Facing Familiarity
Familiarity is something we have all been getting better acquainted with over the past year or so. Limited in the distances we can travel we have walked the same paths, followed the same routine and seen the same people. It’s been hard. We have all felt trapped in one way or another, like a wind-up toy stuck in the corner of the room, nudging at the skirting board. All that energy, all that drive, and nowhere really to go. But, as familiarity rubs shoulders with the uncertainty of how long this will last, a strange kind of friction is created; static from a balloon that makes everything stand on end. In this space we start to notice new things, new feelings, and the familiar begins to take on a new shape.
My daily exercise walk takes me along a concrete track, onto a muddy drove, and then eventually out through a farmyard, where I’m greeted by the undulating downs at the edge of the Chalke Valley. There are far reaching views, and through clouds of corvids, the faint grey spire of Salisbury Cathedral stands proud. Up here the songs of farm birds drip from trees and crops: linnets, yellowhammers, huge charms of goldfinches, and the occasional passing squadron of starlings. And, I am mostly alone, save for the cream-coloured sheep speckling the hillside. But I have walked it so often now that my feet feel as though they could do it on their own. And with my mind in autopilot, it’s like they had. Utterly mindless, I was picking podcasts over paying attention, reaching the end of my walk without even realising.
I am lucky I have all this on my doorstep; that I can walk deep into the downs and be greeted by that ‘quintessentially English’ vista. But it felt as though I had become stuck in a cycle of not noticing. Walking it daily, the scene wasn’t necessarily losing impact, but I had come to learn what to expect and pushed it aside as though there was nothing special left in it. It was an uncomfortable feeling to be so disconnected from something that was forming a huge part of my lockdown existence. Somewhere that I walked daily, and when I had first discovered it my heart was lifted by its beauty. I knew I wanted that fluttering feeling back. To find that connection again.
When I first headed out here my mind was constantly questioning. Scanning the scenery and reading it like a novel so that it opened up before me , allowing me in. Questions like; how did travelling clouds change the tones of rolling greenery? What birds were passing high up over head? Where are the changing seasons laying their hands on the landscape?
It took a while to tune in again, to get myself out of that empty headspace that carried me through obliviously. But slowly, and quietly new things took precedence over the blankness, and that familiar view fine-tuned back into focus. Sounds reached Dolby surround quality again and life seemed to burst forth from the furze.
When I flicked the switch the stretching blue skies filled with the tumbling notes of skylark song. I noticed that the fieldfares with their iron-coloured wings were gradually receding from the hedgerows and fields, as the blackbirds took centre stage with their squabbles. From the mud pushed the delicate drooping heads of snowdrops, a well-loved sign that the world was waking from its winter sleep. And I took comfort in the idea that we both were, in a way.
The slick mud that thickly coats each path was also offering up new things to consider. As well as imprints of dogs and human activities, this squelching substance hinted at the nocturnal navigations of badgers, foxes and deer. Walks now became about deciphering. Questioning the place and what happened in it away from human eyes.
Familiarity gives us the freedom to inspect further, to create a closer connection. When our feet know the way so well that they no longer slip and trip, and our minds know what to expect around each corner, then we can begin to question what’s in front of us. To dig deeper. Something, which I imagine will look quite different for each of us. It will depend on your interests, on the environment that lies in front of you, even down to how you are feeling on that particular day. But it’s all reassurance that the familiar doesn’t have to be boring. It doesn’t have to be something we just grow accustomed to because our options are limited – it is a way to open up a new world within one that we only just seem to scratch the surface of on a daily basis.
Now, as I lace up my mud-encrusted walking boots, and head out onto the sweeping expanse of the Chalke Valley’s downs, I find myself craving the smaller layers of the landscape. Those ones that allow me to see it in an entirely new light.
