The Growth Route (Or, The Root — To Keep On Brand)

The Growth Route (Or, The Root — To Keep On Brand)

In the final part of my book No Paradise with Wolves, I write about a walk that has become the quiet backbone of our life here at Wild Finca. I call it the Loop.

"My companions always change on this walk, today it is just Albus and me. He has been teething and miserable, but as soon as you get him outside, he calms. Roan is at school, but he and I used to do this walk, almost daily, during my maternity leave with him. It is about 4km or so, I have used it intermittently when attempting Couch to 5k. On the odd occasion I let the dogs drag me around it. More usually we ride the horses around it. We call it the Loop."

That was written a couple of years ago now. Albus is four. Roan is six. Both are at school nine to three. And the Loop has grown with us — changed shape, changed companions, changed what it means to me — but it has never stopped being essential.

From family walk to growth route

This past year, with both boys in school and my full focus during those hours on building The Wild Shift, I have leaned on the Loop more than ever.

And recently I have started thinking of it differently. Less as a walk, more as a practice. Less as exercise, more as a growth route — or the Root, to keep on brand.

I try to do it at least three times during the week, sometimes more. It takes twenty-five minutes if I'm doing a session of Couch to 5k — and I use the word running very loosely. It takes just under an hour on the days I have more time, when I stop for the birds and watch the clouds pass. A smaller section of it takes five minutes on the days I think about skipping it entirely and Luke nudges me to just do the short one.

The same route. Every version valid. Every version doing something.

How it became a growth route

When I really started to look at myself honestly — to understand who I was and how I showed up, not just as a parent but as a person — I began a journey that, looking back, started with getting to know myself more truthfully than I had before.

That journey changed things. My capacity changed. My patience changed. The Loop became the place where I processed it all — slowly, on foot, in all weathers.

More recently it has become where I study.

This morning I ran — two sessions of ten minutes, split. The first ten minutes I listened to a mantra. The second I listened to a section of my ACT course. I created The Wild Shift from lived experience and instinct, believed fully in the power of it, and then went looking for the science that could support it. I found Acceptance and Commitment Therapy — a behavioural science framework developed by Steven C. Hayes — and I have been working through his course slowly, on morning walks and runs, letting it settle alongside everything else I know.

And then — and this part is vital — my warm down was with no headphones at all.

Just the route. Just my senses.

My eyes found the Alburas and Early Purple Orchids, in full bloom along the verge. Two Jays chasing each other from tree to tree. Four Swallows swooping through the air above me. The sound of the water in the valley below. The smell of the morning. The taste of fresh air as I caught my breath.

That last part — the headphone-free return — is where everything integrates. Where the learning settles. Where I remember why I started.

It doesn't have to be spectacular

My Loop is spectacular. I know that. The Picos de Europa as a backdrop, the orchids in the verge, the wolves passing through the valley below — I am not unaware of the privilege of this landscape.

But here is what I've come to understand: looking back across my life, I have always had a route I leaned on. Wherever I have lived. A canal path in London. A park circuit. A stretch of seafront. The specific landscape mattered far less than I thought it did.

What matters is the slowing down. The familiarity. The repetition.

I can promise you this: head to your nearest green space and loop it ten times, with real attention activated, and you will see things you have never noticed before. You will get to know it through the seasons — of nature and of your own life. Even if you walk out in one direction for one minute and then turn back, that is two minutes you have never done before. And it is that momentum, that tiny consistent act, that grows and compounds and becomes something you can rely on.

Not because the route is magical. Because you keep showing up.

What's your growth route?

I believe everyone needs one. Not a gym programme or a wellness routine — a route. A familiar stretch of the outside world that you return to, again and again, in different seasons and different states, that gets to know you as well as you get to know it.

A place where you can run or walk or shuffle. Where you can listen to something that challenges you or walk in complete silence. Where you can cry if you need to, or notice an orchid, or just breathe.

A place that holds your growth without asking anything of you.

I'll leave you with the lines that close the Loop chapter in the book. They came to me on the route itself, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about them since:

"As I observe these moments, a question that recently resonated with me comes to mind: What sort of ancestor do I want to be? This question has begun to occupy my thoughts, guiding and shaping my daily choices as I reflect on the legacy I wish to leave behind."

That question lives on the Loop with me now. It might find its way onto yours too.

I would love to know — what's your growth route? And if you don't have one yet, hit reply. I would genuinely love to help you find one.

No Paradise with Wolves is available now. If the Loop resonates, the whole book is essentially an extended walk around it — and everything that grows alongside it.