Progress – Page 42 – My Outdoor Living Room

Steeped in folklore and adventurous tales, there is a valley. Overlooking this valley are hills and mountains, with lakes high up in the clouds and steep, winding paths. It was this valley where I decided to spend my last full day in the mountains.

As usual, the walk was well planned, maps studied, satellite images printed off and compared to the map. Having never been to this area before, I was apprehensive. As soon as I set off though, I could sense something special here. The first leg of the path took me to a long lake, higher up than the valley floor. It was surrounded on three sides by what felt like a rock-made amphitheatre. It almost did feel like a huge room. The path around the lake was calm, peaceful and sheltered. It was a shame to leave it behind, as I made my way up and over one of the sides, to be greeted by another lake much higher up. Looking down on all of this was the mountain summit I was here to climb.

I’ve always thought how walking, running or cycling hills teaches you a lot about yourself, and these hills were no different. You can draw endless analogies between life and moving uphill. Far too many to cover here. It’s true I think, that the outdoors provide pathways to answers to any number of life’s problems and questions. Maybe it’s the simple act of being outside, back to basics, facing the elements. My first day in the mountains this week cut some of my problems down to size, I can tell you that much.

Once at the top, the descent was along a gently sloping path, high up, but sheltered from the wind and by this point of the afternoon warmed up by the sun, radiating from the rocks. It felt very spring like and quite serene. It will have to be covered in a further post but I did have a strange experience up on this path. One of two strange experiences to recount from walking in the last twelve months I dare say.

It was the perfect end to the week and it left me feeling hungry for more, so it won’t be long until I’m back in the clouds once more.

In my last post, I covered different aspects of what constitutes progress. I should probably say that I believe that humanity as a whole is regressing not progressing. I see progress in the form of its definition:

“development towards an improved or more advanced condition.”

Call me old fashioned but I feel that compromising the environment is in no way progress for us at all. After all, how do you measure progress? Inevitably it will be facts and figures, numbers and profits, not general human state. If you could capture that, I think it would be a different story.

I do admit that the planet is becoming overcrowded and we all need somewhere to call home. That can’t be disputed, but the manner in which it’s tackled is generally deplorable. For example, a few hundred acres of prime agricultural land is given up for housing. That for me would be more easy to accept if it was to have 500 suitable, sustainable family homes built on it. However, more often than not, the majority of houses are 3, 4 or 5 bedroom houses that don’t accurately fit in with the needs of that community’s housing needs. It is clearly down to the greed of developers and local authorities.

I have always been critical of HS2 here in the UK (a high speed rail link, that is cutting through the countryside including irreplaceable ancient woodland and wildlife corridors). It is wreaking all this destruction for what? So business users can get to the north for something ridiculous like 30 minutes quicker than they are now. Again, I ask, what for? Well it’s money and that word again, progress.

I was amused a long time ago by post I saw on social media. It hit the nail on the head for me about the general human state vs the environment. It said this:

“Imagine if trees gave off a WiFi signal. We’d be planting trees all over the place and we’d probably save the planet too.

Too bad they only produce the oxygen we breathe”.

The crying shame is, it’s true. If only we had the same attitude towards environment and nature as we have towards high speed broadband, high speed rail links, high speed everything.

Our human state is ultimately unhappy, and probably will continue on this path, but at least we can get there quicker.