Here, I’m sharing the journal notes from the first four days of going outside in my bare feet, and breathing in. Breathing in air, earth, acceptance… and rain.

~~~

Day 1

The grass is damp, thick, and heavy with dew.

I breathe in: air, earth, acceptance.

I feel my feet sink into the ground. My feet do not feel cold.

It is only when I step back onto the concrete and move back inside that my feet notice the cold.

Day 2

It is a beautiful spring morning, full of bright sunshine.

I am not seeing but hearing: all I can hear is the wild, outrageous chorus of the birds, singing in all delight.

What I see today is pure, sweet song.

Day 3

It is pouring with rain, and yet I long to go outside.

I head out in rain kagoul and pyjamas, laughing at myself.

Is this mad? I wonder. It is starting to seem that it would be mad not to do this, not to step out and press my feet into the ground, to breathe in the morning.

Invited to notice what I see, I see the apple tree. Focal point in the garden, feeding station for the birds.

It is the symbol of life.

Through spring, summer, autumn, winter, it is the symbol of life in the garden.

Day 4

It is raining, but now it seems normal to go outside with PJs and kagoul. Yes, already.

I breathe in 40 times, eyes closed.

By breath 10 I am not in this garden but somewhere else, bigger.

No, I am not somewhere else, I am everywhere, I am all places.

All I am aware of here is the song of the blackbird.

After 40 breaths I open my eyes.

It is raining.

Everything is wet

The apple tree is dripping.

It makes me smile, to be back here, but also to know it is here and everywhere else.

I breathe in: air, earth, acceptance, and rain.

~~~

The invitation to step outside and breathe in your bare feet was from Essence of Wild – I was doing the free 10 steps course (you start with 10 breaths and build up day by day to 100).

The next paid course – which includes a lot of other material and prompts to extend and develop the experience – starts on 27th May. I can’t vouch for that experience or course, but I do know they know their stuff when it comes to helping you experience the essence of wild ;-)

Greater Stitchwort.

Dog Violet.

Herb Robert.

Wood Sorrel.

Tufted Vetch.

Red Campion.

Lesser Celandine.

Somebody mentioned to me recently that it is not just the hedgerow flowers that are beautiful, not just their photographs that move us, but something about the names that speaks to us, that connects us with something inside.

Something evocative.

Something that reminds us, or calls to us, or grounds us.

It’s strange.

To me, like most of us (I guess), the names of these flowers are not familiar.

I need to learn, year after (painful) year, what a flower is, what name it goes by.

I have some hazy recollections of being taught a few flower names as a child.

One happy memory of walking on the moor with my granny in Skye, being shown the wildflowers, and told their Gaelic names, but of course I cannot remember the details now, just the moment, just the feeling of being taught something important.

It frustrates me, this lack of knowledge, this lack of such basic literacy, and yet still I am aware that at some level I do know, and I do remember.

Ever since I came to this neck of the woods I’ve had the feeling that this landscape and in particular these hedgerows were reminding me of something.

They’re lush, wild, and unspoilt.

They’re what I remember from something I never knew, but know from somewhere else.

I’m not sure if that’s from paintings, or books, or childhood stories, or the enchanted woods I disappeared into when I was little through the pages of Enid Blyton books.

Or if it is something deeper, and longer ago than that.

I read something by Helen Keller today that made me wonder about this further:

Each individual has a subconscious memory of the green earth and murmuring waters, and blindness and deafness cannot rob him of this gift from past generations. This inherited capacity is a sort of sixth sense – a soul sense, which sees, hears and feels, all in one.

I don’t know what the answer is.

But I do know this: that over and over, the hedgerows are reminding me.

Through all grief, through the deluge of tears,
The wings of the butterfly are folded, still, in perfect poise.
The world reveals itself with beauty at its centre.
There is nothing beyond this: this act of worship, this act of communion.

The wings of the butterfly are folded, still, in perfect poise.
Gasping in wonder, laughing in astonishment, crying with delight,
There is nothing beyond this: this act of worship, this act of communion.
Things are happening at the level of the tiny.

This is a piece I wrote last week for the Abbey of the Arts poetry party, on the theme of the centre and the edge.

As I wasn’t posting last week I didn’t get the chance to share it, but I do love the image so much – it’s a female orange-tip butterfly, on greater stitchwort – and she really did sit, still, in perfect poise, while I took photograph after photograph. Plus the words make me feel hopeful too.

You could maybe call it a postcard with a poem on the back ;-)

I think there’ll be more of them too :-)

I said I was going to take a break for a whole six weeks or so, but it turns out that there are too many things I want to tell you about. I just keep on seeing things and noticing things that I want to tell you about.

