Hi again,

I feel the need to continually tinker with this email newsletter in search of alchemy. So I ran a Twitter poll asking whether people preferred short, punchy newsletters or long essay-style pieces. The result? Exactly split 50/50! 😂 And so I shall just continue muddling along as the mood takes me.

✂️ A few snippets that have caught my attention: the intricate Japanese art of kirie (paper cutting) made out of leaves. I’ve always liked the idea of taking photographs in identical places many years apart. The Drone Photos of the Year are gorgeous and disorientating. And pages and pages of brilliant, quirky maps.

👉 OK, now onto some longer things that I hope you’ll enjoy after asking you if you’d please set me a really hard question to answer.

• ⛵️ Marvin Creamer, who sailed around the world navigating without even a sextant or compass (never mind a GPS or an Instagram account) has died, aged 104. An amazing life.
• 🦅 Teenager Mya-Rose Craig, aka Birdgirl, talks to Rhiane Fatinikun [my podcast guest in a few weeks] about Black Girls Hike which she founded about a year ago to encourage black women into the rural landscape.
• 🦘 This expedition impressed me so much: a husband and wife crossing the Outback on foot (tough) with a young child in tow (hardcore!)
• 🚲 Life, In 12 Bicycles – can you remember all the bikes of your life? I love this! I’m ashamed (secretly chuffed / not surprised) that I began to lose track once I reached adulthood, following my first little blue thing, a grey Strika, a Christmas morning red racer with five gears, a lurid pink Townsend Equalizer that I saved up £130 for, and a black Rockhopper with a yellow Girvin flexstem…
• 🧠 This is a really good article on living a life of purpose.
• 📷 The world is slower and more restricted than before. And I no longer seem to have any answers, only a carousel of questions. I decided to pause my usual late-night manic runs and rides, and go for an evening walk instead. (A walk! With no challenging destination or mission involved! Just a measly walk! I’m not sure I have ever done such a thing.)
  This situation is a chance to live differently, to stop hurrying, to liberate myself from habits and assumptions, and to sharpen priorities. What do I want to spend the rest of my life doing? These are not questions to rush.
  To make sure I kept moving slowly and resisted beginning to run or rush, I carried my heavy DSLR camera with me.
  To keep things simple (but not easy) I carried just one prime lens [no zoom], fixed on just one setting [f3.5].
  To remind myself that I’m looking for new perspectives in a once-familiar world, I shot the photos in black and white.
  And because I have less time than in the good old days, I would not allow myself to edit or photoshop the pictures. This is not a time to be seeking perfection.
  My hope was that these walks might help me to ask myself questions, in contrast with my usual runs and challenges and missions which all demand solutions.