When I was small—still-in-nappies-small—the first two words I combined were ‘out’ and ‘play’. I’m told that, daily, I took myself to the front door, stood with my hand on the patterned glass and repeated these two words until I got a satisfactory result. I was, it seems, drawn by the call of nature, aching for that open door to what counted for the wilderness in my toddlerhood: a flat green in the centre of the cul-de-sac on which we lived in a small town near the west coast of Scotland. Daisies were the wildest flora that grew there, and errant dog leavings the most dangerous. But it was enough to satisfy my toddler impulses to be free and abroad in the world.
A couple of years later, my Papa began taking me on wilder walks with him. He’d pack us a rucksack, allow me to select one of his collection of walking sticks, and take my hand as we embarked upon the arduous climb up what he had nicknamed the Muddy Mountain, a hill that rises behind the seaside village where he and my granny lived, and which offers views of some of the southmost of Scotland’s western isles. I was four when we first took on this ‘mountain’. Now, the same walk takes me fifteen-ish minutes. At the summit, I still find myself breathless at the views and, in retrospect, at my papa’s capacity to make this walk an all-morning- or -afternoon-long adventure that connected the pair of us in our shared call to the outdoors and to the glory of the natural world. These walks were also my introduction to hillwalking, which would become a lifelong source of solace and sustenance that connected me also to the benefits of feeling small in the face of the vastness and stunning beauty of this earth, this sky, this sea.
I was, of course, small at the time Papa first took me, and that hill was mountainous to my preschool legs. I had my papa and a rucksack filled with my granny’s wheaten bread and a lovely slice of cheese, and maybe some shortbread or, if I was very lucky, a treacle toffee for afters. So it makes sense that I’d feel small and held and safe.
Here’s the thing, though: more than half a century later, with Granny and Papa and the rucksacks and walking sticks of my childhood long gone, replaced by this adult body and mind with all its potential for aches and anxieties, I still feel the same sense of smallness and safety when I’m out on a hill or in one of those wild, treeless glens where I can see for miles and know that I am the lone human in a vast, untamed space that has been here long before anyone I’ve ever known was a speck of a thought and that will be here long after we’re all gone. I am a mote on the landscape, tiny in the best of ways.
I thought that this sense I long for after too much time in paved places was simply a longing for space and stillness, for somewhere untouched by so-called civilization and the weight of cultural expectations. And it is that, in part. But it’s also a seeking of the connection to the Small Self, which we can get to through any of the arts as well as nature—through anything that we might come upon that stops us in our tracks, makes us pause and lose ourselves in its gloriousness, in other words, anything, from a tiny flower to a huge vista, that feels transcendent or awe-inspiring. This connection with awe and the Small Self has been shown to increase prosocial emotions as well as increasing generosity and ethical decision making. It also feels good and acts as an antidote to our anxiety-ridden world.
When the left brain gets all tangled up in the problems of the world (or the problems of even-minimally-possible-future-personal-or-global-catastrophes), I know that, somewhere within me, there’s a wee girl standing at the door with her hand on the patterned glass, desperately needing to go ‘out play’. And although I am far, far away from the Muddy Mountain and all of Scotland’s wild glens, my experience of them still lives within me and can be enlivened again through memory. It’s also not the only place that I can connect with the Small Self. And so, what’s right right now is:
Alone on the shore,
Swirls of snow in the sand,
a tide frozen in its retreat.
Wind whips my hair in all directions, claws at my cap,
Sun glints on the water, the Massachusetts Bay tide receding,
Flowing out to the Atlantic and the thousands of miles beyond,
Reminding me that I am but a tiny creature.
And for these moments, I am that wee girl on the grass plucking daisies,
And I am on that hill with Papa;
I am in that glen with a loch and a stag ahead and the rising hills around me,
And on this beach in this swirling world,
Here, now
I am
Today, I invite you to explore what you might do to connect with your Small Self. Imagine what piece of visual art or music or book or dance or walk in nature has stops you in your tracks and then go ‘out play’ with or in it. If none of that is available for you to experience today, I invite you to return to a memory of it and recall the way it looked, smelled, sounded, felt in your body. Consider conjuring it on the page: write about whatever makes you feel a sense of awe, including all the sensory details you can recall. (And if you’re so inclined, share it in the comments.)
Alternately, or additionally, here’s a guided meditation to help:
Makes me want to find a hill with no one on it.