Before It Happens

It’s amazing what you can hear when you listen to silence. If you take five minutes, switch your phone off, take your headphones out. Just, listen. I know that sounds cheesy, but trust me. It’s not the start of a made-for-TV film, I promise.

Not everything is written for great worth. A lot of people don’t know this, though. A lot of people take everything to be some kind of gospel, a life truth. Some things are written because they simply happened.

I walked out of the house with just a bag, clothes on my back, and shoes on my feet. I skipped past the red brick of my family’s cosy home and gravel crunched under my trainers. The morning air was crisp, but I could see the shape of the sun in the sky, waiting to warm everything up.

I got to the end of the road, and I kept on walking until I didn’t know where I was anymore. I wasn’t running away from anything – it’s nothing like that. Our lives are so catered to routine that we can forget what real adventure feels like sometimes. Get up, shower, get dressed, go to school, walk the dog, have dinner, go to sleep. There’s very little flexibility.

My feet stopped when I reached the mouth of a field. Laid out before me were slopping hills. My breath caught in my throat at the sight of it all. I ripped the headphones out of my ears and shoved them in my bag. No more noise.

Trees covered the expanse of landscape before me, and I couldn’t take it all in quite fast enough. I grappled with the metal fence, pulling myself into and through the hole in it. I obviously wasn’t the first person to do this.

I tripped, but caught my footing as I came through. Right in front of me was the start of a forest. Trees far enough apart to have rays of sunlight still beaming all around them. I could see further along through the thick of green, where it started to darken, but I didn’t follow that path.

Instead I tugged the hair tie from my wrist and carded my hands through my red hair. I fixed it in a bun, but I didn’t really care how it looked. Adventure was pulsing through my veins.

I followed the slight clearing, and after a while I started to run. I ran past wild flowers, and the rabbits watched me. I felt like a dear, running through my home. My legs were on fire, searing with every step I took. I couldn’t stop. My body was a machine.

The wind whipped past me, and I heard it. I hear the silence I craved. I panted, thick and heavy as I sped through the green, tangling deeper into the trees. The ground turned uphill gradually and I slowed down. The sound of the wind tearing past, rustling leaves as it shot through. I needed that more than air.