From the door

I enjoy travelling to explore new places, seeking new paths for my boots or bike tyres to tread. But I also feel the need for adventures that start from home.

I wrote previously about a midwinter walk I took along the Malvern Hills. Back then, I argued that setting out from the front door like this is ‘a subversive act that sees you walking or cycling against the tide of the mundane and everyday’ to connect with the place you call home.

Because home isn’t just four walls and a roof. Home is community and environment. Home is where your body can take you from your door, whether on foot or by bike. It’s the connection you make with your surroundings by immersing yourself in them.

From As I walked out one midwinter morning

On reflection, I think there’s more to it than that for me. Yes, it’s about establishing a deeper presence in my home ground. But it’s also about travelling seamlessly from the familiar to the unfamiliar, and then bringing some of this adventure back home.

The souvenirs I return with are the feelings from the road or trail. The frisson of transgressive excitement when I continue beyond my usual point of return, pushing further away from the chores and to-do lists waiting for me. A calm that comes from having no decisions to make beyond when to stop for a snack.

These are every bit as important as physical souvenirs. They sit unseen on my desk as I write case studies, articles and other communications for clients (my day job). They tell me that adventure is out there, and all I have to do is step out of my door.

As Scottish poet Thomas A Clark writes in his poem ‘In Praise of Walking’, at ‘any moment, we can set out, with the least possible baggage, and discover the world’. Bad day at work? Remember, Clark says, that you can always ‘refuse all the coercion, violence, property, triviality, to simply walk away’. That’s a great feeling.

Although my regular walks and bike rides are, by necessity, loops, I will sometimes head out on longer, one-way trips. Over the summer, G and I walked the length of the Malverns from our home right to the far end, taking in every peak along the ridge (that bit was his idea).

It felt like we were winding out a thread – from the front door, through our regular walking territory, all the way to more distant and lesser-visited summits. As Thomas A Clark puts it: ‘We can walk between two places and in so doing establish a link between them, bring them into a warmth of contact, like introducing two friends.’

And this is where the real value in an adventure from the front door lies – in what these new connections do for me when I step back through that door, and the trail is gone. An adventure from the door brings the extraordinary into everyday life and shows me how to rewild a tame existence of admin and bills.

It reminds me to explore unknown paths in my work and personal life, because even the most unpromising track can reveal an unexpected view. It encourages me to keep going, because even the worst storm doesn’t last forever. And it inspires me to spend my time adventurously, because one day – hopefully not until I’m extremely old, but one day – I won’t be able to get much further than the front door.

So here’s to opening the front door, stepping out and not looking back. At least until dinner time.