Nature sauvage ?

 

Everyone he knew seemed perfectly happy to get by without wilderness - a country restaurant, Hyde Park in spring, was ail the open space they ever needed. Surely they could not claim to be fully alive. Hot, wet, panting, he strained to heave and lever himself onto a grassy ledge and lay there, cooling his face on the turf while the rain beat upon his back, and cursed his friends for their dullness, their lack of appetite for life. They had let him down. No one knew where he was, and no one cared.

After five minutes of listening to the rain rattling on the fabric of his waterproofs, he got to his feet and climbed on up. Anyway, was the Lake District really a wilderness? So eroded by walkers, with every last insignificant feature labelled and smugly celebrated. It was really nothing more than a gigantic brown gymnasium, and this incline just a set of grassy wall bars. This was a work-out, in the rain. More debilitating thoughts pursued him as he climbed towards the col, but as he gained height and the going became less steep, as the rain ceased and a long fissure in the cloud permitted a tiny consolation of diluted sunlight, it began to happen at last – he began to feel good.

Amsterdam, III, iii

 

(Episodes : I, II, III.)