A feel of nature’s masterpieces
Depending on the time of year of their birth, several hill children don’t crawl. If, at some point in winter, they are expected to move on both hands and feet, they just may not. Swaddled in heavy clothing to keep the cold away, their tiny limbs cannot move freely. Come spring and suddenly, the little people may present a surprise by standing erect and taking their first steps. In the mid-hills, where many of us live, the deep bite of winter is still a couple of weeks away and these young ones, for the moment, can freely crawl, clamber and run. Once grown, today’s toddlers will walk every day for a few, if not several, miles for the rest of their lives.
The monsoons have ended, leaving behind a verdant landscape that shall soon pass into winter’s quiet repose. While the weather is changing and there is a slight chill in the air, autumn, my favourite time in the hills, is here. The last tree fern has wilted. The cob of the ‘snake plant’, a species of arisaema, has long turned traffic-light red and announced that the monsoons are over. The leaves on the deciduous trees are changing colour and moving into shades of rust, crimson and gold. If some doubt remained about an end to the months of rain, the magnificent deodar trees are pouring dusky pollen all over the place.
For someone like me, one reason for living in the hills is to walk. Autumn is one of the best times to revisit the trails I’ve known for most of my walking life. This may be something about taking life slow, but it is also about nourishing both body and mind. Hopefully, should it choose to, the soul (if it exists) may also decide to dance. This has very little to do with the obvious benefits of walking. It is more about the simple pleasure of being able to do so. Nature was always democratised. As a species, we humans evolved alongside this. It was always accessible. We were, and are, just a part of a far wider and more complex pattern that makes our planet. Adding to those undemocratically grandiose words and to the hundreds if not thousands of pieces that have been written extolling the virtues of walking, let me add my two bits.
At different places in the hills, one still has to pass through patches of forest to get from one place to the other. When we were little, during late evenings or at night, for reasons perhaps known only to child psychologists, we would exchange ghost stories before entering the woods. We would scare ourselves silly. If there was mist swirling in the branches and making strange patterns, the fear would turn to terror and often enough, we would break into a run to reach the safety of our front doors.
That said and done, time and again, I go back to the simple but extraordinary lives that my parents and many of their generation lived. When my father came to settle in Shimla, a good acquaintance lived on a large estate below the temple of Tara Devi. His house faced the town and this was accessed by a path in the forest. Even in the 1950s, the gentleman did not have electricity; water came from a spring on the property. He communicated with the outer world via a heliograph with the postmaster of Shimla. As the lights flashed and messages were received and sent, his hospitality, perhaps born out of solitude bordering on loneliness, was also generous. My father, and occasionally other guests, would walk through the woods for a couple of miles to his house. That was fine. But then, often in the dead of night, he would walk back to town and home along the forest path.
“Weren’t you sacred?” I asked him.
“One is only fearful of what one does not know or understand. These hills are among the safest places in the world,” is the closest approximation I can recall of his answer. “I have a powerful torch, a good walking stick and for an emergency, a whistle to summon help,” he added.
He would have walked along a path that alternates between short open patches and dense foliage. Most trees are baan oak and rhododendron ones. The undergrowth is heavy with box, though a little more correctly, this is called sarcococca — and is the somewhat leathery-leaved perennial plant often used as foliage in flower arrangements. Of the many ferns on this stretch, the crannies are thick with the maidenhair, adiantum raddianum, recognisable by their delicate triangular fronds and exquisitely formed slender stems that are also surprisingly strong. As a therapeutic, this is dried and used as an ingredient in cold and cough treatments.
Decades back, as photography evolved, the legendary Henri Cartier-Bresson coined a phrase in the context of taking pictures. He called it the ‘decisive moment’ and emphasised the importance of timing in photography, which would allow the capture of a split-second that conveyed the essence of the scene. It is along the now-threatened paths that nature’s masterpieces are woven and we may well need to start grabbing what split seconds that we may have.
— The writer is an author based in Shimla
