Hello and welcome to 5 minutes in nature with me Liz Scott.
I'm by the River Wrecks at Exeter Quay and right beside me is the ferry.
It's a ferry that goes across the river.
It's not very wide the river and there are bridges that you can cross so this is more of a leisure ferry and there's a cable that goes across the the river and the ferryman,
And it is a man,
Pulls the cable and pulls the boat across the river and just as I've spoken there's a rain shower so I'm going to go to this overhang in this property over here and just shelter as I continue speaking to you.
I think this is just a little shower passing through and the river buildings are quite impressive actually.
They're like old-fashioned warehouses and this is where the boats would have come up to Exeter Quay from Exmouth along the river.
There we go,
I've just sheltered a little bit along the river and then would have offloaded their cargo here.
There's a custom house which is probably about from the 1700s I would think and it's a really lovely place.
A lot of people walk,
Run,
Cycle down here a bit early in the morning at the moment and I'm just watching the the rain.
I think it might be might have already finished,
That would be good if that's the case.
And as I was walking along the river I saw a family of swans and I've seen this family of swans periodically when I walk along the river.
I sort of sort of say hello to them and the parents' swans,
Beautiful white swans,
Gliding up and down with their cygnets following behind them.
Today is actually all about this idea of transition which is something which is very much part of my reflections in life and I have been watching these cygnets transition into swans.
They're not quite there yet but they're not far off and they've gone from these small fluffy grey inquisitive creatures to now they are big grey swan-shaped adults but not quite with all the plumage of the white swan.
And today I particularly noticed that there are more now white feathers coming through so they're very dappled in their look and I love this idea that soon all those old feathers will fall out,
New feathers will grow and the swan will become a beautiful white swan.
And it reminds me a little bit of the story of the ugly duckling.
Do you remember that story?
It was a cygnet that happened to find itself amongst a family of ducklings and all these beautiful little yellow ducklings thought that this grey cygnet was a very ugly duckling.
Well of course when they all grow up this ugly duckling becomes its most beautiful swan and sometimes I feel that transition is a little bit like this.
Firstly that transition happens over time.
There are times when there's a flash of transition where something one day completely shifts to something else.
In my experience my sort of transition is slow.
It's more like the cygnet becoming a swan,
Slowly growing,
Losing feathers,
Gaining feathers,
Growing in,
Understanding what its role is until it no longer is a cygnet anymore and it becomes a swan.
That is very much how I feel with my journey of transition.
It's quite slow and I also love the story of the ugly duckling because of course when the cygnet starts its life it looks at all these little fluffy yellow ducklings and longs and longs to be like them and yet it never quite fits in.
And that feels to me a little bit like my journey in life too.
I never quite feel like I fit in with the life I'm supposed to live or that society wants me to live.
I feel like there's something else.
I'm just not quite the right shape that society wants me to be and I wonder if a bit like the cygnet in the story of the ugly duckling is that I am trying to fit in with something that I'm not and actually it's much easier when I look towards that which I'm supposed to be or which I am growing into and I look towards that as my space of being the place where I fit in and where I feel a part of something.
So today is all about transition.
Transition.
Are you slowly transitioning and do you sometimes feel that you don't quite fit in?
And maybe you don't fit in because you're not meant to fit in.
Maybe you're transitioning into a place of something where you do fit in.
You are transitioning into your purpose.
