#89. The Rhythm of the Wild: What Mongolia Taught Me About Slowing Down

When the world becomes quiet

For hours, we travelled through vast forests and open landscapes to meet reindeer herders. There was very little sound beyond the wind, the trees and the rhythm of the horses moving beneath us.

As the hours passed, my attention slowly moved away from my thoughts and towards the world around me. I became aware of the horse's breathing beneath me, slow and steady, completely unconcerned with time.

Without consciously trying, my own breathing began to follow.

I remember the cold air on my face, the wind moving through the trees and the feeling of being surrounded by a silence that seemed almost alive. Nature did not ask anything of me. I simply had to be there and pay attention.

Finding the feeling in a photograph

Later in the journey, while staying with eagle hunters, I photographed these snow-covered mountains early one morning. The landscape was vast and quiet, the light soft, and for a moment there seemed to be nothing that needed to happen.

Years later, the photograph still brings something of that moment back to me. Not the temperature or the smell of the air, but a sense of spaciousness and calm.

Recently, while going through some old notes, I came across words from photographer Jeroen Toirkens again. Back in 2020, he described my photography like this:

“The essence is a kind of stillness, but at the same time there is real strength and wildness. Untamed nature captured in an almost poetic way. Feeling and atmosphere are important in your photographs.”

Reading those words again, years later, was striking. They put into words something I had been searching for in my photography, perhaps without fully realising it at the time.

Why nature can feel restorative

What I experienced in Mongolia also connects with what we know from environmental psychology. Soft fascination describes the gentle attention we give to clouds, trees, water or distant mountains, without needing to analyse or solve anything.

Much of everyday life asks us to focus, decide and respond. Nature can offer a different kind of attention: something to notice without demanding anything in return.

A photograph cannot recreate the mountain air or the silence of the taiga. But it can remind us of how it felt to be there.

Bringing a little of the wild home

Most of us cannot disappear into the wilderness whenever life becomes overwhelming. We return to our homes, workplaces and everyday routines.

But perhaps we do not need to bring the whole landscape home. Sometimes a single image is enough to create a small pause, a place for the eyes to rest, or a reminder of a slower rhythm.

This is where I see the potential of Healing Nature Art: carefully created nature photography that brings something of our connection with the natural world into the spaces where we live, work and care for others.

I cannot bring the mountains of Mongolia into an ordinary day. But sometimes, when I look at this photograph, I remember how it felt to breathe there.

And perhaps that is one of the things a photograph can do best: not take us somewhere else, but remind us of a way of being.

A little slower. A little quieter. A little more present.