I didn't really care any more.
I knew that there were beautiful places and that they exerted
some powerful influences on me. But perhaps they were just
the yearnings built into my genes, the yearnings for a natural way of life,
to be closer to the earth, to nature. I rejected all notions of a guiding force.
I vowed to guide myself.

I decided that I would not return to my old life in the city, that
I would downshift to a little place in the country.
I began to search the For Sale columns.

When I found a perfect cottage high on a Cumbrian fell, I knew that I
had made the right choice. I did not realise that I had not yet ended my quest,
because in merely acknowledging the side of me that craves nature and earth,
I had not truly resolved the question of who else - and how many - I am.

And sometimes I caught a glimpse of myself in the waters of the burn,
wearing my anxious face, as if there were something more to come.