Today is day100 of #dailyconnectionwithnature so I had to feature the van. I can’t even begin to explain how switching to a nomadic lifestyle has changed us. When last in India I wrote a poem on an overnight train, and called it Dharma. It includes the lines: live as closely to nature as possible / create / love / everything else is superfluous / everything else is part of the lie that keeps you / enslaved like a battery hen / when the door is open. / your body knows what you need / and you can either lift up your face / and give thanks to the soft rain praising your skin / or you can hide in brick houses / behind solid doors that ostracise the sun and moon / and feed the whispers in your lungs telling you / the problem is with other people… And I realise what a dichotomous thing the van is. We are disconnecting and travelling yet I find it so easy to be around people these days. We are spending more quality time with people who matter to us. Everyday I find something in nature to marvel at. Life is both more simple and yet we have to work harder at every element to make life on the road work. Our relationship is stronger because we cannot bounce around an empty house waving at each other as we pass like ships in the night. Nature is no longer the wallpaper to my daily existence, or something I feel I ‘shouldn’t’ communicate with – I regret that in the past I’ve allowed other people’s opinions to negate my very real experiences. Life here is lived very much in the ‘now’. There is no other time but now to start on the path to living the life we want to live. Today marks 280 days living in the van and day100 of documenting this deeper connection with nature. Still it feels as if I’ve only just begun to scratch the surface – there is so much out there to see and experience and I can’t wait for each new day to unfold before us as we map our own personal terra nullius.
No Comments