If you’re a fan of nature documentaries then you’ll doubtless have seen at least one where an animal, having either been rescued from captivity or rehabilitated after injury, is finally released back into the wild after a lengthy period spent in an enclosure.
The door of its cage is lifted up and the team of experts stands back, breathless with anticipation, as the hitherto captive animal sticks its head out of the open door and smells freedom.
What will it do?
Some don’t even flinch. They see their chance and they take it, bolting like lightning and leaving only a cloud of dust behind. Others cautiously stick just their heads out, nervously sniff the air and then skulk back into their cage. They need a bit more time.
Where once they were so at home, now they are uncertain. Everything out there looks familiar, but somehow it’s different too.
Lure of our lockdown enclosures
I’ve been both of those animals over the past month. The announcement in April of an early easing of travel restrictions caught me unawares. I didn’t really have time to think about it. I bolted to Braemar that first day without hesitation, almost involuntarily, driven by an instinctive fear that we might be back in our enclosures again in a few months’ time.
A walk on Mar Lodge Estate felt wonderfully familiar, like I’d never been away from the hills. It wasn’t until I was actually sat down on a summit, staring out over a spring-like Glen Quoich, that exactly what I’d been missing hit me. It was that unique combination of elements on a scale unlike anything I’d experienced in at least six months: the smell of sun-kissed pine; the sound of big rivers; the sight of an eagle; forests composed of something other than sitka spruce; mountains more than twice the height of anything I’d climbed during lockdown.
It was all wonderfully restorative, like inhaling fresh air after a thunderstorm. But since that initial catharsis, for the most part I’ve found myself returning to the security and familiarity of my lockdown enclosure. I can’t say I was expecting that.
The world feels bigger
One possible explanation is that I’m out of practice where very early starts are concerned. The 4am alarm, so that I can be on the road by five and walking by eight, has never been less appealing. But I also think that an element of conditioning has taken hold, where living within smaller walls means I am now oddly accustomed to a smaller life.
Even before Covid I could find myself frozen into inertia by the bewildering choice of walks on offer
It reminds me of childhood actually, when I simply didn’t have the means to go more than few miles from my home and had to find adventure on my doorstep. I’ve certainly done a lot of that in the last six months. I’ve found all manner of weird and wonderful places that I never knew existed, locations I might never have visited had they not been in my enclosure. The way I view my doorstep has undoubtedly changed as a result. It seems bigger somehow.
I still love exploring farther afield of course, and I’m sure I’ll be doing that again soon, but I think part of me has also quite liked not having to make choices. Even before Covid I could find myself frozen into inertia by the bewildering choice of walks on offer within a three hour drive of home.
Wanting to escape, but also wanting to stay
It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes when I want to go everywhere, I can all too easily end up going nowhere. It’s a bit like going into a supermarket to buy a simple toothbrush, but being so overwhelmed and confused by the myriad options that you give up and instead leave with nothing. Or is that just me?
I am of course aware that my risk of contracting Covid is miniscule in the hills, and lowers still further because I tend to favour places well off the beaten track. Plus, I’ve now had my first jab of the vaccine. It’s not fear of the virus that’s keeping me tethered. This is some other kind of post-lockdown anxiety – wanting to get away, but also wanting to stay.
So for now at least, I’m surprised to find I’m a cautious animal, half in and half out of his box, craving former freedoms but simultaneously comforted by the smaller, simpler world of the last few months. I genuinely thought I’d bolted back in April, but evidently I was only really sniffing the air.
Ben Dolphin is an outdoors enthusiast, countryside ranger and former president of Ramblers Scotland
