by Graham King

Created on: June 16, 2008

I think being alone outdoors is an experience worth having. It can have beneficial effects which may surprise you. They surprised me!

Last year, 2007, I felt a deep need to get out and among nature. I was feeling restricted and dissatisfied, uncomfortable amidst a largely built-up, man-made environment of traffic, tarmac and walls... and people. I live in a city of 60 000 people, which I know is not large by some standards; it has several spacious parks which I greatly value, and I have good friends whose company I enjoy greatly; but I knew I needed to get away. I wanted to find green spaces without human presence or traces, places to be unobserved and alone: oases where I could easily and quickly go, whenever I needed, to refresh my inner self.

This heart's cry was answered by me finding - to my delight - that there are various locations within easy reach of my home that meet these requirements. I had not noticed these places, until I consciously acknowledged that I was hungry and thirsty for solitude, and embraced that desire as a fervent wish. Then these natural havens became apparent.

There is an attraction and a freedom in nature woodland, seashore, cliffs... Partly it is delight in things that just are: surroundings that are not trying to sell us something nor persuading us to change nor asking anything of us. Other people may either demand recognition by us or withhold recognition from us, to our discomfort, but the natural world just does what it does; we can engage with it or not, as we please. Geology and weather proceed, myriad small creatures live their own lives, processes and events occur both noticed and unnoticed, at every pace and scale of size imaginable. And in that ample frame, there is space for a human individual to be individually human, too.

Not a constrained, defined space not a job, clocking in and out with tasks to perform and standards to meet but scope to wander at will, to stroll wherever a path leads or to rest; to explore curiously off-trail, or leisurely idle time away in some pleasant location.

I find that when I am alone amid nature, where I am becomes real to me again; and I become more real to myself. I realize afresh who I am. The hubbub of a busy world can overwhelm a person's own identity. In my childhood I bought a 45 single, a vinyl record I still have, by the group America: "A Horse with no Name". This song contains the memorable lyric In the desert, you can remember your name, cos there ain't no-one for to give you no

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