Personal Thoughts about "The Wild Places" by Robert Macfarlane
"The Wild Places" by Robert Macfarlane has lingered with me in the way certain landscapes etch themselves into the memory, not as mere geography but as something deeper, something sacred. As I reflect on his journey to the far edges of the natural world, I find myself drawn to the wild places within me. These untamed landscapes—both external and internal—hold a certain kind of truth, a truth that is raw, unpredictable, and fiercely alive.
What strikes me most in Macfarlane’s writing is the sense that wildness is not simply an absence of human touch, but rather a presence, a force that shapes and transforms. It is a place where time stretches out and deepens, where the veil between the known and the unknown feels thin. In the wild, we are reminded of our smallness, of the larger forces at work that we cannot control, and perhaps this is where the beauty lies: in the surrender, the release of our need to tame, to know, to possess.
I am reminded of those places in my own life that resist taming, those parts of myself that do not fit neatly into the world’s expectations. Like the mountains Macfarlane climbs, they are rugged, sometimes inhospitable, and yet they hold something essential. There is a purity in their refusal to conform. And perhaps this is what draws us to the wild places—not just for their beauty, but for the permission they give us to be untamed ourselves.
In the wild, there is space for grief, for melancholy, for the messiness of being human. There is no need to mask or disguise our scars; the land itself bears its own. The wind against stone, the roots that crack open earth, the river carving through rock over millennia—each of these tells a story of struggle and endurance. And in this, I find a kind of comfort. The wild places teach us that transformation is slow, that change comes in its own time, through forces beyond our control.
And yet, amidst the wild, there is also a profound stillness, a silence that invites us to listen in a way we rarely do in our daily lives. It is not an empty silence, but one filled with presence, with the quiet hum of life unfolding beyond our perception. This stillness calls us inward, urging us to reconnect with the forgotten rhythms of our own hearts. It is here, in the quiet wild, that we remember who we are.
I wonder if this is why we are drawn to wildness, why we seek it out despite its discomforts and challenges. It calls us back to something ancient, something primal within ourselves. In the wild, we touch the edge of the eternal, where our lives meet the vastness of the natural world. We remember that we are part of something far greater than ourselves, something that humbles and exalts us all at once.
The wild places remind me that life is not meant to be controlled, but lived. It is a reminder that beauty and harshness coexist, that growth often comes through the rugged terrain of our experiences. And perhaps, in the end, the wild is not so much a place we visit but a state of being we return to—a way of seeing the world and ourselves with open eyes, open hearts, and a deep reverence for the untamable mystery of life.u
All my Love and Light, 💗
An
