The moment

I am an an­i­mal.

The shiver be­tween the shoul­der blades crawls up my neck. The pound of my heart echoes in my ears and res­onates down to my fin­ger­tips as I stop to haul in air. The going is get­ting tricky, and the zigzag climb up through the tan­gle of leaf and branch of the vast es­carp­ment dis­ori­en­tates me.

I grip the wil­lowy stem of a bush of yel­low-tipped broom, turn and dig my heels into the slope of leaf loam, wedg­ing my bum onto a lip of rock. Acorns tum­ble away. It al­ways ap­pears steeper look­ing down.

The damp red sand­stone, mot­tled with the fire­work lichens of cream green and ochre, stains my hands. I ab­sorb the de­tail. Lichens gar­land the necks and limbs of the oaks. They cloak dead branches, pat­tern every rock. Lichens colour and fill our world, yet these star­bursts of hues, one of the great­est sym­bi­otic suc­cesses on the planet, are typ­i­cal of so much of what I once ab­jectly failed to no­tice. They are such a huge part of the palette of life. They cover up to 8 per cent of all open air sur­faces above sea level. Look at the pave­ment to your door, the gut­ter­ing, the gate, trees in the park. These are not plants, but the land corals of the woods, forests and our man-made world, and they are sur­vivors. A map lichen – there are thou­sands of species – found in the Arc­tic has been aged at 8,600 years, by far the old­est liv­ing or­gan­isms on the planet.

To my back, above the rock, is a cush­ion of emer­ald moss with flour­ishes of tiny ferns, both rel­ish­ing the damp­ness of the north face shad­ows. They too are every­where, like the mo­saic of decay and re­birth - the com­plex nu­tri­ent cycle with fungi at the heart of it, fun­da­men­tal to the ecosys­tem and re­gen­er­a­tion. Ge­nius.

Veer­ing off the nar­row path to aim for a cave higher up the face of the es­carp­ment, a sliver of black­ness I can no longer see, may have been a mis­take. I look around and glance back down into the shad­ows and tan­gle. I am in deep and the for­est and rock breathe with the cold si­lence of a tomb. The quest re­mains. Are there more Ne­olithic art­works and hand tools? How deep can I go? Not today. The light is fad­ing.

It is sub­lime. Yet it is still merely an­other toe dip. The um­bil­i­cal cord, the wig­gly, nar­row path back to shel­ter and love of home, and the cogs, egos and ob­ses­sions of a global so­ci­ety on over­load, may be out of sight but I know it is there, some­where below me. Head­ing out as I love to do, I am for­ever re­mind­ing my­self I need to learn to live, with my­self, in the mo­ment, to find my bal­ance, and some sort of peace, not least for the ben­e­fit of those I love and value so much.

It is un­think­able to not delve deep into the mys­ter­ies of this Cata­lan val­ley that is home, the serra I stare at every day. An­other book is ger­mi­nat­ing. This lit­tle known wilder­ness holds so many se­crets and as­ton­ish­ments.

More­over, I find per­spec­tive, pa­tience and that bal­ance, to counter the white light glare of gross ob­ses­sions and to calmly ap­pre­ci­ate all the more the can­dle warmth of lov­ing re­la­tion­ships, what is tan­gi­ble and of the great­est bear­ing on the trail of a ful­fill­ing, peace­ful life.

If that is Tao­ism, then I am in. I will fol­low the path. Slowly. I don’t want to miss any­thing. And, yes, Mag­gie, my love, I will be care­ful.