Like today for example: I was down by the Solway coast, walking in beautiful May sunshine.

Being rather in love with the hedgerows, woodlands and moorland landscapes I don’t tend to head to the coast that often, but there’s something uplifting about being by the sea, especially on a bright May day in Scotland, when the air is clear, and the gorse is burning gold.

We ate cheese rolls by the shore, and I took photograph after photograph of sea thrifts, enchanted.

I wanted to tell you about the way they moved, and how it feels to have the warmth of the rocks under your body as you watch, and click, and notice, over and over again, as the flowers move in the wind.

How taking this photograph reminds me of other photographs, and other picnics, in Ireland last year, at the Holy Isle, in the highlands, in Skye, and my mind starts to jump with thoughts about how this noticing and remembering joins up moments of time and changes the way we experience time from something linear to something a lot more circular, rich and returning.

And that if I’m going to have thoughts like that I should really keep on writing about them.

Walking back through the woods there were flowers everywhere. I took close up photographs because that is how I want and need to notice and try and learn about the flowers (and it is starting to work, this year I am remembering so much more), but I also wanted to try and capture and convey something of the feeling of walking through this carpet of flowers, how the stitchwort and the bluebells were weaving and dancing together, an effusion of purple and white.

And it struck me, as I thought about this desire simply to tell you about that which I see, and that which is beautiful, and that which reminds me of home, that I have been rather over-complicating what I am doing here.

That I could very easily rekindle my feelings of delight at writing by making it a whole lot simpler: not about the practice of noticing, and whether it’s art, or contemplation, and how we foster our creativity, or whether I should be teaching some of what I’ve learned, or selling some of what I make, and just stop worrying about these patterns of thoughts that have been circling for such a long time (I mean, a very long time) and press on instead with telling you what it is that I see, and notice, and am reminded of.

And then it also struck me that what I really wanted to do was to send a kind of postcard: image on the one side, words on the other, capturing a moment in time, expressing something fleeting, but possibly also something that lasts, originating from a place specific, and sent out into the world, simply, from me, to you.

And as is my practice, I’ve gone with the simplicity of that idea. I’ve shaken things up a bit at the site so there is more emphasis, yes, still more emphasis on what I see and notice (landscapes, hedgerows, wildflowers, trees) and less about practice, less about how and why, less about art.

I’ve shifted the description for the site to this.

Everyday Wonder: Postcards from South West Scotland

I feel so much better for rooting and grounding the work that I do in place, in the land, in this country that I love, and that is my literal and symbolic home.

Actually, I feel like the weight of the world has been lifted from me, and I am eagerly looking forward to sending you lots more virtual postcards.

Thanks for all your support, encouragement and readership so far, including those of you who read and do not comment. It means a great deal to me.

Here’s to the next chapter :-)

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?

I sat outside for a half an hour this afternoon, in beautiful soft sunshine. The birds were singing, loudly, and I could feel the ground solid, and comforting, beneath my feet. I didn’t read, didn’t write, didn’t take photographs, just sat, listened to the bird song, and drank my tea.

A thought drifted into my mind, as clear as anything.

You need to take a break for a while.

It went on:

You need to be not-creating for a while.

Not making, not writing, not planning, not encouraging, not poem crafting, not synthesising, not finding meaning.

You need to walk, read, and be.

You need to take photographs, and let the world talk to you in images.

You need to stop blogging for a while, and just be.

~~~

Waves of relief, and tiredness, washed over me.

Because I know this voice of stillness, and clarity, to be true.

I do need to take a break for a while.

There are so many things that feel like tension points inside me.

The love of macro photography, and adoration of the flowers. The desire to take landscape photographs, and pay homage to the hills.

The desire to do more and more with photography, to lose myself in its comforts. The knowledge that I am most myself when I write, and that I can change things within and without when I let my words flow, like honey.

The ability I have to help others release their natural creativity. The need to focus on my own creativity, my own making of art.

The recognition that art is the way we make meaning, express truth, beauty, love. The hunger to move away from the shadowy, ineffable nature of the creative process to things that are more tangible and real. Pulling up weeds, typing notes of meetings, making sure the animals are fed.

The fascination with the way we can connect and weave together our stories through blogs and social media. The need to feel truly connected in the offline world, the need to be not-online for a while.

(I could go on – but you’ll get the idea.)

I have a trail of projects and sites and domain names that have done, do, or could explore: writing, and finding poetry, and flower kindness, and the meaning of place names, and the landscapes of the west, and the art of everyday wonder. I would dearly love to find a way to integrate these strands, these seeds, into one whole.

I need time to do that, time away from the day to day reflecting to look for bigger, deeper, lighter, softer, more meaningful, more nonsensical patterns, to find a way that I can work and make and communicate that allows for or integrates these tensions and battles and allows me to express what I see in a more peaceable way.

Or just lets me really see the sky ;-)

So, dear readers, I’m going to take a break from writing here for a while, for six weeks or so, while I let other things filter, sift, settle and form. It’s part of what I knew I needed to do at the beginning of this year – to allow myself to be still, so I could leave room for the dance.

It’s also a beautiful time of year to have some time out – which for me means time outside. The hedgerows will be blooming, and I suspect I might well find the answers I’m looking for to be blowing in the wind… :-)

With the wonders of RSS technology you don’t need to do anything to stay in touch – you’ll automatically hear from me once I’m back up and blogging again.

For now… thanks so much for all your encouragement and support, and I look forward to asking for more of it once I’m ready to rejoin the dance :-)

