Sarah Wilson’s nomadic, desert dream

The Clearing with Katherine May

In this episode of The Clearing, host Katherine May interviews author and podcaster Sarah Wilson about her unconventional approach to rest and

Key takeaways

• Sarah Wilson was diagnosed with autism four and a half years ago, clarifying why traditional stillness feels unproductive and why she relies on movement and brief sensory deprivation to recharge.
• She prefers the Australian desert over forests for its 'cosmic insignificance' and horizon effects, which naturally lower blood pressure and strip away social pretenses.

Main topics

• Rest and recovery strategies
• Nomadic lifestyle and minimalism

Notable quotes

"Being in movement is far more restful."

Conclusion

Wilson's unconventional approach to rest challenges traditional wellness

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) you Speaker 3 (0:08) Hello, Catherine here. How are you all? You may notice that I am not taking you on a walk this week. There isn't the lovely ambient noise around me because I have a little bit of the COVID, unfortunately. I'm staying in so that I don't spread my germs, which is really tedious, but I do feel all right, I have to say. I'm not feeling too bad. I think I've got away lightly with it all and I'm just taking it a little bit easy. and trying not to make it any worse for anyone else. So please don't worry for me. But it is the season, isn't it? It's started already. Everyone has colds and coughs and sniffles and all sorts of things like that. And it's a massive nuisance. And I hope that this podcast intro finds you very well indeed and not chugging the Lemsip. And if you are, then you have my fullest sympathy because one of the worst things about adulthood is that you have to carry on despite it all. But this one's fine because I really... I don't have a very hard job here. I'm introducing you to the conversation I had with the writer and podcaster Sarah Wilson. You may know her from her podcast Wild, from her substack, which is called This is Precious. Or maybe you've already read or perhaps you need to know about. her latest book which is called I Eat the Stars, How to Live Fully and Beautifully in a Collapsing World which came out a little earlier this year and we'll be touching a little bit on those ideas in the interview. But before I hand you over to Sarah I just wanted to update you on the stuff that's happening in the subscriber edition of this podcast because I do a weekly like little extra episode about half an hour long in which I share one of my ideas for what I call a mini break, which is like a little thing that you can do in your life or something really that I enjoy doing that I use to take a bit of a break from the world. And I've covered such things recently as the online game GeoGuessr and by contrast, the Rocky Horror Picture Show that kind of maybe shows you the scope of the things that I talk about in my mini breaks. But for last week's episode, which has been really popular, I took a bit of a diversion and I offered an audio diary of a course that I took the week before last, which was somewhat bizarrely a stand-up comedy course. I explain why in depth in the audio diary, but I think the too-long-don't-read summary is that I just... really wanted to polish up my skills for when I'm on stage like as a writer I spend a lot of time on stage and it really bothers me that I might not be that good at being there and I might not always be the most comfortable presence there and I feel like as writers you know we sort of owe it to our audiences to offer them something that is maybe entertaining is the wrong word but at least worth being there for anyway so I wanted to polish up my skills and I'm hoping I will use them more in the future I doubt very much that I'll become a stand-up comedian although I have to say I did really enjoy it and it had some surprising benefits for my writing practice too so anyway If that's of interest to you, do consider subscribing. You can do it either by becoming a paid member of my newsletter, in which case you get loads of other stuff as well. Or you can just join through Apple if you're on Apple or through Patreon just for just podcast only subscriptions if you only want the light version, which is really fine. And if you just want to continue listening for free, then no shade is being cast whatsoever. It is really fine to be a casual listener. And in fact, you are so welcome and we love having you here. Anyway, links to that and links to all of Sarah Wilson's various locations across the internet and in the publishing world are in the show notes. But first of all, I will hand you over to my past self who was in conversation with Sarah and I hope you enjoy it. See you in a bit. Speaker 2 (4:46) Hi, Sarah. Lovely to see you. It is really lovely to be, I guess, on a podcast together again. It's been a couple of years since we last spoke. Speaker 3 (4:55) We first recorded proper mid-pandemic, I think. Wasn't it? Yeah, it was. It Speaker 2 (5:03) was a little kind of gap in proceedings. Yes. Yeah. You'd managed to get through Speaker 3 (5:09) the borders and into London. Speaker 2 (5:12) Yeah, it's funny, isn't it, how so much was punctuated by those openings of borders and then shutting of borders. Yeah, so many people remember time through that lens. I don't, to be honest, because my life didn't change that much, bizarrely. No, okay. Just because I lived on my own anyway. I worked from home. I was fostering a bunch of children. That did change things a fair bit, but yeah. It was not the same. I didn't have the same experience. Yeah, exactly. Speaker 3 (5:42) Well, we are a podcast that is all about talking about rest, really, the kind of rest we dream of taking and the rest we actually end up taking, which, you know, there's often quite the divergence between those things. But I just wonder how we find you today. Are you in need of a break or do you pace your life better than the rest of us? Speaker 2 (6:05) I would say I am a peak example of what not to do. So today, I think just off air, I mentioned that I've ridden in London, you know, for a bunch of talks and related to my book. And I today have ridden, I've done three line bike rides across the city of London. Speaker 2 (6:27) sort of frantically trying to sort of get from one thing to the next in a headwind, a hot headwind. Like riding into a blow dryer. Totally, totally. With, by the way, because I arrived with my hair in little clips to the side to kind of fashion my fringe in preparation for this conversation with you. So, yes, you find me in quite a frantic place. I've also just finished a massive project. I have been down a deep... deep rabbit hole for four years, really, working on a massive book project. And I've completed a big book tour in Australia. I just got back from Australia. My mother, like yours, has been very, very unwell. We almost lost her several times. And so I've just been back in Paris where I'm based. And it's been a heat wave where, again, I haven't been able to live in my apartment. I've been... taking off into a forest with my tent every second night just to be able to survive. Yeah. So I've been on the road with a backpack on my back, riding wildly into headwinds. And, you know, I sort of arrived here in my book publisher's boardroom to be able to speak to you in a bit of a frenzy. So no, you find me in a place of desperately needing rest. Having said that, tomorrow... I am taking a sort of six-week sabbatical. Oh, great. Yeah, so you ask the question. I've Speaker 3 (7:57) got just Speaker 2 (7:57) under the fence. Speaker 3 (7:58) Yeah, you've Speaker 2 (7:59) asked the question at a very sort of almost sort of a threshold moment. Speaker 3 (8:02) Yeah. Are you the kind of person who... Speaker 3 (8:07) make space for us like in your mind I mean do you kind of prize it or do you think about it at all much I mean you always seem like you're busy and that you're traveling and thinking and speaking to people does it come into the equation when you're planning your calendar or do you have to sometimes just shut everything down Speaker 2 (8:28) It's a really good question. I am somebody who doesn't find relaxing things restful. So staying still is not restful for me. Being in movement is far more restful. So it looks like I'm being frenetic all the time, but quite often I'm going for a hike up a mountain at a very fast pace, but that is my rest. Definitely. You know, yeah, I don't know if we've talked about this, but I was diagnosed with autism like... so many of us in this space, I think four and a half years ago. And I've realised, yeah, I mean, I've known all my life that I have to work, I work at very intense levels, but I am only able to do that by being able to on a regular basis. That is, at least once or twice a day, I need to go and lie in a dark room. Speaker 2 (9:20) And sometimes that'll just be a public toilet. I'll just go and sit in a bathroom and I just take a deep breath and have a conversation with myself where possible. You know, when I used to work in television, I used Speaker 3 (9:30) to Speaker 2 (9:30) go and find cupboards to line with my feet up the wall and just close the doors behind me. This is sort of before we had an awareness of what autism was, of course. You know, I was just intense and problematic and anxious and diagnosed with bipolar and OCD. And all of those things are possibly, you know, have elements of truth. But so I've found, I find interstitial restful moments and they generally just, yeah, small dark room moments, but also rest in movement. Do Speaker 3 (10:03) you find those effective? I mean, they seem to me like a compromise really, rather than the actual rest you might need to take. Do they actually work for you or are they just something that you grasp at in the absence of all