Kerry Christiani
August 15, 2018
Sometimes, it’s too easy to focus on what we can photograph (and Instagram) on our travels—at the expense of our other senses. That’s what Kerry Christiani discovered on a rare camera-free trip.
I was sitting on an old wooden bench, propped up against a sagging stone croft, when it happened: The moment, that is, when I stopped seeing and started, well, sensing. It sounds obvious, but that particular moment of realization—call it an epiphany, call it an awakening, call it whatever you like—stands out in more than a decade of round-the-world travel.
Here I was, all alone on a remote, wind-battered, wee speck of a Hebridean island off Scotland’s northwest coast in the October gloom. A place where most days I saw nobody. A place ruled by the changing tides and the BBC shipping forecast. A place where the gray could dampen your soul and a sudden shaft of brilliant light could make you feel like you were seeing the world for the first time. A place seemingly immune to time and trends. A place where I had no wi-fi or watch, no mobile signal or proper map. No plans. Nothing specific to get up for in the morning, yet everything to discover.
And it was here, without the rush to tick off this or that or the pressure of having to ‘see it all’, that I learned what some might call ‘mindfulness’, or fully engaging the senses and being present.
So obsessed are we with the light that we often forget that darkness gives places an entirely different dimension. Any traveler who has misjudged time on a hike and had to negotiate a mountain slope or forest at nightfall knows this. Any traveler who’s pitched a tent by a rushing river or set up a hammock between two branches in the jungle knows this. The night makes us aware of the elements, of the wilderness that surrounds us. Suddenly, we perceive layers that we’d never notice by day—the rustling in the undergrowth, the crackling in the trees, the warbling in the canopy. Though at times deeply unnerving, there is nothing like it for it setting the senses on high alert.
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Spending time in the wild, be it on a multi-day hike in the mountains, wild camping in the back of beyond or a walk into the woods by moonlight, does something to our powers of perception. I once spent a few days on the Russian-Finnish border observing brown bears. Seeing the bears was special, but as twilight approached and I settled down to sleep for an hour or two in my flimsy shack of a solo hide, I heard a bear snuffling and scratching around outside—close enough for me to hear its panting, ragged breath. Pure terror and exhilaration flooded my body. Not being able to see the bear weirdly made it 10 times more real.
