As anyone who has wandered alone through a forest, looked out from a mountaintop or stared in silence at a sunset, will likely have felt…
There is something undeniably powerful, humbling and potent about being close to nature. It seems the more reliant on it you are, the stronger these feelings become. It would be right to describe these feelings as primary, but standing alone on the ridge of a volcano, as night fell on my first evening at Elsewhere wasn’t just primary… it felt primordial!
No matter how much you travel, when you scale down from complex megacities of millions to a palm hut on jungle hill in the middle of nowhere your senses are quick to tell you that you’re not in Kansas anymore. There is an initial spike as the light fades, dormant senses awake, and the darkness fills with an unfamiliar chorus. It’s the wilds warm welcome… you’re a guest of nature.
Having forgotten a mosquito net (schoolboy error) I lay awake most of the night, not fearful in any way just alert, super alert. Listening to the night orchestra of a million bugs and creepy crawlies going about their business. I felt like a ripe strawberry in an ants nest… a happy one.
