Walking with Plato (10 page)

At first glance, neither of these unhappy men seems like a poster boy for the therapeutic power of walking. But my point isn’t that countryside walks are a panacea for all forms of depression. It is that depressed people often find it helpful to take country walks.

Mildly depressed people, such as my thirty-year-old self, find that walking helps to put their troubles into perspective and to improve their mood; and more severely depressed people, such as Kierkegaard and Rousseau, find that walking helps to make their lives bearable.

Scientific evidence bears this out. Numerous studies have shown a positive link between walking and mental health.

For example, a study reported in the
British Journal of Sports Medicine
found that walking thirty minutes a day boosted the moods of depressed patients faster than antidepressants. Another study undertaken at California State University, Long Beach, found that the more people walked each day, the more energetic they felt and the better their mood. And a study undertaken by researchers at the University of Stirling revealed that walking had ‘a large effect on depression’.

I was fortunate, then, not to be walking for just thirty minutes a day, but to be walking for seven or eight hours a day. And not only that, but also to be walking through some of the wildest, most wide-open, and most inspiring places in Britain.

Small wonder, then, that I was beginning to feel healthier, happier, and more energized than I had felt in a long time.

We stayed for two nights at a busy campsite just outside Inverarnan. It had plenty of facilities, including a sheltered campers’ kitchen. But it also had an unloved and uncared-for air about it.

On our second night, as we tried to coax a little heat from a clapped-out electric ring on the clapped-out hob in the kitchen, we fell into conversation with a group of French boys, in their late teens, who were also trying to coax a little heat from a clapped-out ring on the same hob.

They were pleasant boys, who seemed – much to my surprise – to take a genuine interest in the doings of a couple of middle-aged fellow hikers. When they learned that we were walking not just the West Highland Way but the entire length of Britain, they were astonished. One of them nodded approvingly, and then uttered a single word: ‘Respect.’

I felt strangely moved.

From Inverarnan, the next stage of our journey took us seventeen miles to the rural community of
Rowardennan
, much of it along the eastern shore of Loch Lomond.

This has the reputation of being the toughest section of the West Highland Way because the loch-side path, such as it is, constantly rises and falls and requires you to scramble over boulders and pick your way across tree roots.

We had been dreading lugging our backpacks along such difficult terrain, and had anticipated a long, hard day. But, as it turned out, we managed the seventeen miles, and the ups and downs, and the boulders and tree roots quite easily. We had become much leaner, fitter, and tougher than when we started.

Loch Lomond is the largest lake in Great Britain by surface area, and second only to Loch Ness by volume. It is studded with over thirty islands of varying shapes and sizes, and set amidst magnificent mountains, including the magnificent Ben Lomond, which lies close to its eastern shore. Consequently, it is considered one of Scotland’s finest natural wonders.

Oddly enough, I have only the haziest memories of all of this. What I recall mostly from that day is the wonderful, fully alive, fully engaged feeling I had when scrambling along the loch side, the glorious experience of being totally absorbed in the moment.

Most of the things we do in life, we do for the sake of something else. We work to earn money; we exercise to get fit; we study to pass exams; we watch TV to relax; we engage in spiritual exercises to improve ourselves; and so on.

But life’s most sublime moments often occur when we engage in activities entirely for their own sake, without any ulterior motives.

When I was a child, I attended a primary school that had a large oak tree in the middle of its playing field. I recall standing alone, beneath that tree, one crisp autumn afternoon when the leaves were falling slowly but steadily from its branches.

I soon became engrossed in the task of trying to catch those leaves as they fell.

I would look up into the canopy of the tree and wait for a green-brown leaf to come spiralling down. Then I would dodge and dance around, arms outstretched, and try to grab it before it reached the ground.

It was a surprisingly difficult and tremendously absorbing activity. I soon lost all track of time, and lost consciousness of everything except those falling leaves and my desire to catch them. It was an experience of utter mindfulness, in which I achieved a state of near bliss.

