One of the best things about reading is that I get to learn new words. Yes, that’s the nerd in me talking and I thought I’d share three of them.

Hal: to seek rapturous delight and inspiration from nature

Hal is from the Persian language and I learnt this word from the food memoir by Donia Bijan, Maman’s Homesick Pie in An American Kitchen. The memoir is full of descriptions of delicious Persian food during a peaceful and idyllic time in Iran before the Islamic Revolution devastated the country in the 1970s.

I love the concept of Hal and it’s precisely this feeling that fills my heart when I’m hiking in the mountains or at the beach. I wished that more people would take to nature as supposed to always staying indoors and staring at a screen all the time.

Waldeinsamkeit: the feeling of being alone in the woods.

I think I came across this word on a website but I can’t remember which. However, I like the fact that the German language has a single word to encapsulate this wonderful feel of peace that overcomes you when you’re at one with the trees. I believe trees have a soul of their own; the peace and quiet among trees brings a sense of calm. The chirping of the birds, the rustling of the leaves, the tweets of insects unseen…a forest symphony has its own sense of rhythm and melody.

Pantheism: the belief that nature is god.

I believe in Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, so it’s useless talking to me about Creationism and the Bible. However, I’m willing to believe in Pantheism.  When you’re faced with awe-inspiring mountains, canyons, fjords, glaciers, rivers, beaches etc, you can’t help but think some divine being is present in nature.

I came across this word while reading the hiking memoir Following Atticus: Forty-Eight High Peaks, One Little Dog, and an Extraordinary Friendship by Tom Ryan. In this book, Ryan chronicles his hiking adventures with his schnauzer, Atticus, along all 48 of New Hampshire’s four thousand-foot peaks. I loved Ryan’s descriptions of the trails,  the physical and mental challenges faced as well as how he overcame them. Throughout his struggles, he had his trusty canine companion who won the hearts of everyone they met on the trails as well as all the readers of Ryan’s blog where he updates readers on his hikes and life.