I have never done the Otter Trail but I believe the rather beautiful yet torturous hike in the Tsitsikama has a number of exit points at intervals along the route. Presumably, if you are injured or exhausted you can bail out fairly quickly and find yourself a hot bath and a satellite TV within a couple of hours. How sensible.
If life is a hike (and boy doesn’t it feel like that sometimes!) then a book is my quick exit from the hectic uphills. Screeching in from a day of hard work, failure, criticism or just niggly narkiness (a common complaint of mine), I can forget it all a few pages into a great read.
I think I always knew that books would be big for me.
I remember before I could read getting really frustrated at not being able to unlock the words from the page. So I would pretend. Following the words with my finger, I would make up the story as I went along.
Learning to read was a hugely exciting experience. Suddenly I had power. Suddenly there was meaning on the back of the coffee jar or my sweet wrapper. My ability to read was a knife with which I cut away my childish ignorance. And I made new friends so quickly. Noddy and Big Ears, Janet and John; then later the Famous Five and Nancy Drew.
I remember the first time a book made me cry. I must have been about 11 and the story ? about some now-forgotten children in a jungle adventure ? made me weep so much I had to actually put the book down and sob into my pillow. I think I wasn’t just crying for the characters, but for the skill of the author too ? such ability she had to make me believe her world.
Books have added another dimension to my life. The pages are a portal to a different universe where my issues don’t matter, don’t affect the story or the characters at all.
Anonymous observer, I can forget myself. What a relief to stop listening to the looped mantras of my own mind for a while.
But this article is not just an ode to the joy of reading. It’s about the importance of the seemingly non-important activities in our lives.
Some people find the same joyous escape through sport. Funny how when the muscles ache, the brain stops fretting about that board meeting the next day, and starts concentrating on keeping the body alive and mobile for the next few minutes.
What’s your escape?
Prayer, dancing, playing with Scalectrix sets?
You’ll know it because it’s the thing you do where suddenly you look up and say, “I didn’t realise it was so late!”
Of course you lost track of time. You were in that world without clocks, your own personal Neverland. You were playing.
I think when we grow up we feel bad about playing. Adults must put away that childish joy. Life is now about hard work, we think. Viva Peter Pan, I say.
Somehow it’s not okay to kick back for a few hours with the one thing we know keeps us sane. We’re shirking, lazy or self-indulgent. But are we really? Don’t we often return to our lives with vital perspective ? a bad mood soothed, a sadness lifted? And the space we gain allows time for the more uncontrolled creative and imaginative thinking to spiral through.
We get praise for working quickly. First to the finish line, no time wasting. But taking the slower route is often more rewarding in the long run. A few stops at the picnic spots of life can’t be a bad thing, surely?
I think if I ever do attempt the Otter Trail that I shall tackle it in that spirit. I shall take the first exit route I need, enjoy a comfy night and a slap-up meal in a local hotel, and then don my hiking boots the next morning and re-enter the fray. I’ll probably be the only hiker in the history of the trail to emerge from the route with blow-dried hair, full make-up and a smile. But that’s just how I like to do things.