A vaulted ceiling of hopeful green shelters us from the sun as we begin to walk. The rhythmic crunch of gravel accompanies our steps. The smell of asphalt fades almost immediately, replaced by conifers, by the sweet scent of some plant I cannot identify among the leaf litter. The birds take over. The world of cars disappears.
All five senses enter another world.
I recognise this path. I walked it more than ten years ago, when I was a doctoral student and cycled through here on my way to the astronomy institute. A person who already carried within him the seeds of what would later become anxiety and panic, but who still enjoyed all of this without knowing it. Without valuing it.
Anxiety tore nature away from me. The birds, the trees, the forest, hiking, a bicycle lost in remote places. All of it stopped being part of my life the day panic began its siege of my mind. For years, going out into the countryside was not rest but another front of battle. The fear followed me there, between the trees.
But today I return. And I do so as a different, more resilient version of myself — one who values infinitely what I once took for granted.
I watch the birds on the branches. They have no mortgage, no notifications, no fear of what others will think of them. At most, attention to the occasional predator. The rest is pure, mechanical existence, without the weight of the stories we tell ourselves. Much of anxiety lives precisely there, in those stories. In fears built on asphalt and screens.
If you are going through this, go outside. To the forest, the countryside, the beach, the mountains. Whatever is close. At first it may seem terrifying, and the fear may follow you through the trees just as it follows you at home. That happened to me for years. But every time you go out, you will be giving your nervous system something it desperately needs: to remember which world it truly belongs to.
It will not disappear in a day. But the more you do it, the sooner the taste will return.
And when it does, it will be better than before. I promise.