else? Speaker 2 (10:16) A little of the latter because I need them to survive. But I think they also do work because, like I said, normal rest where you go and take a big holiday, you book a cabin in an idyllic place and off you go, that is too ambitious for me. It places too many expectations. I then feel like I'm going to have to be really good at resting and invariably I'm not. So I feel that if I can just take rest. as I'm going about my life, where I can grab it. That is a far, it's a far better way of doing things. But then there's other things that I do find restful in what I do. I find one-on-one conversations really restful, you know. So I will choose, you know, my friends are all used to it now. I will choose restaurants where I know the acoustics are right, you know. It's not on a busy road and things like that. I'll often, Catch up with friends by walking. You know, I suggest we go for a walk. And so, or lying in a park together, you know, that's something. So I sort of do all the things, but I've over the years managed to steer them to sort of more restful ways of doing things. Speaker 3 (11:30) Yeah. Speaker 2 (11:31) And I think that's the best way of doing things because when I put the expectation on me to go, right, now I am currently doing resting. Speaker 2 (11:39) I actually find it very, very hard to do, you know. That Speaker 3 (11:43) for me is a surefire way to start producing a load of work. If I'm trying to rest, as soon as that space opens up, I'm suddenly incredibly productive. Whereas if you tell me to be productive, I grind to a halt. I find... I know what you mean. I'm very resistant to planning. Which I think is why the traditional holiday bothers me quite a lot as well, because you're supposed to book it a year in advance and get excited for it. And I'm like, look, if I can go in two weeks time, I'm interested. Any more than that, I'm going to drift off of this. Like it's that immediate for me. Speaker 2 (12:19) Yeah, and I think, look, I think the thing for me is if I can have chunks of time on a regular basis in nature, I can continue and continue and continue. Like I can keep going and going. So, look, I live in Paris and I would say every weekend, if not maybe every second weekend, I get on a train and I just, you know, travel an hour or so outside of Paris and there's all these forests and I just go sort of hike. hike jogging in these forests for a couple of hours and just look at nature and smile at other people and have a cup of tea in a random little village, you know, and then get on a train and head back in a nice sort of reverie, you know, with the motion of the train. And that's actually enough for me to feel reset, you know. Lovely. Speaker 1 (13:16) For many of us, going further isn't a choice. It's a feeling we can't ignore because ambition has a way of outgrowing where it began. Speaker 1 (13:28) Turning dreams into direction. Speaker 1 (13:33) Every journey brings us closer to the life we imagine. Speaker 1 (13:39) So, where will your journey take you? Etihad. Beyond Borders. Speaker 3 (13:49) I wonder where you're going to take us today, because I'm going to invite you into my clearing in the forest, but it could open up to anywhere. And I am, I'm so curious to know, where are you going to take us? Where would you ideally go to, to escape from it all? Speaker 2 (14:04) Well, you know, it's funny because... Right now I'm feeling like I need to be in a forest. I am craving taking my little one-person tent into a cool forest. And I think that's just because I've been in, you know, a very hot city in Paris during a heatwave, you know. And it's been unbearable and the humanity and all the human-made things have just been too much and I just need the cool, dark. kind of forest scape to feel recharged. But it's funny, I think we discussed these kinds of things when you were on my podcast a couple of years ago, well, many years ago now. And, you know, you're a wintering person and I'm not a cosy, comforty kind of person. And so forests often feel, mostly feel claustrophobic to me. So generally my... preferred sort of place that I want to escape to is the desert. Speaker 2 (15:07) And so for me, big, open, expansive places are the places where I feel most alive. You know, the dry heat. I sort of love walking across crunchy dirt and it feels invigorating and just the energy of old earth, particularly in the Australian desert. You can really feel that the place feels... So ancient. I know that sounds ridiculous, but they're Speaker 3 (15:40) just... Yeah, everywhere's ancient, Speaker 2 (15:41) but some places give Speaker 3 (15:42) you that sense of contact with the ancientness, don't they? Speaker 2 (15:45) Yeah. Yeah, there's that phrase, you know, sort of when it's thin, you know, there's a thinness. Thin places, yeah. Yeah. And so in the desert, you know, I mean, there's so many country and western songs and there's that, you know,