Saturday, what can I say?

Yeah, these days my life is so boring the only thing I can find to talk about is my weekend hike. And I seem to repeat myself every weekend when I talk about that.

Fantastic solitude, though, is what I achieved today. The feeling of desolation that I need once a week in this tight little country. Desolation has long been a spiritual need for me, and one of the biggest problems of my life has been getting my spiritual hands on it.



When I worked at the kids home in Shrewsbury there was this one young lad who'd go up to his bedroom and re-arrange the furniture after moments of aggression and confused emotions. He'd get angry about something or other, which usually ended in a restraint, and it'd take a while to calm him down. The reason he used to shift his bed and bedside table about the room, according to his therapist, was to put things back into order. His physical environment would have a big impact on his mental environment, you see, and it would make him feel better once everything was in a differrent order than how it was before.

I don't know for sure, but when I go onto the mountain I suppose I do get similar feelings. It feels a bit like I'm wiping dirt off my back - dirt that's been accumulating there all week. But also, in addition to the cleansing process, I know that I've long had inside me an obsession with finding desolate parts of the world. I wonder whether there are parts of the world that exist where I could satisfy my need for desolation, or whether it's like a religion or something that I need. Who knows?