There is beauty in the nothingness, and scraping the surface you realise it is full of life - it's just playing by its own rules, unaffected by the 4pm meeting you just had.

'So have you planned your hike for the weekend?' a friend asked. My answer got a blank face as a response 'but there's nothing there? Why would you go there?'. My answer of going to a national park in the arid nothingness didn't seem to make sense. There's mountains, hills, tempered rainforests and coastal hikes. Why on earth would you pick dry and flat bushland without any of the Instagrammable views? It's a valid question.

The thing is, just like the ocean (also flat) leaves you feeling something (small, thoughtful, happy - it varies, doesn't it), dry unforgiving brushland does the same. It's a bit uncomfortable (not much shade), but that only adds to the experience of being brought back to basics. There is less stimulation, so what you see is immensely more impactful. There are few reasons to take up a camera/phone to take pictures so you're forcibly detached from the now habitual smart phone snap taking. There's no streams, so you think about where you have to fill up with water (graciously, there are a few places to do so, depending on how much or little rain there's been).

I guess what it does is force you to slow down. The discomfort is almost a distraction as you wind down from the normal overload of things. Allowing you to shift to a more basic and probably very human and natural state.

It is in moments like this I somehow reconnect with who I once was. And it is nice to feel that the boy I once was is still in there. Still in awe of finding out what's over that next hill, around that bend or across that dry brushland. And these moments sit with me as some of the best moments in life.

So, yeah, a plain of nothingness is actually anything but.

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