Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
And the sun is shining,
Still shining.
I'm so lucky.
So lucky this year.
The spring has been so kind.
And England in the springtime,
There is no better place in the world,
In my humble opinion.
I am a bit biased.
And particularly Devon,
Which is where I live.
Here up on Dartmoor,
I'm at an old burial chamber.
Well,
It's just the remains of it actually.
This is probably 3,
000 years old,
Maybe older,
Maybe 4,
000 years old.
I'm leaning up against one of the remaining two stones.
And there are a couple of other granite stones scattered around.
The two stones standing up are probably around about four foot high and maybe five and a half foot high.
And they look as though they've been placed here.
They don't look natural.
But this would have originally been covered in stones,
I guess when it was first created.
And it would have been absolutely seen as a man-made structure in the landscape of Dartmoor.
Over the years,
As people move on,
Religions move on,
Cultures move on,
I guess the meaning behind this and why it was created has been lost.
But I find coming here gives me great comfort actually.
Because here I feel as though I am connecting with the ancestors that once lived on this land.
As I lean up against the stone sheltering from the wind,
It's a grey granite stone with bluey tufts of lichen on it.
As I lean up against it,
I feel as though hands and people and my ancestors or the ancestors of this land placed this stone,
These stones here,
For a reason and a purpose.
And that reason and a purpose might now be forgotten to me.
But it feels as though I can still at some level touch it in my heart,
In my subconscious,
Below the level of my intellect.
And I feel very strongly that the wisdom of the ancestors,
The ancestors that once lived on this land,
Lived on this land much more gently than we live on the land,
That they have such wisdom that they might share with us as we navigate our lives in what is such a faster,
More complicated world than I think they probably lived in.
The wisdom I feel that these stones are sharing with me is a wisdom of reminding myself to stay absolutely grounded.
The granite rock is so ancient in its own right,
It's so hard-wearing.
And I love to feel as I'm sitting on this boulder that this rock stretches all the way down deep into the earth.
And that feels as though it is providing a foundation,
A foundation for my life,
This foundation of wisdom from the ancestors that somehow has been stored or captured in this rock,
And at some level I am soaking that up.
And I say all of this because the message I keep hearing time and time again for me is to slow down,
For me is to deepen my sense of grounding.
For me it is to allow that wisdom,
The wisdom of the ages that hasn't gone anywhere,
It's just that we've tuned out of it in our busy,
Busy world,
To allow that wisdom of the ages to come through,
To seep through at whatever way or level it can to me,
So that I might hear it once again.
So today's five minutes in nature is a reflection.
It's a reflection on grounding,
On feeling that foundational wisdom that supports us in our lives.
It's about re-remembering,
Re-listening to that wisdom once again.
And it's about being open,
That the wisdom of my ancestors and the ancestors of the land on which I now sit,
That their wisdom can help me navigate in this world that they wouldn't recognise,
And yet that unchanging wisdom can still help me navigate and guide me as I take one step at a time through life.
Thank you.
