The French word for wild is sauvage, and it makes me think of the stronger version of the word wild, savage, every time I hear or speak it, igniting something in me. We are all wild, savage, by nature, we're made of the same stuff after all, us and nature. To be surrounded by wild nature with clean skies above, brown dirt below, free-growing plants and trees all around, this was the point of our mid-winter roadtrip.
I remember reading a vision of the future I really liked in the book, The Celestine Prophecy, where future generations abandon the cities to live in nature, dotted all around in remote locations. In this imagined future, we'd come to prize the high vibration of the trees, the earth, the clean water and air, unsullied by pollution, and ourselves. It meant we had a higher vibration too living amongst pristine nature. We found we could be happier, healthier, thrive more in this environment where our lungs could breathe and we could swim in the water. In this future, we worked and stayed connected online from our tree houses, we still came together at times to do important work in the cities. The decision to live in nature was not just that of someone taking a step back from society, but people playing active roles in modern society too; you could do your work from a remote nature location. We spent our time communing in nature in this future, connecting deeper and deeper to the roots of our true selves, planting them deep in the earth and creating, working, producing, living from this space.
I found myself contemplating this ideal future when we were here. On this weekend away, we listened to the silence surrounding our house. We used fire and wood to heat our home. We touched the leaves, hugged the trees, got dirt on our shoes and jeans, saw deer and horses and cows, a ladybird even, we watched the sun fade into nowhere over a still black lake. But we also drove nine hours in traffic to get here, we filled up our petrol tank at least four times, bought food from a neon-lit grocery store, drank wine, played cards until the early hours, listened to music and made it, worked on our laptops and used the wifi, took a million photos and used our phones plenty. But maybe we're moving towards a new idea of living, a hybrid nature/modcon existence. Perhaps my generation, my friends and I, we'll all find ourselves living this new idea of a country life, still connected to modern society, in the next 10 or 20 years. Maybe we'll try a new existence that honours our true natures whilst using the technologies, connectedness and freedom of choice we're so lucky to have.
Photos by The Travelling Light and my friends Ula Blocksage, Laurent Bécot Ruiz and Jim Rosemberg