Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me,
Liz Scott.
And each day in March I'm out and about,
Enjoying the wisdom of nature.
And this morning I've come up onto Dartmoor.
It's quite early in the morning,
The sun has just risen.
And if I look towards the east,
The sun is so bright in the sky I can't actually look in that direction.
I'm squinting.
A couple of weeks ago,
And probably just a week ago,
It would still have been dark.
But the sun is coming back,
And it's a beautiful day.
It's cold,
There's a nip in the air,
And I'm just beside a clump of gorse bushes.
And these are thorny bushes that grow in clumps across Dartmoor.
And the sun is catching and illuminating some of the yellow flowers,
So it's the yellow flowers against the green prickles of the gorse bush itself.
The yellow flowers are almost like illuminated,
Like they're little light bulbs,
Little lights that are decorating this dark green gorse bush.
And if I look towards the west,
I can see Western Beacon rising up above me.
And then behind me,
As I turn northwards,
Is Eastern Beacon.
At this time of year,
The bracken on the ground is golden orange.
And because of the golden orange of the sunrise,
It's got this warmth to it.
It looks as if if I were to touch that orangey brown bracken in the warmth of this glow of the sun,
It would actually be warm.
It's got that kind of tone and feeling and hue to it.
And today,
I'm taking you on a walk.
In a couple of days' time,
I'll be going on a pilgrimage.
So I'll be walking every day for weeks.
I'll tell you more about that in a couple of days' time.
And part of today and tomorrow is just my preparation,
Mental preparation for that pilgrimage.
And I'm taking you out for a little walk today.
And I'm going to take you somewhere where I find it a spot that I can really ground myself.
It's a spot on Dartmoor that I find is deeply settling to my soul.
So come with me and let me show you one of the spots on Dartmoor that really resonates for me.
So here I am.
It's at my rock.
It's a beautiful scooped rock that I can sit on.
And in the summer,
I lie back in it.
It's very comfortable.
Just the angle of the scooper in this rock is so comfortable.
I can sort of lay back,
Half lie back and listen to these skylarks and just feel myself sink into being present to this space of beauty around me.
And today I've come to the rock because it's also a place that I come and I touch.
And I'll do that now,
Actually.
Let me just take my glove off.
It's actually quite cold.
There are pockets of frost on the ground as I've been walking.
And here we go.
I'm just touching that firm,
Cold,
Real sense of wisdom and connection deep,
Deep into the source of the earth.
And I'm actually on my pilgrimage,
Wanting to settle into a space that I can actually feel the earth again,
Feel a sense of belonging,
Being part of the earth.
And today,
Just as I touch this granite rock with my bare hands,
I'm just asking and setting that intention and request that I can be in connection and communication with the earth when I walk.
I mean,
This is a really special spot for me.
I come up here and sit on it and reflect.
And it feels like a friend.
Silly,
Isn't it?
It's a rock,
But I feel like I'm in relationship with it.
It feels as though we have a bond.
And it feels very important to me to come here today and just to reflect on what next.
And I just wonder if you've got a place like that in your life,
Somewhere that you can touch and feel the connection deep into the earth.
Almost for me,
It's like the ancestral wisdom of people that have lived thousands of years before and somehow their wisdom is absorbed into the very ground that I walk on.
And I really recommend if you find a place like that for you and just go there when you feel the need for it and touch your hand against it.
And connect with the earth.