I look back on it now as one of my life’s most magical experiences. Even today, I sometimes find myself looking wistfully into the canopies of autumn trees.

As I scrambled along the eastern shore of Loch Lomond, moving swiftly over boulders and tree roots, with my heart and lungs working hard, and with my limbs, senses, and mind all working together perfectly, I experienced something of the same exultation: a primitive joy in being alive and healthy, and fully and actively engaged with the natural world.

By four o’clock – much earlier than expected – we had reached our destination, The Shepherd’s House B&B, which is situated in a quiet location at the edge of the Rowardennan Forest, on the east shore of Loch Lomond.

We spent the night in a self-contained bedroom-cum-sitting-room-cum-bathroom-on-wheels, modelled on the huts that shepherds once inhabited during lambing season.

Unlike the shepherd’s huts of yore, this one was a luxurious and well-appointed affair – though too small to swing a kitten in.

In the morning, breakfast was delivered in a pretty wicker basket, replete with hot and cold eatables and drinkables.

I have a photo of Wendy, perched on the edge of the bed, surveying that hamper and its contents with a look of unalloyed joy. But I don’t need the photo to remind me. Her smile is etched into my memory.

There’s a quote that is often attributed to the French author and philosopher Albert Camus that goes like this:

When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him; and you are torn by the thought of the unhappiness and night you cast, by the mere fact of living, in the hearts you encounter.

I have my doubts that it was Camus who said it. But, Camus or not, it captures something important and true. The unclouded smile, the ‘glow of happiness’, on Wendy’s face as she surveyed that basket gave me a glorious yet terrifying glimpse of the capacity for happiness within her.

Gensei was right: ‘With the happiness held in one inch-square heart you can fill the whole space between heaven and earth.’

The following day’s walk took us just eleven miles from Rowardennan to
Drymen
(pronounced
Drimmen
), a village lying a couple of miles east of the southern end of Loch Lomond.

The trail ran first between the loch on our right and the Rowardennan Forest on our left. Then it climbed up and over the sharp little summit of Conic Hill, with splendid views of the loch and its islands. Finally, it meandered through the thick and gloomy Garadhban (pronounced
Garavan
) Forest.

This was another great day for reflection.

In the shepherd’s hut, the previous evening, I had been reading Leo Tolstoy’s epic novel
War and Peace
, and I was struck by a passage in which one of the book’s central characters, Pierre – at this time a prisoner of the retreating French army – is on a forced march of many days’ duration across Russia.

At one point, he struggles through heavy rain up a muddy, slippery road. All around him are the carcasses of men and horses in varying stages of decay. He is weak and sick and half-starved and footsore.

As he walks, he counts off his steps on his fingers and mentally addresses the rain: ‘Now then, now then, go on! Pelt harder!’

Here, Tolstoy writes: ‘It seemed to him that he was thinking of nothing, but far down and deep within him his soul was occupied with something important and comforting.’

Tolstoy doesn’t tell us precisely what this ‘something’ was, merely that it was ‘a most subtle spiritual deduction’ from a conversation he’d had the day before with his peasant friend and fellow prisoner Karataev. But, whatever it was, it was important and it was comforting.

This passage really struck a chord with me. I felt that I understood precisely what Tolstoy meant.

There’s a mode of thinking you get into when you walk long distances that is very deep but largely unconscious. Your mind takes whatever it is that you’re currently preoccupied with, or anxious about, or desirous of, or frightened of, and slowly works away at it.

These are things that your conscious mind struggles to deal with because they’re too stressful, too abstract, too tied up with your ego, too spiritual, too shameful, too frightening, or too complex. But your unconscious mind works away at them calmly, quietly, and unseen.

Suddenly, you have a burst of inspiration or a flash of insight that feels as though it’s come from nowhere. But it hasn’t. It’s come from deep within you.