I was 37 and pregnant with my second child when I started to get an uneasy feeling that I could see down a straight line to old age. I had been working for the same company for 13 years and still lived not far from where I grew up in north-east London.
I had always been a homebody – even when I was at university I came home for the holidays. But now, “living the dream” with a family, a flat and a cat, I felt hemmed in for the first time. While I wouldn’t say I had had postnatal depression, my sense of self had disappeared during early motherhood, along with any aptitude for life-affirming spontaneity. The idea of not disrupting this trajectory made me squirm.
My boyfriend and I had been talking about escaping to the countryside for a good five years. A cycling accident had left him with life-threatening injuries, which had sharpened our priorities. We wanted to strip away as many of life’s nuisances as we could and live closer to nature. Having children only made us yearn more for open spaces, clean air and wilderness.
It is hard to pinpoint when the fantasy became a firm decision. While we fretted and deliberated, a juggernaut of destiny kept rolling along, prompting us to lay the groundwork in case we ever had the gumption to follow through. Little by little, we untethered ourselves from our urban existence. I learned to drive and, after the birth of my second child, became self-employed.
We started going on weekend recces, viewing properties and attending village fetes, at which we eyed up potential friends, like children do when they start a new school. But we struggled to feel any affinity with the places we went. Meanwhile, the people who knew me best furrowed their brows when I told them our plan, believing that I was not cut out for country life.
Eventually, we fell in love with a place. It was further afield than we had envisaged: a small, rural town surrounded by wooded hills and mossy valleys etched with rivers and streams.
After our second child turned two, I became adamant that I couldn’t stomach another winter with no plans to leave. So, we sold up and moved the following spring.
Five years later, country life still feels thrillingly new. It took a long time for my internal compass to catch up with the move; every time I went away I would absentmindedly talk about going “home to London”. Now, it feels truly exciting to return to our home that holds its own against any holiday destinations from which we have returned.
Working from home gives me the time alone I need – and lost when I had babies and an office job. But best of all is living next to ancient woodland and rabbit-scattered meadows. After walking the kids to school, I venture up the steep hill behind for a stroll. In winter, I pull on my boots and march up to admire the frost, watch the sun penetrate the leafless beech woods, wonder at the snow. Autumn provides spectacular tunnels of ochre foliage and mists that catch sun rays shooting out between the trees – it is like walking through a zen screensaver image. In late spring, I go off the path in search of wild orchids. I change my route in high summer, sticking to the woods rather than the meadows to avoid the horse flies and seasonal overgrowth.
Occasionally, alone in the woods, I get spooked and let the adrenaline launch me across the streams and over fallen logs, feeling what I imagine is the feral thrill of being a skittish deer. Being in the woods, with the smell of damp leaves becoming earth, makes me feel OK about the fact that one day I will die, which is more liberating and less morbid than you might think.
I have learned that discovering gnarly old lichen and trees, basking slow worms, bizarre fungi and owl pellets is more viscerally exciting to me than urban delights (except for attending scrotty gigs, but they have those in the country, too). I love working in the garden with the buzzards circling overhead, the sun dipping across the valley, the bats swooping out at dusk. I love having huge bonfires and splitting logs, which makes me feel invincible. At night, all I can hear are the owls.
I won’t pretend the fresh air has eradicated all stress. My personality, the online world and professional and domestic chores and challenges are immune to geography alone. I am gradually becoming calmer, though. I feel unshackled. I feel myself again.
