After a day of interminable meetings, the clock ticking on the wall, I escape into the open air like a colt out of the gate. Don’t get me wrong, I usually love my job. But lately I feel like it’s sitting on my back. Like I am never giving enough and, at the same time, always giving too much. I feel invisible. I feel like I am walking through quicksand. I feel like I am failing but cannot put my finger on how or why.
I never feel this way on the road. You cannot fail the feel of the earth under your feet or the wind on your skin. You are not invisible under the sky. The road has no expectations. It makes no demands on your time.
The light is fading when we set out and the sky grows sleepy, closing its eyes with a deep sigh of relief. I take the track up through the fields, gravel crunching under my feet. Overhead, the sky is a patchwork of shifting grey clouds, punctuated by the shimmer of stars. A grand theatre, and a play staged just for me.
I trudge up the hill, the dog running ahead, and turn off into the long grass. It susurrates and shivers as I part it, whispering things half heard. Through the kissing gate on the path under the oak trees, then over the stile, and I find myself at the place where the moorlands and woodlands and fields meet. To the left, a dark and secret path through the trees, over hills purple with heather and lush with curling, green ferns. To the right, a long path through shaven fields the texture of stubble and the colour of ashes at night. The edges are deep with long grasses and still rich with chamomile flowers. I turn into the fields, the dog running wild through the grass, chasing a scent with intense concentration.
We walk and walk, the only sound the hooting of owls and the shriek of a fox. The pylons are eerie in the mist, skeletal puppets rearing out of the dark with outstretched limbs attached to wires at the fingertips. I round a corner and, in the uneven and fuzzy blackness, glow squares of buttery golden light. As I get closer, a house takes shape: grey walls and the outline of the roof. Home.
