The Sound That Followed Me: A Walk with the Wild Edge of Not Knowing

This morning’s walk was soaked in birdsong, new nettles, and that particular kind of quiet that doesn’t feel empty, it feels alive. But what stayed with me, what followed me all the way home, was the sound I couldn’t place straight away.

A sharp, bark-like cry. Rasping. Repetitive. Coming from the trees, again and again.

I knew, eventually, that it was a muntjac deer. But even knowing that didn’t really answer anything. Was it in distress? Calling for a mate? Sounding a warning? Calling to me—or to my dogs? It was hard to tell. And in that space of uncertainty, something shifted.

Because so much of what I do—both in life and in therapy—is about learning to sit with the not knowing.

We are a culture hungry for answers. We Google symptoms. We label emotions. We want to fix. But healing rarely works like that. Sometimes it’s more like the muntjac: a sound echoing through the trees, no clear meaning, just presence. Just a body calling out because it needs to.

On the surface, my walk was ordinary. Mud underfoot, bluebells fading back, my black labrador Scout trotting ahead. But inside? Something opened up. A remembering, maybe, of the kind of awareness we lose in the rush of the everyday.

Therapy, at its best, is a bit like that. It’s not always about having the right words or figuring things out straight away. Sometimes it’s just about learning to listen differently. To the things that don’t make immediate sense. To the parts of ourselves that don’t speak in full sentences. To the barks in the woods.

We never saw the deer. But I felt her. Heard her. And somehow, that was enough.