Slow down and pay attention: On the power of looking up from your feet

Arizona

One of my personal projects in 2024 was to intentionally slow down on my many outdoor adventures and pay more attention to the natural beauty that constantly surrounds me. The importance of being mindful and aware of the intricate natural beauty present in the world isn't a new revelation, but as I transitioned from van life to house life, I found that it was harder and harder to take the time to observe the small minutiae around me.

One of the many advantages of living in a van is the vast amount of downtime you can enjoy, fully immersed in nature. There are innumerable afternoons spent sitting in a lawn chair at camp, surrounded by towering saguaro cacti of the Sonoran desert, the redwoods of Northern California, the aspens and alpine tundra of Colorado, and all the tiny inhabitants of these unbelievably diverse landscapes. And as long as we didn't make the critical mistake of ending up camped in a Walmart parking lot (or urban camping, period), these times to simply sit and absorb these incredible landscapes were built into our days.

Enjoying a Utah sunset in the van.

Now, living in a house, even when I do get out to adventure in the mountains, it feels like there's an inherent rush to get back to whatever it is that I was doing, or could be doing. The chores at home pile up — there's always something better that I could be doing.

But there's also a simple feeling that because home isn't waiting for you at the trailhead but instead is located someplace else, there's a hurry or a rush to return to wherever that home base is located. An inexorable gravitational pull beckons you back to the couch, to the heater (or the air conditioner), to the indoor plumbing, to the creature comforts of home.

Oftentimes, while living in a van, we had to find ways to bide our time — we had to find comfortable places to just hang out before driving to the next thing or heading out to find the campsite for the evening. While at times there was a sense of urgency — to find a campsite before dark, for example — more often we were able to embody the sense that we were simply living each day, and we got to more fully appreciate the passage of time.

In fact, one of the things we often remarked on was how long every single week — and indeed, some of the single days — felt while we were living in a van. This phenomenon is attributable to the novelty that we were experiencing day in and day out. Some weeks, we could be in an entirely new campsite every single night, traveling down highways and through towns — and riding and hiking trails — that we had never visited before. Sometimes, this would go on for months at a time.

It's been well-documented that having novel experiences makes the passage of time feel like it's slowing down. But when your life is filled with routine experiences, the weeks can begin to feel like they whiz by in a blur. If you wake up in the same house every morning, make the same breakfast, walk the same route to work, type on a keyboard in the same dull-colored office, work out at the same gym, or even mountain bike the same loop in your local trail system — the repetition makes the time seem to speed up, and you can stop noticing all the beauty that's around you.

Utah

I hope that slowing down and paying attention to the beauty that constantly surrounds us is the remedy to this house life malaise. Instead of rushing through each mountain bike ride, I'm working to pause in the middle of each ride by sitting down and spending some time simply observing the rhythms of the planet around me.

Other times, when I get back to the trailhead, instead of throwing the bike back in the van and jetting back to the city, I've instead been digging out the lawn chair so that I can sit down and soak up the sunlight before heading back indoors, to be surrounded by tiny boxes again.

On shorter walks along the river, one beautiful change has been to stop and sit on a bench overlooking the rushing water so that I can complete my daily meditation outside in nature, instead of being surrounded by four white walls.

These moments of slowness and beauty are always available to us, if only we take advantage of them. All we need to do is slow down and pay attention.

I'll leave you with this parting thought from Professor John Stilgoe:

"Get out now. Not just outside, but beyond the trap of the programmed electronic age so gently closing around so many people. . . .Go outside, move deliberately, then relax, slow down, look around. Do not jog. Do not run. . . .Instead pay attention to everything that abuts the rural road, the city street, the suburban boulevard. Walk. Stroll. Saunter. Ride a bike and coast along a lot. Explore."