The simple gift of homecoming

Looking at this pic brings me to a bone-aching yearning for wilderness. Being broken down to basic needs in the moment; living completely self-reliant through wits and hands, buffeted by clawing wind and soaked by rain and surviving on 3 hours sleep a night, brings pellucid clarity. It chips away the thick and blinding mud of modernity. I can see this in my face. Raw. Unfiltered. Real.

In the mirror of wild nature we meet ourselves. Everything that isn't nature is revealed as illusion, reflected in the wave of birdsong spinning round the planet in endless circling dawn. In the bloody, careless push- pull of predator and prey, all living things taking cyclical nourishment from others in the interconnected web of life that is our home. In the restful rhythm of action and rest we fall into when there's no energy for distraction, when every choice has a consequence we feel immediately.

Life becomes simple. What are my needs, and what resources do I have to meet those needs? That's it, really. Any energy that's left over can go into art and play and ongoing projects.

Simple.

I love seeing who I am when my modernity is stripped away. After the great unpeeling of expectation and judgement, what remains is so compelling. Lutruwita scoured those parts of me addicted to image, identity, vanity. None of this is relevant when no gaze blazes bar the bottomless eyes of encircling hills and the dark songs of forests and deep mysteries of lake. No mirrors to preen before. No comparisons.

What a relief to let all that go.

In the interviews since the series aired I've been ushered in to studios to have my hair and makeup done, and while I love the dressing up part of this, watching the creativity of an artist working on the blank canvas of my face, I feel strange in the aftermath.

There's a layer between me and the world. It's a layer of defence, protection, armour, an uneasy mask. My vanity kicks in, as does my human impulse to compare. I squirm a little when I watch it back, feel a bit tainted and taunted by the voices of judgment that arise. The message is that I'm somehow not good enough, raw.

And then there's this pic. The level of reality here is where I want to live. It's so honest. Meeting life in this way is a constant dance. I hope I stay connected to this version of myself, the deepest parts on show without pretence or artifice. It's challenging, in a culture that constantly asks me to layer up and judges me on how I look rather than who I am.

I'm really grateful to a friend for sharing this pic, to remind me that underneath my stories and identities I am a wild thing, as we all are. My hair smells like firesmoke and puffy eyes squint from lack of sleep, but that thousand yard stare penetrates through the skin of reality, into the unfurling gift of nature calling me home. That gift is our birthright. All of us belong in nature. All of us deserve that level of connection.

I'm too comfortable in the Alone aftermath. It's past time to go bush, shuck off stories and wander witless, clothed in soft and savage skin, bare feet kissing cold and the earth kissing them back. Remember how to be rather than do, feel rather than think, which is the simplest homecoming there is.