Jen Benson - The Wild Year: a story of homelessness, perseverance and hope

Jen Benson

Its not what you look at that matters, its what you see.

All good things are wild, and free.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.
Live the life you have imagined.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

Henry David Thoreau

W E SAT, SIDE BY SIDE, in a wood-panelled room that smelled of polish and fear, wondering how we ended up here. Footsteps clattered on floorboards and threads of murmured conversations filtered through from adjoining rooms: voices of those who spent their days unravelling the messy tangles of other peoples lives. E ran around us, playing games of imagination, singing made-up songs, blonde curls bobbing. Behind her were shelves lined with leaflets on divorce, custody and bereavement. In this cold and dismal room, she shone bright and golden, like a ray of sunshine breaking through clouds. Too bright, I thought. Too bright and too good for this place.

Without even needing to be seen by a judge, our petitions were granted and we were free to go. We left together, hand-in-hand, our children in our arms. I felt changed, somehow. Caught up within an almost overwhelming confusion of feelings: sadness and failure and shame, but also a new glimmer of hope and possibility for the future. It wasnt the fresh start we had hoped and worked so hard for for ourselves and our little family but it was a fresh start of sorts. And it was done now, with no going back, becoming a part of our history that, for good or bad, would always be with us. Now, both in the wider context of our lives and, more immediately, our wild year, it was time to move on.

I T WAS THE MEETING point of spring and summer, when the weather is always full of surprises. Only a few days earlier, we had watched as gales shook the blossom-heavy trees, covering the grass with petals like pink and white snow. And now it was hot, the wide Wiltshire sky stretching overhead, blue and empty save for the years first swifts, wheeling, tumbling and screaming through the still air.

Out in the garden, grateful for a patch of shade, I leant against the trunk of the old apple tree, settling in to feed H, my newborn son. From this spot, through the trees low-hanging boughs and across a lawn speckled with dandelions and daisies, I could see two-year-old E playing in a world of her own imagination. Barefoot on the soft grass, she was deeply fascinated by everything around her, touching, tasting, testing in order to really know the things she saw. Once, she told me, she had watched a bumblebee so close-up the breeze from its wings had tickled her skin.

She was three weeks into being a big sister. To our relief she had embraced this new role, quickly incorporating her baby brothers arrival into both her real and imaginary worlds. After H was born, Sim had taken two weeks leave and we had closed the door on the outside world and drawn inwards, discovering, rediscovering ourselves as a family of four. I remembered how safe and secure I had felt then, relieved to be in the after lands of pregnancy and labour, my body so much easier to live in than it had been in those final, heavy weeks.

Already, though, that seemed like another time. With Sim now back at work, my days ebbed and flowed with the tides of love and fear, enthusiasm and exhaustion that is life with young children. The absolute, visceral attachment of mothering, and the state of existing where nothing gets done all day but the fulfilling of basic needs, had been a shock when E was born. This time around, I felt slightly more prepared for the way a new baby changes everything. Perhaps I was simply more accepting of the inevitable loss of control over even the smallest details of my days. I found and still find that each moment in my childrens company feels like a completely new experience: a phenomenon that is both wonderful and terrifying.

But this gentle, all-consuming chaos was only half of our story the half within which it was easy to live amid the busy brightness of our days. As the light faded each evening, my thoughts, too, grew darker, my sleepless nights filled with the impossible choices facing us. We had always aimed to live simply to tread as lightly as we knew how. But even simplicity starts with sufficiency, and sufficient when it came to money, at least, was something we no longer had.

H had not been the only new arrival in our lives that spring. Our first book had published the day before his birth. A real book I could still barely believe it existed. That we had somehow turned this dream, which had on so many occasions during its creation felt beyond what was possible, into reality. A reality that was now sitting in bookshops across the country with our names on the cover.

The opportunity had come about by chance while on a walk with friends through the late summer Cotswold countryside. We had been sharing our passions for the great outdoors theirs for wild swimming and ours for running, particularly off-road running, as a way of exploring and experiencing new places. Our friends are writers and photographers who had recently set up their own publishing company, creating beautiful guides to outdoor adventures. It all sounded incredibly exciting.

Let us know if you ever decide to publish a running book! I said as we exchanged goodbyes. A few days later, they emailed to ask if we were serious.

I showed Sim the email. Do you think we can write a book?

Of course we can! he said, convinced, as always, that anythings possible if you throw everything into it.

We threw everything into it.

We bought a camera and learnt to take photos, working our way through how-to guides, going on courses and spending hours out on the hills shooting, editing, critiquing and trying again. We made regular trips around the country, researching new areas, finding new routes and taking thousands of photos. Needing more time, space and money we moved from our rented house in the Cotswolds to the Peak District to live with Sims parents so that we could work part-time while we wrote the book me as a researcher and Sim as an on-call firefighter.

E was nearly one when we moved north; she loved living with her grandparents, who were in turn incredibly generous about sharing their house and lives with us. It also gave us the opportunity to experience running in the Peak District all year round. I learnt so much about running in the fells during this time, feeling my body growing stronger and faster with every passing month. We both loved running the local fell races, flying flat-out across the hills and the incredible friendliness of the finish line. We knew it would only be temporary, but it was a happy time for us all.