I cannot recommend the experience of WWOOFing highly enough. WWOOF stands for world wide opportunities on organic farms. In the two months leading up to Christmas I WWOOFed at three different farms/communities in the south west: Trill Farm, Keveral Farm and Tinker’s Bubble. I had quite a profound time which I’d like to share in the faint hope that it might be of interest to those with a similar outlook on life.

Tinker’s Bubble was the barest and most minimal of the communities I volunteered at. While the community’s principled stance towards the sustainability and low-impact living garnered my respect straight away, it was the vitality of the lifestyle which really affected me. I slept in an austere cabin with nothing but a wood burning stove to keep me warm. Using my body, working outside all day, eating a hearty evening meal, sitting quietly by the fire and living as part of a community enabled me to see what is truly important in life: exercise, food, drink, sleep, breath and human fellowship. We take these things for granted even though they are great gifts and by finally appreciating them I achieved a natural high.

There was a quiet there which I realised I had longed for since I was young. Modern society is very uncomfortable with the notion of peace and quiet. In cafes and shops inane music plays, on trains people distract themselves with phones and seeking out the next distraction is the order of the day. I have partially been conditioned to live this way too and in fact on the first day my initial sense was that of dread. But as I confronted the fact that I was alone with myself, that solitude became like oxygen to me. Being in the calm, soulful silence of that rustic cabin was reality, not society’s extravagant distractions outside.

Keveral Farm, the second farm I volunteered at, is situated on the Cornish coast. From 8.00 to 4.00 every day I would pick vegetables with three other wwoofers on the vast acres of land Keveral owns. The fields were spread out all about us, on a slight rise, so that as we worked we could see out across the sea. The waves danced and rolled, a never-ending sequence of movement, and as the clouds parted the sun shone along a narrow strip of ocean. There is something glorious about movement. It reminds you that nothing is constant. Everything is happening. With every new second the waves change shape and size and colour in a marvellous interweaving of the two key forces of life: space and time. Sometimes I listened to music as I worked and the movement of the notes and pitches echoed the movement of the waves.

I became aware of a powerful feeling of peace and harmony deep within my core. I felt like I was rising outside of myself. I was floating, regressing, all the while possessed by an immense wonder. The more I think about it, the more I realise that everyone is trying to access this state in some way or another: through imagination, music, Art, meditation, religion, love, work, alcohol, writing, even sport. I believe Daniel Day-Lewis is the greatest actor of his generation because of the level of self-obliteration he attains in his acting. As Thomas Middleton once wrote “I think man’s happiest when he forgets himself.”

Since returning from WWOOFing I have looked into Buddhism, mindfulness and the ideas of Alan Watts as a way of making sense of these experiences. Alan Watts says that what you are doing at any moment is part of what the whole universe is doing. just as what a wave is doing at any moment is part of what the whole ocean is doing. The more I worked in nature the more I realised that I am fundamentally connected to the universe. There are two ‘I’s. There is the ‘I’ of my ego, which separates itself from others and anything ‘out there’, and a deeper awareness which knows no separation, from the world, from my thoughts, from internal and external events. Once I quietened down my mind and focused on the latter, I became incredibly free…

So, if you ever have a few free weeks and want to get out of the city, I would say: go WWOOFing! I had two of the most rewarding months of my life. It allows for a kind of rest and rehabilitation of the soul.