Countryside Living

Maybe it's time...

I look at the calendar hanging on the wall and realize that June’s not far away. I begin to feel a hum in my bones and skip through last year’s summer in my mind. I can feel the summer sun on my skin. I can see the colorful vegetables in the garden ready to be picked. I can feel my long wet hair dripping sea water down my back. I can hear the sound of children playing by the lake. But if I rewind further back, I can see myself sat on a bus rushing around a crowded city for work with sweat marks on my t-shirt, my IBS-ridden stomach trying to digest the pasta I’d eaten from a plastic Tupperware box, full of anxiety worrying I’d not make it in time. I can see myself checking the time on my phone every couple of minutes praying that the numbers would freeze. From where I am now, it feels like looking at two different people living two different lives but they were both mine.

How was I able to become such a different person? How did I go from wolfing down food on a park bench to canning marinara sauce with tomatoes grown in my garden? How did I go from living a life full of stress and illness to living a life full of health and joy?

I used to live a very standard life in the city and if you would have asked me in that moment what a healthy person looked like, I probably would have answered with something like “someone that doesn’t get a cold in the winter” or “someone that can run a marathon”. I had zero knowledge of what a healthy person was because I’d never stopped to think about it, and my own health was a clear reflection of that. I worked long hours, I survived on coffee, I always ate in a rush, I had insomnia, I lost my period, I was isolated from nature, migraines were who I socialized with on weekends… I was a wreck.

After what felt like a lifetime in the city, I moved as far away as I could to the countryside where I now spend my abundant free time with robins in the allotment. In the evenings, I lie in the hammock after an intense session of hoeing the soil by hand, surrounded by old trees and open fields of wildflowers. My friends say I’m a forest fairy or Snow White but the way I see it, I’m just a person that gave up on modern society as I knew it and found a lifestyle that felt more natural and more aligned with my values and spirit.

When I lived in the center of Barcelona, rushing around on underground trains and pausing in awe at the sight of a flower growing through the cracks in the pavement, I felt like I was living in some kind of parallel universe. My life felt like a video game with no clear ending, no meaning. Nothing I did had a heartfelt reason apart from earning money and spending it inside the city’s invisible walls. Life as I knew it changed one day when I was sitting on my building’s rooftop terrace looking at the sky. I knew the sun was setting because of what time it was but it was impossible to actually see it happening. No matter where I looked, there was no sunset to be seen. That’s when I realized that to be able to see the sunset and sunrise in Barcelona, I’d have to pay more money to live in a taller apartment block, looking down on the rest of the city. That way I’d finally have a clear view of the open sky and maybe then, my circadian rhythm would come back to life and I wouldn’t have to chew on blueberry melatonin gummies every night. I started to feel like nothing I did made sense so in the end, I decided to leave.

I moved to a tiny village in the countryside and for the first time in my life it felt like I was living with a purpose. I wake up in the morning with direct sunlight beaming on the golden wooden floorboards, I can hear a variety of birds singing from every direction. People walk up and down the narrow streets as slowly as they can, hoping to find someone to chat to on their way to buy their morning baguette. The villager’s clothes are always dirty with mud, grass and twigs from walking in the forest and working in the fields. When I first arrived, I felt like I’d gone back in time but for some reason this place always felt more human, more real and more like home.

On arrival, everything was a culture shock: None of the houses had ever been installed with Wi-Fi, there were no doorbells because people would stand under your window shouting your name and if you didn’t answer, they’d walk in without needing permission. You’d receive vegetables grown in people’s allotments almost every day and end up with so much fresh produce you’d have to decline free “organic and bio” food. A lot of people had hens so whenever you walked past their house, they’d stop you and rush over with a dozen eggs still warm for you to take home, claiming that they had too many and were going to be wasted if you didn’t accept them. If you tried to decline saying you already had eggs at home, they’d tell you to make a caramel flan, it was as simple as that. I’d just come from Barcelona where a box of eggs the same quality would cost eight euros and was now being given them for free. I was used to buying fruit and vegetables at an organic market, handing over fifty euro notes and was now receiving more than I’d ever been able to buy for free. How was this real?

At first I’d feel guilty because I knew these things were expensive to buy but nobody seemed to think that way in the village. Nobody paid for strawberries because they all grew them, nobody paid for eggs because their hens laid fresh ones every morning before they’d even got out of bed, nobody bought tomato sauce for pasta because they made it themselves in August from the buckets they’d fill by picking tomatoes in their garden. Everything in the village was backwards, or maybe the city was the one not following the traditional community way of life.

I slowly began to understand what community really is and how it works, what you give and what you get. Neighbors taking care of you in the winter months when the ground is covered in snow and everything around you feels empty and dead. Sharing without expecting anything in return and smiling whenever you accept their bag full of cucumbers, big enough for a family of ten. Community means growing enough food for those who haven’t been able to plant anything in their allotment, making sure they’ll also get some watermelon to eat in the scorching summer heat. Community means asking the elders how to cover the potatoes as they grow while they grab the hoe and begin to do it for you. That’s community. That’s taking care of your neighbors. That’s sharing ancestral wisdom and tradition. In Barcelona I’d be lucky if I got a “good morning” in return from someone in my building as I walked down the stairs, whereas in the village there are no strangers.

Whenever I look back on myself living in the city waking up in the middle of the night with nightmares, spending all weekend in bed with a migraine, IBS ruling my life, a bathroom filled with pills, walking around drowning in sweat, fear and worry; I struggle to find the answer to how I was able to live like that for so long. How could I have been so sick and not had a clue that none of it was normal? How could I have believed that it was all genetic and chronic when it was all due to how I was choosing to live my life? 

How could I have thought that it was normal to have a knock-out migraine once a week and think that eating dairy and gluten were the culprits? I’d gone so long living in a constant state of fight or flight, I didn’t know what a regulated nervous system felt like anymore. I don’t think I knew that feeling calm yet full of energy and pain-free was even a possibility.

I retreated to the village in the countryside feeling overwhelmed and apathetic towards life and was given the key to unlock a path that led me to becoming a healthy person. I had no idea where I was heading or what I was going to find but I trusted that I’d ended up living this new life for a reason. It sounds like something you’d see in a film but seeing the sunset every evening painting red and pink streaks across the sky replaced melatonin. Going for long runs through the meadows replaced CBD. Wild picked chamomile replaced coffee. Listening to the birds replaced podcasts and music. Journaling replaced scrolling. Fresh eggs replaced granola. Raw cows milk replaced oat milk. Sourdough bread replaced gluten free everything. Meditation replaced paracetamol. Migraines became a thing of the past. Hyperhidrosis was replaced with dry t-shirts and a sense of calm. Feelings of anxiety and dread were replaced with peace and confidence. My life was changing. The boxes of pills kept the symptoms temporarily at bay, while the sun, the birds, the soil, the trees, the allotment, the community, the slow life and the animals that surrounded me guided me back to integral health.

This article was written by Emily Hubbard. Emily writes POMELO, a publication she shares with the world every week, at 7:34am. Why you may ask? Find out here:

This article was originally published in Issue 25 of the WARKITCHEN Magazine

❋ Explore Issue 25 in full ❋

P.S. Adding us (rocky@warkitchen.net) to your contacts, or moving us to primary will make sure you continue receiving these emails. Access the rest of our magazines and all of our links here. Godspeed 🥂