Being, outside

The wind blows through us, it keeps us wild, it keeps us moving. Don’t sit still! it says. It grabs at your hair, your scarf, your coat; it throws rain at your face and twigs at your feet. It tugs at your umbrella as if to pull you into a wild dance, and says come on, play with me, run with me, come and see where we can go next. 

I was privileged enough to be invited on a ‘forest bathing’ walk this weekend with Luke from Queer On Earth, a certified Nature & Forest Therapy Guide. As you may have noticed, if you live in this area, Sunday morning in South Yorkshire was a little… wild. Horizontal rain, then sunshine, then freezing rain, then snow, then sunshine, then rain again… that kind of day. As I confessed while we were out, the kind of day where I’d usually say a firm no thank you (Bilbo voice) to the outdoors and curl up with a book, or get some chores done.  So to be out in the woods in such changeable weather, listening to the wind tearing through the treetops, and seeing the rain alternately pelting down on the leaves or covering the whole world in drops of glittering diamond during the brief glimpses of sunshine was just such a gift.  

It made me want to be outside more, in all weathers, experiencing all the shifting wonders of even just the small patch of woodland outside my back door. We were asked to observe with all our senses, and think about ‘what is in motion?’ The answer came back so clearly: everything. The people, the dogs, the stream, but also the mud as we walk on it, the leaves as the wind or the rain catches them, and the wood itself as fallen trees teem with other lives, and new trees push their way up from underground. Our only constant is change. 

We are all of us in a constant state of change. We were not made to stagnate in offices or on sofas. So, get outside, let the wind blow through you; blow the cobwebs out and away. Let your thoughts blow with them, and see where they fly to. Maybe the wind can take us anywhere, if only we’d let it.