Core human experiences

Some experiences don’t feel meaningful because they are rare, but because they are ancient.

This month, I find myself back in the snowy mountains of Georgia, where exactly a year ago I kicked off my writing journey on Substack (thanks everyone for the love along the way.)

March has become one of my favourite months of the year because for the past few years I’ve spent the whole of March up in the mountains, doing my own version of getaway or a retreat. I snowboard, work, go for walks, and sleep. It’s an introspective time for me and I’ve learnt to treat it as a sort of annual reset.

Tuning into my experiences

A few days ago I was hiking from the top of a chairlift up to a steep ridge, wading through knee-deep snow, carrying my snowboard in one hand. As I hiked, one foot in front of the other, I noticed how thin the oxygen was, and that all my brain could really focus on was the patch of snow in front of me, trying to dig my boot into the deep snow in such a way that it would preserve as much energy as possible.

All I could do was keep going in such a way that I was able to keep breathing whilst keeping my body warm in minus 10 degrees. It’s a fine balancing act.

As I reached the top of the snowy ridge, I realised that for the entire climb, my mind had been completely quiet.

I had been absorbed into what I was doing to the extent that my brain had no interest in thinking about anything else: which messages I hadn’t yet replied to, something work-related, friends I needed to call.

Some experiences are core to being a human

I’ve written a lot before about reaching deep states of focus and bliss, especially in nature, but I guess I’ve never thought about it from the perspective of evolutionary psychology. It’s easy to forget there’s a much wider category of experiences that are deeply wired into us.

It sounds obvious: we sleep, eat, procreate: these are all core ‘human’ experiences that are deeply baked into our bones and nervous systems. But we now mostly live in a relentless storm of digital and technological stimulation: phones, laptops, cars, infinite scrolling, memes about memes and AI slop.

So it’s easy to overlook this wider range of ‘core’ human experiences (other than eating, sleeping, sex) that are biologically programmed into us.

Staring at a fire

Take something as simple as sitting around a fire. When was the last time you watched flames for ten minutes without looking at your phone?

We’ve all been mesmerized by staring at flames, and if you think about it now, you’ll know what I mean when I say that your attention settles, your mind softens, and time seems to slow down.

There’s a reason for that, I guess, which is that for tens of thousands of years, sitting around fires was one of the most consistent human rituals on earth. Our ancestors cooked around them, talked around them, survived winters around them (In South Africa we call this the ‘Kalahari TV’; sometimes the only option for entertainment).

Again, we all know this and I’m not saying anything new, but when you do have the privilege of sitting around a warm fire with close friends, watching the flames rise and lick the low edges of the sky, do you ever stop to think about the deep ancestral tuning behind it all; the simple practice that shaped almost the entire history of our species?

The simplicity of walking

Another example is walking long distances through natural landscapes.

Friedrich Nietzsche considered walking essential for creativity, famously stating, “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking”. He viewed sedentary thinking as a “sin” and believed that only ideas gained through movement and being outdoors had genuine value. I guess he was onto something.

Before cities, before cars, before trains, we were a migratory species, and our hunter-gatherer ancestors would routinely walk between 10 and 20 kilometres a day, not as a form of exercise, but simply as a condition of being alive.

There’s something about sustained movement that the brain recognises, as if it’s returning to a familiar cadence it hasn’t forgotten.

Rhythmic effort

A lot of the work our ancestors performed also shared another quality that’s easy to overlook: rhythm.

Rowing across water, grinding grain, chopping wood, carrying water over distance, walking for hours at a time; these weren’t sporadic efforts, but steady, repetitive movements that the body could fall into.

Something that comes close here is dance; the art of tuning into a musical rhythm and moving one’s body in accordance with it (another ancient, paleolithic practice).

When the body settles into a consistent tempo, the brain gradually stops trying to intervene, control, or optimise every moment, and instead begins to follow.

Returning to the source

Standing on that ridge, lungs burning and legs heavy, it struck me that nothing about the moment was particularly new.

Humans have done this for thousands of years; walking, climbing, pausing at the top to look out over the world and catch their breath.

And maybe it felt the way it did (freeing and peaceful) because for a brief moment, without trying to optimise or improve anything, I had stepped back into something older than thought itself.

So my conclusion here, I suppose, is that we shouldn’t think about these experiences (hiking, camping, stargazing) as ‘escaping from life’, but rather returning to it.