Hey, this is Doug, and this is microcast number 109.

I am walking on the way back from such a glorious wild camp in the Northumberland Hills.

I haven’t seen anyone since I started this walk.

I’m walking back to the car right now.

I’ve got about half an hour before I get back.

Obviously, this time of year, late October, it gets dark quite early, and I’ve actually never been wild camping this late in the year.

So by about five o’clock, it’s dark, which means I need to pitch my tent by 4.30, and then it got light about 6.30 a.m.

So I had all that time, and I realized that my phone battery was quite low.

I didn’t bring any reading materials, so I literally just lay in my tent, thinking my thoughts, falling asleep, drifting in and out of it.

And when I woke up, which must have been about 4.30, 5 o’clock, I looked out of the tent, put my glasses on because I didn’t have my contact lenses in, and I have never seen a sky like it.

This is a designated kind of dark sky zone, but because I’ve only ever been wild camping when it’s been, you know, I’ve never got up in the middle of the night when I’ve been wild camping here before.

I’ve never seen it like that before.

And the sky was clear, and it was absolutely magical.

So I used the, there’s like the night photography mode on Android, but there’s also like a astro mode, astronomy mode, which I’ve never used before.

And it auto detects when it’s looking at stars, and it puts it on like a four minute exposure.

So I did that, and I kind of propped it up, and I was more focused on making sure that the phone didn’t move than looking at the sky while it was happening.

And it captured this wonderful photo, but it also captured a little bit of video when it looks like some kind of meteorite went through the sky.

I’ll put the little one second video along with this microcast, but it was incredible.

I mean, I missed it.

I didn’t see it with my naked eye because I was too busy making sure the phone didn’t move.

But it captured this one second of video with the meteorite going through the sky, and it was just magical.

It really was.

And then the kind of golden hour last night was lovely.

Maybe I’ll put some photos of that.

And this morning with the sun rising with the reds and the purples.

Oh man, seriously, I don’t know why I don’t do this more often.

Anyway, as you can probably gather, I’m feeling a lot, lot better.

It’s mad to think that taking this SNRI has made such a difference to my life.

But I guess it’s because it’s keeping stuff in my brain that otherwise is being reabsorbed.

I don’t exactly know how it works, just that I feel a lot better.

I guess that’s the serotonin.

And I feel a lot less anxious, which I guess is the serotonin.

And the neuroferrin, is that what it’s called?

I don’t know, neuroadrenaline, something like that.

It does something about regulation.

Anyway, I don’t even care if I’m on this for the rest of my life, if I feel like this, especially at this time of the year.

I feel like I do in the summer.

And I guess I’ve just got used to, at this time of the year, feeling a bit down and a bit low and a bit anxious.

I don’t need to feel like that.

That’s the wonderful thing.

And I reckon this must be in my top three, top five wild camps ever.

The other ones have been more, the other really good ones have been very eventful.

Whereas this was uneventful and just marvellous.

And as I’m looking out over the landscape now, again, why don’t I do this more often?