~~~

(The opening line is, of course, from Bob Dylan’s classic song, Blowin’ In the Wind.)

Here’s the apple blossom that was eluding me before.

We seem to be one of the few places in the country that’s (so far) escaping the rain. The blossom was sunbathing this morning, and the birds are singing the sweetest of songs.

I think their refrain goes something like this:

Be like a flower, and turn your face to the sun ~ Kahlil Gibran

Happy 1st May :-)

Last Sunday we lost our beautiful cat, hit by a car. This small, gorgeous, funny, generous creature has been friend, guardian, companion, wise man, fool, and simply: cat, for fifteen years.

That’s a big chunk of my life, and it feels like a very big hole.

As I’ve moved, slowly, through the week, I’ve been aware how much comfort the practice of photography has offered me.

One morning when I couldn’t bear to sit in the house I went outside, in the early morning sun, and took pictures of the apple blossom, almost in bloom. The pictures didn’t work but the practice did: click, connect, focus.

Connect, click, focus.

Breathe.

Connect.

Photography takes me out of myself.

Photography takes me outside, and that is such a huge blessing. Outside you get distracted: there are still gates to manoeuvre, stiles to cross, brambles to untangle and nettles to avoid.

There is still the birdsong, soothing, and the smell of the wild garlic in the woodland: this moment, reeking, here, now.

And there are the images that you find, or that find you.

Symbols that offer something – a way to understand, to process, to heal, or just to keep on going.

Some of these I know I wouldn’t have seen had I not had this practice of going out, each and every day, camera in hand, to watch, to see, to notice.

Some of these images remind me of things I have seen before, and awaken old, good, feelings of wonder, and gratitude.

Some of them whisper secrets that I am finding for the first time.

This wood sorrel has just peeped out from the mossy, dark underside of an old railway embankment, at the edge of the wood. I am trying to get into the habit of looking up the flowers when I see them, to try and learn a bit more of who they are, and what they have done, or symbolised, in days gone by.

This wood sorrel (my book says) forms pockets of shining flowers in spring, on woodland floors or amongst shady rocks. It can grow in locations that only have 1% daylight, so you find it growing in the darkest part of the forest and at cave entrances.

It’s name in Gaelic is feada-coille, candle of the wood.

This practice: this looking, this noticing, this trying to learn, this saying thank you, this commitment to keeping your eyes wide open, your heart wide open, even when you don’t feel it, particularly when you don’t feel it, is really what the art of everyday wonder means to me.

I do not live my life in a state of perpetual wonder. Who of us does?

But I do have a practice that allows me to get outside, to get out of my head, and to see, over and over again, things that are beautiful, and astonishing, and communicate in a way that words couldn’t begin to.

And for that I am deeply grateful.

Actually, moving through the middle of life you can be forgiven for feeling it’s hard a lot of the time.

Sometimes I wonder how human beings are supposed to make their way through the deluge of sadness, worry, and loss that seems part and parcel of the human condition.

Sometimes I remember that there’s only one way through it: a deep breath, placing one foot of the other, and keeping your heart tipping upwards, to soak up the light of the sun.

Sometimes it feels like you’re the only person who knows this, who has been offered the gift, and the burden, of this knowledge.

Sometimes it feels like it would burn right through you.

You go to sleep at night, thinking about it.

You wake up in the morning, and it’s the first thing on your mind.

When other things are going on, when life is running by, you hug the knowledge to you, like a secret.

It might be knowing how loving your self can transform relationships with others, with your world, and how you start to see these patterns playing out, wherever you look.

It might be the characters, the narrative, the stories that you see moving between places, people, times, stories that you see flitting between fantasy and reality, and the urgent need to write them down.

