A walk along the paths of life and good vibes.

Hiking and walking in nature are among my favourite things; I couldn’t do it before, but now I enjoy it whenever I get the chance.

Many people go hiking as a form of exercise, something that benefits the body, and as a bonus it has excellent side effects such as clearing the mind of stress. In my case, it’s the other way round: my priority is a healthy mind, to shake off nerves and worries, or at least, if they can’t be eliminated, to use a walk in natural surroundings to help me understand things better and find solutions.

This happens because being in natural surroundings allows you to step away from everyday life, gain some perspective and tackle issues from a different angle. That’s always helped me a great deal, even when I couldn’t go hiking and simply had my garden. Being there was an oasis in my daily life.

But nature doesn’t just help in this respect; it also provides moments of calm, and the simple act of thinking about nothing allows the mind to rest a little, helps us connect with our inner selves, and has many other benefits, such as helping people get to know themselves better, shifting their energy for the better, and more.

I always say that nature is wise and it’s good to learn from it. I see the benefits to physical health as a side effect. I believe that a healthy mind leads to a healthy body, as the body often falls ill due to unresolved emotions, stress and feeling overwhelmed by life.

The woodland parks here in the city aren’t at sea level; to explore them, you have to climb and climb. The climb might not be very steep, but as you walk for a while, you realise just how far, or rather, how high, you’ve got. And the higher I climbed in this park, the more I felt purer oxygen filling my lungs.

I have a little story: when I spend a lot of time in an environment like this, accompanied by my family, for example, my mood or attitude tends to shift to a state of greater happiness than usual, and I feel as though I’m floating in the air. When my brother sees me, he says, ‘You’ve got too much oxygen,’ and we start laughing. And it’s something that always happens to me. I don’t know if it’s caused by my mind feeling free or actually by the excess of pure oxygen I’m breathing in, but what I do know is that it completely revitalises me.

I might arrive home exhausted from all the walking, climbing hills and steep paths, but it’s a healthy kind of physical exhaustion. My mind is refreshed and so is my heart; it’s as if my energy were shining brighter and brighter. If people realised just how good this is, I think I’d see more people in these places. Unfortunately, that’s not usually the case, as you can see in the photos.

Likewise, I enjoy it because I like the silence, the peace and, often, the solitude. In solitude, you hear more, it seems like a contradiction, but it’s better to listen to the breeze, the birdsong and the sea in the distance than to the noise of cars, people shouting or a building site. The latter is stressful, at least for me.

A walk on a sunny day, with just a few clouds in the sky and, through the many gaps between the trees, I could see the sea, that marvellous sea, and the higher I climbed, the more marvellous the views became.

There was even a deserted children’s playground, waiting for someone to use it. My inner child said to me: ‘Nobody can see you,’ and I smiled to myself.

It was a place that even had a large picnic area; the whole trail was well looked after, free of litter, well maintained, and at times it felt as though no one else inhabited the planet. I could lose myself gazing at the sky, imagine beautiful things, look up at the sky that seemed infinite, and see the treetops as if they were embracing it all.

It’s walks like these that shift and renew your energy, so you can return to earth and carry on with life. And when I look at these photos, it’s like going back to that moment; I close my eyes for a few moments and am transported, wishing I were there again.

Thank you so much for joining me on this Wednesday walk; I send you my warmest regards. See you soon.
Amonet.

All photographs are my own.