One reads and hears over and over again that Nature brings the human being back to himself. I repeatedly experience the opposite, though. In the city, certainly, I am totally and constantly absorbed with myself – outside, when I’m alone, walking in the forest or trekking up the mountain I sometimes start gliding further out of myself with every step I take. I feel wide awake and yet in a dream state, in the present and yet absent. Sometimes I’m so far away from myself, I’m so absorbed in the place that it suddenly occurs to me: it is, naturally, me that’s here.
That’s what happened to me when I arrived at the top of Mount Michael after a trek through the native rainforest of the Blue Tier Forest Reserve – and was greatly startled by a few green parrots which swooped away from the peak, cackling loudly.
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