A month on the wild side (part 1)

It had been a decision quickly made over my birthday weekend in early December, signed and sealed before the still-hot melting wax of thought had time to cool and dither and faff. Yes, there had been last minute nerves mixed in with all the excitement, and as I looked down from the jet's cold metal belly at the mounds of snow encrusting the runway I tried as hard as I could not to even attempt to picture what lay ahead. Not just yet, anyway.

It is probably to overstate the case to say that I'm afraid of flying, but I've always understood why some pre-flight passengers might dose themselves with alcohol or tranquilisers; comfortably numb could well be a most commendable flight path. The cups of tea and fizzy water I'd had during my long wait in the snow-bound airport were very small beer by comparison, necessitating only loo trips rather than sweet oblivion. But no matter; the plane was only half full and I had the block of three whole seats to myself by way of some compensation. The staff busy themselves with the ritual of take-off - bolting the doors; closing the overhead lockers; the safety talk; the seat belt check; the first small movements; that slow-growing rumble that turns into a growl that becomes the powerful roar of the engines that thrusts you back into your seat and has your brain muttering half-remembered prayers whilst seeking religious conversion.

There had been times in the five weeks between my decision to go and actually reaching 35,000 feet that I really thought it might not happen at all. Britain had been enduring its coldest, snowiest winter in more than three decades. All the airports had been forced to shut several times, including up to a day before my own departure. It had also been a very tight time squeeze to get a whole three-jab course of rabies vaccinations done at the travel clinic. But cruising now, relaxing high above the clouds amid brilliant jewel blue skies, miniature plastic glass of Diet Coke in one hand and in-flight meal on the fold down table in front, all that was left behind.

All that lay ahead was the ocean, America, and a month in the middle of nowhere surrounded on all sides by wild animals. Grinning, I finished my drink, folded the table away, tucked myself up under the bright red blankets and fell asleep. Next stop: Florida.

Book review: The Philosopher and the Wolf

During the course of our lives, if we are lucky – or unlucky depending on your own view – we will undergo a number of life-changing experiences. That the details of these experiences and their impact on us are unique to us and us only is not in dispute. What is curious about these personally seismic events, though, is the strange phenomenon that we are only able to recognise the full implications of such experiences long after they have happened; when we have shaken the dust from our allegorical feet and thrown a backwards glance over our metaphorical shoulder.

As it is with all of us, so it was for Mark Rowlands. When he picked up that local newspaper on a hot summer day in Alabama and decided, on impulse, to buy a six week old wolf cub, I’m pretty sure that he had no concept that the consequences of his actions were going to change the rest of his life. His only worry was whether he had enough money in his bank account to pay for it. And so begins a remarkable story of how this young British professor of philosophy came to share the next eleven years with Brenin the wolf.

At one level, The Philosopher and The Wolf is a highly amusing and deeply moving memoir of the life and times of one man and his wolf. As both grow and mature and change - jobs, homes, continents, girlfriends - they provide, for each other, the only constants in each other’s lives. We watch Brenin as he grows from fluffy cub into 150lb adult; we observe his training and his interactions with dogs and other people; we prowl with the wolf as he hunts rabbits and chases birds as much as we see his human companion hunt jobs and chase girls.

If The Philosopher and the Wolf were just a memoir of a man’s life with a wolf, it would still be a great book. But what raises it to brilliance is what it shows us about what it is to be human. Or as Mark Rowlands describes it, the “certain thoughts that can only emerge in the space between a wolf and a man”. The philosopher holds a mirror up to himself and sees the reflection of the avaricious, deceitful ape standing beside the raw and honourable furry embodiment of the natural world. The author does not try to dodge the unflattering bullets of this comparison and never strays into the territory of anthropomorphism; indeed, I believe Mark would regard that as an unforgivable and insulting betrayal to the fundamental nature of what Brenin is. So the book is also uncomfortable at times in what it tells us about what we are; our own, very human, nature does not always look good in this glaring spotlight that misses no detail of our defects.

It is a rare book that keeps me compelled to keep on reading until the dawn chorus reminds me that it’s morning. Rarer still, perhaps, is a book on philosophy that delights, entertains, amuses and educates in such a way. If this book’s grand theme is that of evolution and how we came to be what we are, it is also a road map of one man’s personal evolution from what he was then and how he became what he is now. All the lessons that Mark learned about love, death and happiness were taught to him by his wolf, and I don’t mind admitting that I was in tears for most of the last quarter of the book. Ultimately, this book has moved me beyond measure; reading it really has been a life changing experience.

If you are examining any of the big questions in your own life, if you are looking to take a peep around the curtains at the machinery that lies behind why we act as we do, if you have a deep and non-sentimental regard for nature and creatures, this book could change your life too.

The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death and Happiness is published by Granta (2009)

Mark Rowlands is now professor of philosophy at the University of Miami. His website is

www.markrowlandsauthor.com

And relax...

"So Katy, what do you do to relax?"

It was September 2007 and we were sitting in the dark outside a pub by the river in Gravesend. Three months had passed since the ex announced that he wanted to split up and my daughter and I had moved out of the barn a few weeks previously. Until then I'd had only the vaguest of notions of what shell shock might feel like. Now, though, I knew. Or at least I knew that there was probably a name for the numbness, the gripping crushing sensation that had grabbed me and sucked all of the air out of my body, the cartwheeling spinning nauseating disorientating sense of disassociation.

