Embraced by Nature

Hello Slow Into The Seasons friends,

Today I invite you to take a walk in nature with me, a walk that began to complete a mundane everyday household task but ended with a feeling of deeper connection to the earth. 

I returned from my walk with a mind full of sentences to commit to paper so I made myself a cup of chai, positioned my typewriter to face the autumnal view of this Highland glen, and began to type: slowly and methodically, pausing to think before committing each line to paper, looking outside as I pondered the thoughts taking shape on the inside…

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Embraced by Nature (also available on Spotify)

I pulled on my wellies, flung my knitted red shawl around my shoulders, and picked up the bin bag. Like all of life’s most insightful moments, it began in a rather uninteresting way: to walk down the track and put the rubbish into the communal bin.

BUT the slithers of sunlight that morning—slicing through the gap in the curtains like a knife through butter—had prompted me to leave behind studies and work duties to pull on my jeans and go outside. 

Life has felt still lately. So still. Soft and quiet; muted and sleepy, and that kind of life can be all.the.things: beautiful and reflective, nourishing and calming. But it can also leave a person lacking, as if there is a great void to be filled but somehow, despite being surrounded by beauty, there appears to be nothing that can satisfy.

Sometimes, when I feel this way, it is enough to enjoy a cup of tea by the window of this cabin and simply lose myself in the view. It is a lesson in coming back to the moment, of remembering that I am here, that I am part of the patchwork of autumnal colours, and that that is enough. Other times it is a practice that only makes me feel like a perpetual outsider.

For I find it hard to sit still.

And so that morning, with the sun shining and clouds hanging low above the treeline—as if a range of mountains—I sought to get out and become part of the landscape. To be an observer is not always enough, sometimes a person must let the earth—everything that is raw and honest and true—filter into their very being, weave its sodden pathways into one’s very soul, and infuse the intricate networks beneath the skin with the essence of life.

Not the life we create here in the material world, but the life that is inherent if we take the time to slow, to venture, to peek beneath the veil of all that we think we are as we make our way, day to day.

As my wellingtons crunched on the gravel, I called to my dog sniffing in the undergrowth. She trotted to my side and I lifted the bin bag over my shoulder. Leaves were falling through the sky like confetti and oh how I wished that you—reader—were there, walking with me so that together we might observe this heart-stopppingly-beautiful spectacle, or so that you might kindly remove the small, brown, curled and crispy leaf tangled in my hair; caught onto me as if to strengthen the message that wherever I am in the world, I am always home: I am always part of something.

I wish that you had been there to stretch your hand in front of me in a firm yet gentle gesture that would stop our idle chatter so that we could instead stand together in awe as the deer ran across the track and leapt up the steep bank, the delicate yet sure-footed sound of its hooves disappearing without a trace in moments that are come and gone with the quick movement of a clock’s hand and yet, felt like forever as we stood together in silence. Oh how I wished to stay, rooted to the track in humble acknowledgment and yet, with my spirit following, through fern and leaves, bog and water.

Perhaps you did too?

But I walked on. I walked on, but not without noticing everything I needed to notice that day to know that I am part of something greater than the melancholy that sometimes grips me, that I too am laying stones like these ancient walls that hold up great banks of earth. That these words written back at my desk—to the background noise of clanking keys and flipping of the papery pages of my Thesaurus—have the power to help not only me hold back the landslide of life, but perhaps also those who walk with me.

I stopped to sink my hands into moss: soft and spongey, deep and comforting—better than any mattress bought for hundreds of pounds—and longed to find a patch large enough so that I might lie down and be lost; for an hour, for a day. So that I might look up to the soft blue November sky and know that it is enough to be embraced by nature.

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I hope you enjoyed this piece of writing, and that in some way it resonated. Do share in the comments below if something spoke to you. I so appreciate the opportunity to share conversation with you. 

🌟 NEWS🌟

FREE Copy of JUNO Magazine

As a long-time contributor to JUNO magazine, I was thrilled to instead be interviewed last month and share a little more about my story and way of life. This interview will be featured in the December issue and you can claim your free copy right here:

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Thank you for being here.

With love,

Wandering Alice
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