Reading through Tim Voor’s new book The Great Alone, about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), brings to mind the words of the poet TS Eliot:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Though you think you are going in a straight line, you might actually be tracing out a big circle. Voors, a Dutch advertising type, undertook the hike, 2,650 miles (4,300 km) from the Mexican border to the Canadian border, through desert, mountain, and forest, for now almost-standard reasons: to learn self-reliance, to get in touch with himself, to get in touch with unsullied nature, to give his marriage time to breathe. As I began to read, I felt a big, sceptical scowl coming on. But his exuberance is infectious and he demonstrates self-awareness – and the ‘journey’ seems to have changed him in a real sense. He wasn’t exactly ‘lost’ before, though he did wonder about it, and actually felt it at moments in the dense woods of the High Sierra. And he isn’t exactly ‘found’ at the end, though he seems to have made progress of some kind in knowing himself and the world. He has deepened his knowledge of the place where he started.

More like this:

- How nature helps us overcome trauma

- What trees teach us about life and happiness

- The wild words we’re losing