I need to get my greenery fix pretty regularly. I love living in the city, but if I don’t get the soggy moors beneath my feet, marvel at the beautiful mosses and lichens draped over ancient stone walls, every few weeks I start to feel, well just a bit wrong.
I have tried to identify what feels wrong and the most accurate description I can come up with is a sense that I am being tamed by the city, that I have temporarily lost my wildness.
Last weekend I went with a very good friend of mine up to the most special place I know, a valley on the Yorkshire/Cumbria border, where sheep and hairy horses roam on the high fells. We took enough food to feed an army, wood and kindling for the fire, my dog-Suzie and our fiddley craft projects. We had 3 nights, walked and explored all day and we forgot the time and the rest of the world. There isn’t any mobile or internet reception up there, so our worky lives just had to wait til we were ready for them again.
After our days away and returning home, the internet seemed like a very unnatural way to spend my time and I’m finding that people & actual things delight me even more!
The most real thing of all right now is the growing baby inside me! They remind me just how full of possibility we all are and that I am the wild free creature I was born to be. If we just keep attuned to our wildness and keep doing the things that make us feel free, our sense of feeling ‘there is something wrong here’ may just begin to float away on the breeze!
Dig deep- what makes you feel tamed and sedated or wild and free?
PS. I love lichens and this valley has the largest selection I have ever seen in one place. Cladonia fimbriata, the gorgeous mini ‘golf tees’ are one of my favourites.