It might be the archetypes of the ancient goddesses that you can see, clear as crystal, showing up in present day.

It might be the core spirit values of your land, and your insight into how tuning into these can change business, work, leadership, life.

It might be the change that you see when people use art to make sense of things, and heal the rifts inside. It might be the knowing that comes with that, how you need to keep telling it, teaching it, making it.

It might be the gratitude you feel for the flowers of the desert, how the earth blooms from the most arid of landscapes.

It might be the way the light glints on the water, and calls the seeker: home.

It might be the way the flowers jump right out from the hedgerows, and call you, dance with you, smile at you.

It might be the way the world offers you a secret: so obvious, so true, so apparently invisible to others, so vital, so essential, so gorgeous, so astonishing that you know, in that deepest and most secret recess of your heart, that you must both keep it, and give it away.

You must share it, tell it, write it, express it, create it. Make photos, make poems, make books, make websites.

Even if none of that tells it, captures it, expresses it, still you’ll keep going, burning with it, waking with the secret, sleeping with the secret, feeling it burn within you, driving your work, your first thought in the morning, your last thought at night.

And that’s it.

That’s all there is to it.

That’s *all* there is to it.

The secret to creative flow:

There is something you know.

~~~

The links woven into the text take you to some of the sites and blogs I enjoy, and have followed for many years, watching the authors pursue their work with passion, commitment, and creative flow. If you’re intrigued, please do follow the link and have a look for yourself!

Flowers jump out at me.

Good morning! Good morning! they cry.

I’m pretty sure this is code for ‘take my photo, pretty please’, so I stop, and oblige.

As I stop to take a photograph I try not to stop at taking a photograph.

I also admire them, encourage them, compliment them.

The flowers smile, broadly, in response.

I walk along the road, by the hedgerows of all delight.

The road sides are dotted with splashes of white, and it makes me glad to be seeing these flowers for the second time.

It makes me glad that I’ve got to know their name, and something about them, and to have written of how proud you’d be to walk with this flower in your buttonhole.

I bend down, pay attention, take some photographs.

It’s not so easy with these tiny flowers.  They move, bend, flutter and dance in the wind. It’s delightful, but hard to get the focus.

They shine, bright, white, in the sunshine, and the sunshine makes it hard to get the contrast right. (Cloudy days and rainy days are often better. But then, the flowers do so love to sunbathe.)

Later, I look at the photographs on my laptop, and start to edit.

This part too is full of delight, noticing a pattern I hadn’t seen before, discovering a point of detail that is simply: astonishing, and wonderful.

Still, this is also the time where the difficult and more challenging parts of the creative process come into play.

Doubts and frustrations swing by. A whole series of  impossible I wish desires run through my head.

I wish I knew how to create other-worldly flower portraits.

I wish I knew how to create an impressionistic effect.

I wish I had a better camera.

I wish I could paint.

I wish I knew more about the flowers, their names, their mythology, their symbolism.

I wish I could find a way to take a flower photograph that was good enough, match enough, representation enough of the flowers that dance with me, and delight me in the hedgerows.

And of course, I cannot.

Accepting this is part of the creative process.

(Yes, I know, it’s part of life.)

Accepting this requires me to think about why I take, and share, flower photographs.

I share them not to appear, to be thought of, to be spoken of, or to be: an artist, a photographer, or an ‘authority’ on flowers.

I simply want to try and share something of their gorgeousness, the way they dance and move in the wind, how they jump out from the hedgerows and show off in the sunshine.

I want to share this simple, everyday reminder that the earth is beautiful, and you are loved.

(I am not sure if this ambition is smaller, or bigger, than the others ;-) )

And I want to take photographs, myself, just for me, over and over again: because it’s the best way I’ve yet found to get to know the flowers, to communicate with the natural world, to feel close to home, connected, co-creating, delighting, loving, laughing.

The wishes I wish for are only about the way you might (if you wanted, and I’m not sure I do) create ‘products’ from the photographs.

They have nothing to do with the wishes I have for my relationship with the flowers, which is within my own hands, own heart, own eyes each and every time I step out of the door.

Creative doubt has never, ever, come close to diminishing my delight in the taking of the photographs, the moments of absorption, of noticing, of talking and connecting, of watching and laughing, of falling over, of getting stung, of getting mud soaked, and I trust it never will.

That relationship, that connection, that admiration and honouring are the only things that matter. 

Whether or not the picture’s any ‘good’ is really neither here nor there. This is what I need to keep on learning as I learn to take imperfect photographs.

I step back outside the door.

The sun is shining.

The flowers jump out at me, all smiles, all delight, and ready to pose once more.