Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
I'm up on Dartmoor as the evening falls and twilight emerges in a very grey,
Dimpsy light.
The sun has dipped behind the hillside.
I can hear in the background the faint hum of a helicopter.
Below me are the cows grazing and I'm very close to my beloved hawthorn tree that I often come up to and just touch the branches and hug it.
In fact I was with a friend the other morning and we came up and in the morning sunlight I hugged the tree and really felt a connection to this hawthorn which is such a beautiful solitary tree standing in quite a desolate Dartmoor landscape.
I say desolate It's a green landscape,
Lots of ferns and lots of grass,
But this is actually a landscape that over time used to be a rich habitat and now is really just grazing land for the animals,
The cows,
The sheep and the horses and ponies that live on this land.
And today's reflection is that connection with nature and I'd love to know your reflections on this.
Moments where you really connect with nature,
With the natural world,
Where you feel as though you are in relationship with the natural world.
My sense is that in our modern day society,
And I can only speak for myself,
But I often value deeply the convenience of what it is to go shopping,
What it is to easily buy food,
To jump in my car and find my way to visit friends and family.
For me,
I find the convenience of not having to make my own clothes,
Not having to grow my own food in order to survive.
The convenience of modern life,
I think,
Comes at a cost.
And the cost is that I am taken a step away from the natural world.
I don't experience it and see it as probably my ancestors once did.
You know,
There's a real sense as well that as we opt for convenience,
As we opt for driving and house building and building cities and towns,
And we take the resources away from the landscape,
We take away the trees and we farm huge fields in order to grow crops.
As we feed our convenience,
I guess you've just got to ask,
At what cost?
It's convenient for sure,
But are we just hypnotized in this world that keeps us entertained?
And what are we missing?
What about that human connection?
What about the storytelling?
What about sitting around a fire and being with people?
What about growing food,
Understanding the different animals that live in the ecosystems that surround us?
What are we losing?
What are we missing out on?
So today's reflection is a request that you go and hug a tree,
Or hold a tree,
Or touch a tree,
Or lean up against a tree.
Just be with a tree.
And just feel the energy from that tree.
Feel that connection with another living being.
And be present to being with that tree.
That's what my request is of you today.
And it might be that you even find you take your shoes and socks off and you feel the grass beneath your feet or the earth beneath your feet.
But today is to have eyes for nature.
To be open and aware,
Not in a busy way,
Not in a concentrated,
Frowning kind of way to connect,
But in an open,
Relaxed way to allow nature to connect with you and you to connect with it.
So today's reflection is all about.
.
.
Touching base with nature,
Being present to nature,
And feeling that sense of relationship with nature,
Even if our worlds are so busy and are built on convenience.
Let me know how you get on.
And of course,
Don't forget to join me again tomorrow for another five minutes in nature.
