Personal Blogs

Do You Worry About the World Your Children Are Waking Up To?

I often meet a man who is rebuilding his life after addiction, carrying with him some of the weight of his past. He had often seen me taking old books into the charity shop, and one day he asked me, “Can you recommend a book for me?”

I thought for a moment and handed him My Life as a Dog.

I told him about Ingemar, the young Swedish boy at the heart of the story. His mother is seriously ill, and eventually he has to leave home and live with relatives. Suddenly, he is separated from the people, places and things he loves, without really understanding why any of it is happening.

Ingemar has an unusual way of coping with the things he cannot comprehend. He compares his own troubles with the lives of people and animals around him. He thinks about Laika, the famous dog sent into space, and somehow persuades himself that  his own situation is not quite as terrible as it might be. He uses imagination, humour and stories to make sense of pain that is simply too large for a child to face directly.

He makes mistakes. He gets into trouble. Sometimes he behaves badly. But beneath all of that is a frightened and lonely child, desperately searching for somewhere to belong.

That, I think, is what makes the book so special. It does not pretend that suffering is easy, nor does it suggest that sorrow simply disappears. Instead, Ingemar keeps going. He discovers small islands of friendship, kindness, laughter and hope. Slowly, he begins to understand that even when life takes things away from us, there can still be people who care, and there can still be reasons to carry on.

I told my new friend that the book was really about surviving hard things without losing the part of yourself that can still laugh, love and hope. It is simple, funny, sad and warm. Most importantly, it does not lecture you about how to live. It simply tells a story about a boy trying to find his way through a difficult world. That is why I thought of it for him.

As I walked away, though, my thoughts travelled much further back, to my own school days and the boy I once was.

I was a rough kid growing up on Clydeside, and, if truth be told, I seemed destined for trouble. I was not exactly showing early promise as a future Nobel Prize winner. Then one day a science teacher seemed to recognise something in us that perhaps we did not recognise in ourselves. Rather than trying to turn us into scholars, he taught us how to make fishing rods.

Fishing rods.

It sounds almost absurd when I say it now, but it changed my life.

He took us fishing and, without perhaps knowing the full extent of what he was doing, introduced us to another kind of life. A life where patience mattered. Where you could sit quietly beside a river and watch the water. Where the natural world could occupy your mind and, for a while, the troubles of the world could become wonderfully distant.

Every weekend, Sammy, Tom and I would set off fishing, far away from the Clydeside. I learned how to make lead floats using a potato mould. I learned to tie flies onto hooks. I learned the strange pleasure of simply being still.

Years later, I took my own daughter and her friend camping in Europe, and my son too. I suppose I was passing on something that had first been given to me by a teacher who understood that sometimes the best way to help a young person is not to tell them what they should become, but to open a door into another world.

And that brings me back to the man I met as I was going to the charity shop.

But what does fishing have to do with someone rebuilding his life after addiction?

More than we realise.

Sometimes a person does not need another lecture about the mistakes of the past. Sometimes they need an invitation into a different world.

If you love your children, take them into nature. Take them camping. Take them fishing. Teach them to identify butterflies, build a fire, watch birds, walk through a forest or simply sit beside a river and be quiet. Give them experiences that ask nothing of them except their presence.

Recently, I watched families with children and young people coming down from Scotland's West Highland Way. They were tired, their feet were sore, and they looked as though they had earned every blister. Yet there was something else in their faces. They looked renewed.

The natural world has a way of doing that.

When we step away from the noise, the screens, the pressures and the expectations, we remember something fundamental about ourselves. We remember that we belong to the earth, to one another, and to something larger than our immediate troubles.

And that is what my teacher gave us all those years ago. He gave a few rough boys a fishing rod, but what he really gave us was another possibility. He showed us that there was a world beyond the one we knew.

Sometimes, that is where hope begins.

There are people who help restore us. There are books that open doors. There are rivers that teach us to be still, friends who remind us that we matter, teachers who see possibilities in us before we see them ourselves, and small acts of kindness that quietly tell us there is still a place for us in this world.

And sometimes, God uses all of these things to lead us home.

 "We do not need to explain these long walks to everyone...those who have walked understand: the trail changes you. And once it does, the walk never truly ends."

