Hello and welcome to five minutes in nature with me Liz Scott.
Ah this is lovely.
I am back in Devon.
If you remember I'm doing a 10-day hike and just completed day four and yesterday I went to a funeral.
An aunt died and I went to a family funeral right on the other side of the country and it has involved a lot of traveling by bus and train and car but it was really good to see the family and to be part of that experience and it means that today as I come back onto the walk again today it's absolutely beautiful where I'm sitting at the moment.
I'm in a park at a place called Nos Mayo.
It's right on the estuary of the River Yalm and it is stunning when the tide is in.
It's absolutely stunning.
As we've walked here the tide has actually gone out.
It's absolutely beautiful in the park here.
We've got people playing tennis nearby.
There are dog walkers and families just enjoying the sunshine.
It's been a warm day,
A warm day of walking and today we walked from Ivy Bridge to get here to Nos Mayo and one of the things I want to reflect on is the absolute contrast of what I experienced traveling yesterday and my mode of transport today which basically has been my feet.
Yesterday we came upon the M25.
This is the major motorway that rings around London and we came upon it at rush hour and it was chock-a-block for me who I'm not very experienced in driving on motorways around London where the drivers are much more aggressive than they are in Devon.
My brother was driving so it was fine but there were cars undertaking and overtaking and motorcyclists weaving in and out of the cars and it just felt like there were so many vehicles.
As far as the eye could see vehicles traveling along together.
I found it quite overwhelming and then today here I am walking with my friends.
We've walked along rivers.
I've had a paddle in a river.
I've walked through fields,
Over stiles.
We had lunch under a beautiful tree.
It's just completely different and I feel this extreme sense of weariness.
I am quite tired but also an incredible sense of delight at the privilege of walking here today.
And one of the places we walked through and it struck me and I've seen this on two of the days walking is we walked through a field,
A green field that was absolutely yellow with dandelions and as we walked through these fields as we walked through lots of fields a couple of days ago the dandelions were deep orangey yellow fluffy flowers speckled throughout the field and today we walked through a field with dandelions and they'd started now to turn and they've got their seed heads,
Those lovely fluffy white seed heads that are beginning to form and many people see the dandelion as a weed particularly when it gets in your garden and it's quite prolific when the seeds spread but actually it was beautiful in this field.
It was like a golden haze of yellow across the green of the field and I realized something about the way the dandelion shares its seeds is it creates thousands of seeds,
Each flower creates thousands of seeds and the wind catches them and they float off and if they're lucky they find a place to seed themselves.
And just reminded me of maybe the work I do which is sending out messages into the world which a bit like the seed head of the dandelion as it floats in the wind some of them will find soil and put down roots and grow into dandelions and others are going to land on rocky ground and not grow at all and my job as the dandelion is just to put the seeds out into the world and not be concerned whether they take root or not.
That's not my job and that's what I see as my job here on Insight Timer is just to put out these ideas of peace,
Of love,
Of wisdom out into the world and to know that they will hopefully take root and if they don't that's not on me.
My job is just to put those ideas out into the world.
I do hope you've enjoyed being with me today and don't forget I'm back again tomorrow with another five minutes in nature.
