to my late father for telling me I could be anything I wanted to be.

To those reading, thank you so much for taking the time.

A few years ago, I went up a mountain in the Pyrenees with a tent, nine bottles of water and almost no food. I wasnt being nave or irresponsible, I simply wanted to commune with the wild in the raw.

Its a custom that has become quite fashionable these days in certain circles, even though it is as old as the hills. It wasnt the first time Id done something like this, so I welcomed the experience. I kind of had an idea of what I was in for, in the way that if youve ever fallen madly in love, you know what it will feel like, even though every time it is completely different. This kind of experience wasnt about challenging myself no, it was about quietening down, going inward and listening. No special skill required, which is just as well because I didnt have any, other than the ability to enjoy my own company. It didnt feel strange or alarming to be spending four nights on the mountain with only two apples, a handful of nuts, no phone and no watch, and those nine bottles of water.

Anyway, I needed the time out. I had a lot to get off my chest and I figured in the mountains I could cry my heart out. Up there alone on my first night, though, after the sun had gone down I heard a strange sound. It made my heart pound in a way that was nearly as frightening as the sound itself. That unearthly whisper on the other side of the canvas well, my brain couldnt make sense of it. The guide whod walked me up here had called the mountain Hartza Mendi, or Bear Mountain in English. Hed spoken of the Lord of the Forest, a strange creature, the lovechild of Basque myth and the Pyrenean wilds. But I hadnt actually expected to hear its voice, if thats what it was. It had come out of the dark, from nowhere. It was urgent and somehow sentient. It was punctuated by pregnant silences that made me hold my breath as a wave of fear flooded my body. What do you do when youre in a blind panic? Me, I reached for a charm that was stashed in the tent pocket and I began to rock back and forth. Under my breath I muttered in a small, scared voice: I come in peace! For once I was far too frightened to feel silly or self-conscious, my usual default setting.

Outside my tiny tent weird, discombobulated voice aside the mountain fell silent. No more gusts of wind, and whatever night creatures lived here and in the thick, now menacing, woods beside me were holding their breath. Id heard no footsteps, no crackling of bushes, and anyway Id been rooted to this spot on the flat top of this peak, like a landing strip for an alien craft, high in the mountains since noon. A mare and her foal had trotted up earlier to check me out or welcome me or show their concern for this strange woman stranded in their territory, I wasnt sure which, but the only sign of human life Id detected until now was the tinkle of a shepherds bell in the valley down past the waterfalls and the emerald forest Id walked through to get here.

A long minute or two after it began the voice stopped. Just like that. The mountain exhaled, the night sounds noticeable only in their absence started up again. Over the next four days and nights up here, I thought about my strange encounter and tried to make sense of it. Had some presence that made no sense to the rational side of my brain given me exactly what Id hoped and prayed for before I walked up that mountain? Id wanted Id yearned with my whole being to hear natures voice. Is that what Id heard? Was it some kind of spirit? The Lord of the Forest? Who knows?

Ive told this story to people and I know what most of them think: It was a bird, obviously. Or your imagination, silly New-Age deluded hippie. Only, I could swear it wasnt. My proof? None, I had none. Only a deep conviction that what I heard that night wasnt a human or animal or bird but something quite mysterious and spirit-like. At any rate, after that experience, it was hard for me to just go for a walk or look at a tree or stare at the sky without hoping for an epiphany or some transcendent experience that would give me the feeling that the land was speaking to me in a way that went beyond the ordinary. I wanted to invoke something for some life force to make its presence known to me and the wanting of it felt like a kind of lovesickness.

Had I been a die-hard conservationist or scientist or maybe grown up on a farm, Id have likely laughed myself silly at such notions. But those things hadnt been a part of my life. Instead, what Id had was Hinduism and atheism by osmosis and then ordinary-growing-up secularism but with a yen for magical things. Call me sentimental but I wanted something more than to walk through an alluring landscape and admire its beauty. I wanted somehow to be more porous . I didnt want to be burdened by needing to know the name of every bird, creature, tree and petal. No, I wanted something else, something a bit Other and a bit mystical even the seeking of it was what truly excited me.

As a travel writer, I had had experiences that opened my eyes and I was infinitely grateful for the world that revealed itself to me. Gul, my young blue-eyed hostess from the Kalash tribe deep in the remote valleys in Pakistans North-West Frontier Province, had shared with me the ways of her people, their reverence for the gods of the river and the sun, and for their spirit ancestors. In Cape York in Queensland, Id met two sisters whod led me to a waterfall and told me a dreamtime creation story involving supernatural beings: theyd brought the earths physical features into being, the sisters said. These encounters, and others, showed me as plain as day that for many indigenous people around the world all of nature was alive, imbued with spirit and a powerful ally if treated with respect. To some people I knew closer to home this idea made perfect sense. No big deal at all, but an obvious thing. But to many this was absurd. I never got why the words of people who live close to the land and treat her like kin people who nurture an inner relationship with the earth were rarely listened to or heeded beyond alternative circles. Its not like we couldnt use the input.

Still, despite those encounters abroad, back in the UK and sensitive to the mood of the day and the things Id read and the voices I heard, I worried that I didnt love nature in the right way, that I didnt bring my gaze to bear upon Her in the approved way. What made me feel even more of a fraud was that half the time I didnt even think in terms of the word nature. More often Id be thinking of a specific place, some amazing, sigh-inducing landscape or a cool, twisty tree, or a small creature or squawky bird I spotted while on a walk in the countryside or in some meadow or park in my neighbourhood. And even if there were those whod be empathetic, who would hear me? I often felt too conventional for the pagans, too esoteric for the hardcore wildlife tribe, not deep enough for the deep ecologists, not logical enough for the scientists, not listy enough for the birder types, not enough of a green thumb for the gardeners. All in all, I felt invisible, ignored by the cliques, and that I was becoming ill and needy with the desire to be heard by them. I struggled with the pain of being overlooked and of falling through the cracks. But I was also sick of it all, sick of the anxiety. This was no way to live, I realised, if I wanted to hang on to my sanity. It was time to just do the thing that I secretly longed to do: to actively seek to enter a world that co-exists with the visible one, a world of signs and portents; and to experience this land, my home Britain, as the indigenous people who Id met in the far-flung places of my travels had experienced theirs, and to let the rest go.