It's Time For the Pilgrimage 

There is a mystery to long walks in the world’s grand places. Across continents and cultures, from the dusty paths of the Camino de Santiago to the granite trails of the West Highland Way, Klipspringer Hiking Trail the, Yosemite Grand Travers, the wind-carved coastlines of Norway or Italy and Austria's Alpine regions people set off, boots laced, and packs loaded, with a longing that’s difficult to articulate. It’s more than tourism. More than exercise. The terrain speaks to something deeper. Something ancient.

What drives us to take these long, solitary walks? Why are so many drawn to leave behind the comforts of modern life to trek through mountains, deserts, moorlands, and forests—sometimes for days or even weeks at a time?

The Call of the Wild Places

The natural world has always been the setting for spiritual encounters. Moses met God on a mountain. Jesus fasted in a wilderness. The early Celtic saints sought the thin places—those wild spaces where the veil between heaven and earth seemed worn, transparent. There’s something about vastness and silence that awakens the soul.

When we step into these grand landscapes, we enter a different rhythm. The chatter of daily life falls away, replaced by the whisper of wind through grass, the cry of a bird overhead, the distant rush of water. Walking becomes a kind of prayer—each step a word, each mile a verse in a slow, unfolding psalm.

In such places, God seems nearer, not because He is more present there, but because we are. Our minds settle. Our eyes open. We begin to see not just creation, but the Creator’s imprint on every rock and tree and changing sky.

Stripping Away What Doesn't Matter

Long-distance walking has a humbling effect. It pares life down to essentials: water, rest, food, warmth. We learn the cost of carrying too much, both literally and figuratively. There is a discipline in choosing what to leave behind. In this simplicity, we begin to notice how cluttered our lives have become—how many of our worries are unnecessary, how much noise we live with.

In the walking, we begin to shed more than weight. We shed the versions of ourselves we’ve been holding tightly to: the competent professional, the overachiever, the person always in control. On the trail, we become something more elemental. Human, vulnerable, dependent.

The journey becomes a mirror. With no screens to distract, no tasks to complete, we’re left with ourselves. And it is in this solitude—sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes liberating—that many begin to face long-buried thoughts or griefs. Walking through wildness often becomes a form of healing, because the path doesn’t ask for eloquence or perfection—only honesty and movement.

On Meeting Strangers

Though many set out alone, the trail has a way of bringing people together. There’s something deeply human in meeting someone at a trail marker, sharing a flask of coffee, comparing blisters and stories. These encounters are rarely shallow. Perhaps it’s the shared vulnerability of the walk that opens people up. The miles invite reflection, and reflection seeks expression.

In these fleeting friendships—formed over shared hardship, under starry skies or in stormy weather—we’re reminded of a truth: that life, like the trail, is meant to be walked together, at least in part. There's no need for small talk when both people are tired, sore, and staring into the same majestic landscape. Conversation moves quickly to things that matter.

Finding the Self You Lost

The great paradox of pilgrimage is that it often begins with a desire to escape but ends in rediscovery. We go to get away from the demands and routines of life, but in doing so we encounter a version of ourselves we had forgotten.

Out in the open, stripped of pretence, we meet the child who once loved stars, the soul who still dreams, the person who prays not in words but in wonder. Somewhere between the first mile and the final descent, we recover what the noise and pace of life had eroded: a sense of direction, of calling, of hope.

The road does not give answers easily. But it shapes us. It teaches patience. It demands perseverance. It opens the door to awe. And awe, I believe, is the beginning of wisdom.

The Ongoing Journey

There’s a reason why, after the walk is done, so many return home changed. Not always in ways visible to others—but changed, nonetheless. They carry in their memory the scent of pine, the shimmer of dawn mist, the silence of ridgelines, the sound of their own heartbeat in remote places. They carry a renewed sense that life is not just a list of obligations, but a path.

The world’s grand places—its mountain paths and coastal ways, its desert trails and forest roads—call us not just to see beauty, but to remember what it means to be human. To walk with purpose. To endure with grace. To feel small and yet known.

We do not need to explain these long walks to everyone. Some things are better understood with the feet than with the tongue. But those who have walked understand: the trail changes you. And once it does, the walk never truly ends.

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A memorable encounter on a quiet pathway never forgotten

They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us as He spoke with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” 

Luke 14 (BSB).