Life Outside
Inside out
Silver & Pink
Driving behind a silver car on the way to drop my daughter off at nursery. We’re passing through the small village of Newton-on-the-moor and my subconscious makes a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it observation.
Newton On the Moor
Just a handful of stone buildings and a parish hall; Like many quaint English country villages, Newton-OTM seems at odds with the road that cuts through it.
It’s to do with the history of Roman roads and medieval carts and wagons I suppose. Having your house plonked right next to the track makes sense when you’re wanting to load your donkey or oxen to take to market sometime in the middle ages, but it’s just plain dangerous with modern transport capable of 100mph. We updated the vehicles but not the road layout.
Not that anyone is traveling through these narrow roads at anything like one hundred miles per hour, but still, even at 20-30mph it feels incongruous. Too fast for both us and our environment to be occurring in the same century, or indeed the same point in time.
What Did I Observe…
And so it was, traveling behind this silver machine doing a casual 20-25mph when a gust of wind ran through a rose bush in a garden by the side of the road. This had the effect of scattering pastel pink petals in the silver car’s direction.
For a split moment, I honestly felt like I was at a wedding. The silver car coming out of the church, to be festooned with nature’s most sublime confetti.
However, my jubilation-bubble quickly burst as I watched the delicate petals get ripped into the car’s slipstream and viciously hurled back in the direction of the rose bush.
What was the audience…the stone buildings, the rose bush, me…to make of witnessing this assault?
It all happened in a moment, but in that moment was the bleakness of our 21st-century day-to-day reality.
So that was it really.
The whole realisation of how we live our lives at the pace of these machines we call co-pilots and co-workers.
Cars, internets…maybe even the printing press has hurled us along too quickly to notice the rose petals being offered at our very feet.
Slowing Down
I’m not saying anything new here, am I?
Most of us have enjoyed a cycle ride, haven’t we? The pace where we can enjoy eye contact and smiles with the people we pass.
As vehicles go, cycling permits traveling relatively far whilst remaining intimately connected to the landscape and the people along the way. Walking too of course.
The speed and armor of a car simply won’t allow it.
I’m not saying it’s time to ditch our cars…and I don’t think anyone would listen if I did, but I’m saying it might be nice to say a little sorry each time we get into our vehicles for the miracles we’ll undoubtedly miss. A tiny moment of grace and then we get to continue with our normal modern hurricane ways…I think that sounds reasonable, don’t you?
Fin
Wake up in the Woods
If you live local to me, I’m offering my own little space to give thanks to the outdoors. Two and a half days in the woods. A time to reflect on what the outdoors really means to us when it ceases to be just that space outside of our front door in between our homes and our destination.
Two nights, sleeping in hammocks or in tents in a small woodland plot not far from my home.
21-23 July. You could call it a retreat if you like.
Not that anyone needs a retreat or permission to be outside but sometimes it’s just nice to have friends and good company when we do so.
And, maybe like me you’re returning to the outdoors after a long period away…maybe you got caught up parenting or maybe you got up with chronic sickness. I can certainly tick both of those boxes. And so maybe you’re wanting a gentle reintroduction to the wild.
The wildness outside of you and the wildness inside of you.
I guess you could shoot me an email if that sounds like something you’d be interested in at this point in time or maybe to be kept in the loop for future outdoor adventuring.
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