Hey there,
Lovely being.
I hope you're doing really really well.
I'm just heading into the woods,
I've got a.
.
.
Conversation with a tree I need to have,
Can you believe?
It's been a couple of weeks since I've managed to get into the woods.
We were away.
And then there was a period of poorliness,
So I'm very excited to be out for the first time in ages.
And here's my friend Katie.
Hello,
Katie.
She's not avoiding her PhD by taking a walk in the woods.
Apparently.
So the rain has come on.
It wasn't meant to rain.
This is what happens in the woods here,
I'm afraid.
You end up meeting beautiful people.
So Katie is a fantastic composer.
She plays cello.
If you've heard any of my poems with music,
Things like the moon poems,
The music that's underneath those,
Those films of those,
All that music is by Katie.
And she actually worked with,
Is it Thomas Newman?
On the score for the James Bond film Skyfall.
She was kind of a copyist and corrector on Skyfall,
So if there was a note needed putting in its right place or something needed tidying up,
She was the one.
The rain has really come on,
Actually.
It wasn't meant to rain at all.
Anyway,
Let me take you with me,
Because that was the plan for this little walk,
And we'll just have a bit of time in the woods.
What I did want to say to you,
Actually.
.
.
Is something that's been on my mind a lot,
And this is not really meant to be a meditation video,
But it's just something that's been on my mind a lot at the moment,
Especially with the way we are in the world,
Is that everything is actually our practice.
And I don't mean you've got to accept things the way that they are,
But I mean the way you conduct yourself in this day,
This ordinary day of your life,
Is the only road to sacredness that there is.
And so instead of trying to create a sacred feeling that.
Just inviting you to.
Bring a sense of your true presence and beauty to the way you do things,
From tying your shoelaces,
To taking a walk in the woods,
To making your coffee,
To doing your work.
Is the life itself.
And what we take in as well.
If we're actually meeting ourselves in this way of everything being our practice,
Then we might want to choose what our inputs are and how we associate with things,
But not in a kind of pompous and pious way,
Trying to fit a set of externalised rules,
But listening to our souls within and allowing our souls to show us what our own true rules are,
If you see what I'm getting at.
Anyway,
Let's walk in the woods.
And we've got the river down below.
Many of you have been on this walk with me before,
But every day,
This is my kind of daily walk,
But as I say,
It's been a couple of weeks.
But there's just something about this walk.
It just brings me back.
Okay.
These beauties.
Sitting a little path above the river but for some reason it just uh calls to me and calls to me.
Oh,
The rain's eased off.
I'm glad about that,
I was a bit nervous thinking having to put the camera away.
It is a bit precipitous because you actually have the river sort of down below.
And then you've got this kind of old mill pond stream at the side which is very murky and muddy and then this narrow path in between so maybe that's a bit of a metaphor for walking the path,
I don't know.
Sometimes the path does seem a bit narrow but I think if we choose beauty.
Beauty genuine beauty that's beautiful for our hearts genuine beauty that's according to our souls.
Then uh.
.
.
Then we find our way,
You know?
But it is definitely in the ordinariness.
I've tried.
All the extraordinary things I tell you and I'm sure you have too.
And I found that there's nothing there.
I couldn't be somebody other than I am.
Could never follow anybody else's rules.
Just couldn't make myself into something that somebody else wanted me to be.
But when I listened to my own sweet self.
.
.
The light was there,
The light in the world around me,
And the light of myself,
And I just felt okay being me,
Or I just feel alright being me.
More than alright,
You know,
But actually alive.
So,
I love this bit actually.
It's not going to show very well on the camera.
But when we get a bit further round.
.
.
It kind of opens up.
A lot of leaves have come down in the last few weeks.
This was very swampy at one time,
But it's slowly kind of settled down.
And uh.
.
.
It's actually quite surprising how big the space actually is.
It looks like a wee tiny sort of place.
But actually it's actually very expensive.
So I actually talk to all of these trees,
For those of you fellow tree-hugger types.
There's a beauty coming up right now.
But I tend to talk to the trees as a whole,
Because of course.
.
.
Whoops!
Slippery.
Of course there's,
You know,
The network of roots and fibres in the earth,
And all the trees kind of communicate with each other.
So I've taken to realising or feeling that if I talk to one tree,
I'm talking to all the trees.
Uh.
.
.
For sometimes the specific ones and as i say i've got one in here who i'm going to keep to myself i won't share him with you.
And he's definitely a hymn tree.
This one,
This is very odd.
Thing.
Not really a father tree,
The tree that I'm going to,
But it's got a Fellow.
Fellow man kind of quality which I like.
As I'm rocking this existence this time.
Next time,
Of course,
Or before.
Obviously,
We are all everything.
There's that space,
Look.
So big when you come round this side.
And there's this tree here,
Across the way.
Bit murky down below,
So it's hard to get into,
But there are paths in there.
For me,
Just going to carry on along.
And then I'll uh.
.
.
Let you go.
I'm going to go down to the weir and the water.
This is a really interesting bit along here.
In that when it's frog season you tend to get almost like a kind of city of frogs going on and I just like to come and see them.
I mean we're a way off from that now,
It's next year when they get going but this old log that's coming up,
The froggy seem to like this area which is fantastic.
There you go,
Rain's gone again.
Black River.
So this river coming down here is the Hebden Water.
So it's not the main river of Hebden,
But Hebden has so much water.
You've got the Hebden Water,
Which flows into the Calder,
Where the two rivers join together,
And then it kind of flows out and away,
And on the way down towards York,
On the way down towards York,
The Calder turns into the Eyre.
I actually wrote a poem about this called Whirlpool,
Once upon a time,
And it's a poem Because where the two rivers meet,
There's such a swirl of water energy,
It's really quite interesting where the Hebden water and the Calder meet.
Okay.
Sorry,
Down by the wheel.
You'll see that in a second.
Today is also a very celebratory day for me.
I've been working on a short story for about seven months.
It's taken the longest time it's ever taken me to write anything in my entire writing career because the story was writing me then the other way around.
I think that's the proper way.
The author lets the story write them.
And once I'd kind of fallen on what this story was it kept unfolding and I had to travel to different places and do many different things and it would just keep coming and coming and I think I've lost count of the rewrites.
Because the goal of course is not to get the thing finished but to let it unfold until it feels like it's a living thing and it doesn't need you anymore not that you can ever perfect a story anyway this morning it felt alive earlier in the week and then this morning there was just a couple of changes and kaboom the word finished crossed my mind finished until I show it to my reader of course and there's the weir down here reader who will then say,
Well,
As a reader,
Oh,
Heron is here,
Look.
So i'm standing by the weir and heron has flown away obviously i started talking and off he goes he's the younger of the two there's an older one and a younger one and you see them at various places i normally normally see this heron down the canal there's a kingfisher as well that goes flying along absolutely astonishing and i'm just going to take in the power of the water for a bit and then head off to where my tree is thank you so much for walking with me i've been in my Little Red Riding John mode today and I'll see you soon.
Take care.
