Why we still seek mountains, oceans, storms, and wilderness in an age of algorithms

To have the epiphany of your truest passion and aspiration is a defining experience. I was fortunate to receive such a revelation while exploring the groves behind my Welsh Valleys village.

I grew up among the sheep speckled hills of my home town. Like most Welsh Valleys villages, the area is rather deprived when compared to other parts of Wales. Few opportunities are present. For most, there is little to do apart from looking at screens to visions of new and exciting worlds.

I was fortunate that from a young age, I would spend a lot of my time exploring the valley peaks and forests that towered over my scrappy quaint village.

After living in a city for some years and obtaining a Master’s degree, I moved back to my hometown for a spell. Once again, I was able to spend my free time on a carpet of grassy planes and sitting in towers of trees.

Returning to those mountains reawakened something that I realised had become dormant within me. Living in a city for so long — among the noise of trends and algorithmic systems — began to eat away at me.

I felt in constant comparison to those around me. I felt the allurement of fashion and trends. A lot of what I earned from my hospitality work served only to re-feed that machine. Existing to hedonistically exist is a waste of life, is it not?

So while I was back in the charms of the valley wilderness, hindsight offered me that revelation: the revelation that all of what we are comes from the lands. So naturally, it would not be incorrect to consider agriculture to be the most important aspect of human existence.

After all, all that we are, all that we consume, and all that we turn to returns to nature.

I feel that people are too easily ignorant to that fact. After all, most important decisions are made in cities; those fabricated constructs that simulate and parody human nature. Things are made convenient, and we are often ignorant to the true costs and processes.

I don’t claim to also be aware of the light of such truths either. I know my limitations and ignorances; and I am deeply grateful for my own self-reflections that my time in nature has so graciously offered me.

Being enlightened, if only just slightly more, to the nature of our modern world and cultivating curiosity toward the mechanics of our systems and products throughout their entire supply chains. I firmly believe that further cultivation of such ideas can only benefit the development of a better world since it offers more consideration for the priceless value of nature’s role in our raison d’être.

I live back in the city again now, but the ecosystem of the Valleys wilderness will remain ingrained in my soul.

Should you, reader, ever feel lost to the despair of modern life; please remember that the natural world that created you is ever-present in the microcosm of you.

By Tomos Morris

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