I lit a cigarette, aware of David and Liz peering at me in the half light from the other side of the wooden bench. The question hung in the air above our heads along with the lazy streams of my exhaled smoke. "What do I do to relax?" I repeated Liz's enquiry, my short-circuited brain trying hard to grasp the words and the meaning contained within them. The conversations drifting from other tables, the thudding of the remains of my heart and the thrum of the remains of the day's heat vibrated between us as I tried to think. Finally, I answered truthfully. "Nothing. I don't do relax".

I was shocked by my own revelation. Over the months that followed I reflected on that statement over and over again as I slowly started to draw the shattered parts of my psyche back together. There were some very dark days indeed during that time, a time that seemed at once both endless and fleeting. And yet, although moving imperceptibly like a glacier, my personal threads did start to re-join.

Liz and I went away to stay for a few days in a beautiful spa hotel to celebrate the passing away of the fiendish year that was 2007. We sat one evening in the hotel lobby and wrote lists in our notebooks: lists of people or things to be grateful for; lists of things that we wished to let go of; lists of things that we planned to do over the coming twelve months. Then we read them to each other, as if by speaking the private words we had written out loud we would make a real pact with each other and the world to make them so. Of the three lists, it was perhaps the third one - the looking ahead one - that was most significant. In one way and another, most of the items on my list were about learning how to relax - accepting that I needed to actively work on introducing some balance.

I have never recognised that I needed anything quite so much in my life and I committed myself to this resolution with a vengeance. In doing so, I have also learned that I am somebody who relaxes by 'doing things'. Since then, I have become a regular attender at classes at the sports centre four or five times a week; learned to scuba dive; taken up riding lessons (albeit sporadically) again after a quarter of century; walked the dog here there and everywhere; and a hundred and one other things beside. Of all the classes I tried and took part in at the sports centre, it was yoga that appealed to me most. I don't know why; it just grabbed and took hold of me in a way I cannot explain.

Yesterday was the first full day of my Yoga Foundation course. It's the first step on my way to (hopefully, possibly, eventually) becoming a yoga teacher. That final goal is still perhaps three or four years away at the moment; the foundation course the building block for what will follow. I enjoyed the first session enormously, even though at the same time I recognise that I really am still very much a beginner on the nursery slopes.

It is funny that you don't recognise life changing events at the time. No fanfare, no drum roll, no swishing of big red velvet curtains to announce their arrival. But Liz's question sitting outside the pub that night 18 months ago or so completely changed my life.

Snow go

Do you want a life changing experience?






As opening lines go, that one got my attention. It being the south east’s annual snow-bound-so-stay-at-home Monday, I was sitting at the kitchen table smoking and reading the small ads at the back of the London Review of Books. I’d already completed my day’s quota of snow-related experimentation:

• driving to work and managing to get the car stuck in four wheel drive mode
• staring out of the window, silently calculating exactly how many flakes it would need for me to depart without showing undue haste
• popping out at lunch time to buy some curtains for the barn kitchen – a random privacy thing
• finding the door to the office locked on my return - thanks for telling me guys...
• driving back to the barn again barely three hours after arriving at work and finding that I was one of very few fools left on the road
• hanging said curtains up whilst simultaneously coaxing the Rayburn into fire and making tea
• walking the dog around the orchard, throwing snowballs for him to fetch
• laughing when the ex slipped over in the snow and landed on his butt (divine retribution is a marvellous thing)

So the only obvious thing left to do was to sit and read. And there it was, the beguiling line at the top of a box advert from a TV production company:

Do you want a life changing
experience? We are looking for
women who have a sense of adventure and would
like to spend a month living with
a remote tribal
community.

A life changing experience. Is it even possible to plan such a thing? Surely life changing experiences are ones that come and grab your ankles when your head is happily in the clouds and you’re not looking where (or in what) your feet are treading? I mean, I know people set off travelling the world in search, of, well, whatever it is they are hoping to find – themselves, someone else, hallucinations, cheap beer, religion, freedom, a day-glow-pink Chrysler. But does anyone actually set off in search of a life changing experience, as if it is a destination in its own right like Disneyland, say, or Cheddar Gorge? Maybe. I don’t know.

The concept held a lot of appeal in any event so I downloaded the application form from the website. It was full of interesting and surprisingly challenging questions, such as: ‘what would you do if you saw a tribal practice that you deeply disagreed with?’ and ‘how would you feel about taking hallucinogens or having a piercing or tattoo?’

I sat and started to consider what my responses might be. What would I do? How would I feel? These are tough questions with no real right or wrong answers, just opinion and viewpoint accompanied by representations from your own ethical or moral code perhaps. The big question I am really asking myself, though, is would I like to be considered for this challenge? Is now the right time to be doing something like that? Is there ever really a right time? Would I cope? Would this be an example of where my stunted ability at making small talk or lack of reliably being able to integrate easily with strangers proves an insurmountable stumbling block? Could I live happily for a month without the internet or Marlboro reds?

Probably not is the answer to all of the above and I’m pretty sure I’m not going to apply. But perhaps by starting to ponder these questions and issues I may find myself having a life changing experience. Albeit one on a much smaller scale and, like today’s snow, undertaken on this occasion without the need to leave my own home.