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Into the Wild


There is this nature reserve near my house, a nature reserve with a rather steep running trail that I frequent with my friends when in the mood for some stern mental and physical challenge. Though I have always kept to the same trail ever since I started running there, usually because I did not have the time to be adventurous.

Though today was different. With the expectations of academics 2 weeks behind me and no work due anytime soon (other than the dusty ceiling fan my father has been pestering me to clean for the past 3 weeks), time was for the first time this year unequivocally on my side. After my run on the usual trail, I was walking back when side trails that I barely noticed during my runs started to make their presence felt. With a tinge of curiosity, a touch of adventurousness and an abundance of time I took it.

And one unknown trail led to another unknown trail.

By the time, I came back into contact with some form of human civilisation, it was with a certain sense of previously unfelt contentment. Maybe it was because of the little discoveries I made along the way, like the freshwater stream that quietly flowed in the middle of all the vegetation, the resting structure in the middle of an open grass patch that was reminiscent of the lake house in the Hollywood movie that went by the same name or the white tulip like flower that seemed out of place but strangely beautiful admist the greenery.

Or maybe it was that while walking along the thin trail flanked by huge trees and plant species, one cannot but enjoy both the solitude endowed by nature on the human traveller and the sense of the wonder the human feels for the beauty of nature around him. Perhaps this is what Emile Hirsch felt when he abandoned the pleasures and the insanity of human life to live in the forests of North America.

Though for a moment, I asked myself why I did not feel the same way during the time I spent in the jungle during my NS? Guess the answer for that lies in the fact that when you have 20kg of load on your back, it creates a whole new perspective of the things around you. 

Just like how work and everything else blinds us to the beauty of life around us. 

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