Escape to the country

As I have gotten older, I seem to spend more time on my computer working and less time outside in nature. Going outside has, as a result, become some sort of “good for my health” obligation, rather than anything else these days. My ten thousand steps a day are usually a few thousand short and often reluctantly wedged into my day among other pursuits that I find more important somehow.

I’ve been cognizant of this lately and, as a result, I have tried to recast my time outside from being a physical duty to my body, to a creative duty to my brain. In simple terms, instead of marching out my daily step count through the countryside to a podcast, I’ve turned the headphones off and started exploring again, like I used to when I was a kid. It means taking away the purpose of being outside and instead just being…because there doesn’t always have to be a result.

Cue Arthur and I heading off to Wales for a bit of exploring. Arthur is my youngest. He’s 19 and studying natural history photography at Falmouth University. For the last few months, he’s become obsessed with long lenses and aiming them at birds, mainly raptors. It’s been lovely to watch his passion grow into something more profound—something I’ve seen from the images of buzzards and owls he pings me on WhatsApp most days. His work has gone from snapshots he’s managed to grab, to him relentlessly chasing an image he has in his head. To me, that is the best practice a photographer can have; get the image you want, not what you’re given.

So, on a cold morning in March, we loaded up the back of the Jeep Compass with a bunch of cameras and lenses and headed off into Mid Wales in search of landscapes, adventure and—perhaps the most elegant raptor of all—the red kite. In Mid Wales these aerial scavengers can be seen everywhere, as they glide among the mountains and valleys searching for food.

I’ve never been one to help my kids achieve their dreams. I always figured they needed to do that themselves. Arthur deciding to study natural history photography put him firmly in my footsteps as a wildlife photographer, but even then I have tried to step back from telling him how to do things. Now, I’m not talking technical advice. Arthur was streaks ahead of me with that, it turned out—I kept having to ask him how to get the autofocus working best to capture the fast-flying kites. No, what I was keen to do on this trip was to give him a wee bit of life advice.

Like all forms of photography, wildlife photography can become very addictive. I’ve kind of always seen it like alchemy, because, ultimately, you can get up in the morning, head out with a camera and, by the end of the day, create gold—some stunning image that never existed before. It’s wonderful in many ways because it gets you outside, gets you indulging your passion and, well, gets you off a screen. The problem, however, is that the passion is addictive, and when you get addicted to the result you often forget the journey in pursuit of it.

As Arthur and I spent time exploring Wales, I could see my young self in his shoes—doggedly chasing an image at the expense of the moment. It might sound pretty trivial, but actually it’s not—and that’s something age has taught me.

When you give purpose and pursuit to what you’re doing, you reduce the process of achieving it. You see a beautiful sunset and you want to photograph it—by the time the sun drops below the horizon, you’ve missed experiencing it, because capturing it becomes the goal and then perfecting that image becomes all-consuming. Of course, the photo is never as good as the actual sunset, so your time spent experiencing it is usually one of frustration, composition, and exposure mathematics.

I’ve had an extraordinarily privileged life, traveling the world as a photographer for National Geographic magazine. I have seen some incredible things, but I look back now and realize how much of that life I missed, because I was so hell bent on documenting it.

Of course, no kid ever listened to “dadvice”. I never did, and I don’t expect Arthur to. But part of being a parent is about giving it anyway. So, as the two of us nosed our way through the stunning scenery of the Breacon Beacons and the Elan Valley, I tried to explain this concept to Arthur—enjoy the road as much as the destination.

I mean, it fell on deaf ears—his and mine ironically. Because the moment we got out of the Jeep and stuck some telephoto lenses on our cameras and started shooting images of red kites—our brains became completely consumed by what we were doing. But it was great fun and we got some nice shots. And it occurred to me afterwards that it was so much fun because we were doing it together—showing each other our shots, giving each other suggestions, laughing about our failures, showing off our successes. That doesn’t happen when you’re on your own. Perhaps most importantly though, we went out into nature, got some fresh air in our lungs, and cleared our brains of chatter. Being outside is profoundly good for us, both physically and mentally—that’s not anecdotal, that’s scientific fact. But being outside for the right reasons, not by duty but by desire, can surely only increase that benefit. And that holds true even when it’s raining, which it certainly was on our trip. But we didn’t mind, we actually enjoyed it. It was almost effortless navigating the Jeep up thin, winding roads, or getting off-road exploring down dirt tracks deep into the forests, with no idea where we were going, but always amazed by the beauty of what we found.

My dad used to take us to Wales when we were kids, but dad was always in a hurry, we always had to achieve something. Arthur and I chose to do the opposite—we just went where we wanted, ignored the map, followed the light. We’ll both remember that trip we took together forever, not because of all we achieved, but because we enjoyed the journey.

Charlie and Arthur’s exploration of the Welsh countryside was made all the easier to navigate with the Jeep Compass—their trusted companion through it all. Thanks to a harmony of smart technology like the Selec-Terrain System, the Compass transitions seamlessly between city streets, winding roads, rugged tracks, and shifting surfaces with snow, sand, and mud modes. All the while, flexible cargo space easily swallowed up the pair’s photography gear.

For the National Geographic photographer and his budding-photographer son, the journey in the Jeep was all part of the adventure. A disconnecting getaway doesn’t necessarily mean traveling to the furthest corners of the globe—not even to the toughest corners of the UK—it’s more about a shift in perspective, devouring the miles, and enjoying the process. Perhaps doing so in a car with the adventuring pedigree of Jeep, folded into a gentler but no less capable model with its emphasis on family.

Continue your journey and uncover even more about the road trip into nature here.