All I did was walk

Taming Anxiety with a Walk in the Countryside

From the way the sunlight skips across the fields, you’d think you were somewhere else. No one had told me that England could be beautiful. It was supposed to be grey and rainy.

The farmers here are always busy and the fields have been cut down again. The smell of hay has turned to something chemical which I think must be fertiliser. I tell Amie I hate it, but, honestly, it’s not bad.

Something called a red kite, a bird of prey I hadn’t heard of a year ago, swoops down into the dirt and emerges with a rodent in its claws. They’re beautiful but I’ve thought of them as pests since one snatched a slice of pizza right out of my hand at the pub last summer. It was a perfect strike, no skin. Considering their claws are the size of my head, impressive.

The churning in my gut has calmed a little. I can’t remember what caused it. Sometimes it just is. Sometimes I feel embarrassed about it, really. Like I must be the weakest person in the world. Who are you to feel anxious?

I’m sure there was something that set it off. I try to think what it was but can’t. For now, I dodge nettles.

I can tell the brits think I’m crazy for wearing a hat out today. But I checked the UV index. It’s a 5. Moderate. The Australian in me is wary of the sun. Remembers those ads from when I was a kid, tanning is skin cells in trauma. I pull the brim of my bucket hat over my nose.

That’s not why I’m anxious though. I don’t know why I’m anxious. Sometimes you’re just anxious.

I walk on. A podcast plays in my headphones. I’m only half listening. Something about the US election which I both do and don’t care about. A quantum superposition of caring. You’d think this would stress me out; it doesn’t and I couldn’t tell you why.

Up through the narrow path now. When it rains, it gets too wet to walk this way. The dirt turns to mud and the only thing to grab onto is the barbed wire fence protecting a field of rapeseed. As if the genteel retirees were in danger of jumping over, sickle in hand, and carrying off an armload of the stuff.

I don’t just maybe feel better by the time I reach the end of the path. I definitely do. My stomach is calm. There’s no tingling up my back. Even the tension in my neck has eased.

My thoughts feel steadier, less cyclical. I can still feel that crookedness out there, threatening. I know for certain I can’t check my emails for the rest of the day. Emails are always dangerous. I definitely can’t go on reddit.

But I can walk. I can walk through these beautiful fields and I can half listen to a podcast about Kamala’s policy platform which will probably have some loose impact on my life even as an Australian living in England.

It’s a six kilometre loop. I know this because my apple watch tells me. I don’t really trust it. I’ve got a new phone and they’ve never really learned to talk to each other. But the pale blue strap is so jaunty, even if it does occasionally give me a rash.

By the time I’m home, I could almost say I’m happy.

All I did was walk.