Early mornings make me feel alive.
When I say alive I mean in the sense of travelling the world with a single piece of luggage: Breathing in the cold morning air before the world stirs and being awake before the birds. This is the kind of 'Alive' that comes hand in hand with a sense of freedom.
I once awoke in a forest in Germany, en route from India to Amsterdam. We had been travelling for about a week with our friend Hans Peter who we met on the boat that brought us from Greece to Italy.
That particular night, (which was one of many sleeping rough), we bedded down with our blankets on the edge of a forest. It was beautiful and the dark shadows and silent noises took me into sleep.
I woke in the morning to another pair of eyes looking intently at me, it was a rabbit. I dared not breathe because I didn't want to scare it away. For about a minute we stared at each other, myself wanting to stay in the magical moment and the startled rabbit frozen to the spot. Then it turned and hopped off pretending it hadn't been seen, the kind of pretending that would involve whistling a little tune and kicking an imaginary stone along pretending you had not been there atall.
It is one of those memories where although it is not a thrilling story, it is a connection with nature that I need to remember by writing it down.
When I say alive I mean in the sense of travelling the world with a single piece of luggage: Breathing in the cold morning air before the world stirs and being awake before the birds. This is the kind of 'Alive' that comes hand in hand with a sense of freedom.
I once awoke in a forest in Germany, en route from India to Amsterdam. We had been travelling for about a week with our friend Hans Peter who we met on the boat that brought us from Greece to Italy.
That particular night, (which was one of many sleeping rough), we bedded down with our blankets on the edge of a forest. It was beautiful and the dark shadows and silent noises took me into sleep.
I woke in the morning to another pair of eyes looking intently at me, it was a rabbit. I dared not breathe because I didn't want to scare it away. For about a minute we stared at each other, myself wanting to stay in the magical moment and the startled rabbit frozen to the spot. Then it turned and hopped off pretending it hadn't been seen, the kind of pretending that would involve whistling a little tune and kicking an imaginary stone along pretending you had not been there atall.
It is one of those memories where although it is not a thrilling story, it is a connection with nature that I need to remember by writing it down.
Comments