Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott and I am up on Dartmoor right in the heart of Dartmoor.
I'm just below a very famous hill here,
It's a hill,
It's called a Tor up on Dartmoor,
It's Haytor and down in the valley below Haytor there is a wonderful place called Holwell Lawns and in the spring it is festooned with bluebells and I've come up here with my husband quite early in the morning so it's a very popular spot so we thought we'd get here before many people got here and we've had the most extraordinary walk.
We walked way beyond the bluebells into a place that was called a mire,
M-i-r-e,
Which is basically a bogland but it's being run by the Devon Wildlife Trust and there are boardwalks across some of the muddiest patches so you are able to keep your feet dry,
Mainly keep them dry,
And then we had to limbo under a tree that had fallen over and we then found our way back off a route,
Not a marked route,
But on Dartmoor there's open access so we were able to walk quite freely again through quite boggy,
Boggy land and then we suddenly came down to a stream,
A brook,
It was the most beautiful clear watered gushing brook and for a little while we were wondering whether we might have to get our feet wet as we crossed it but then we saw a a grey granite bridge,
It's just a piece of stone across the the brook,
It's called a clapper bridge and we were able to climb across that and then up through this steep wooded area with bluebells everywhere and we just had to stop and look at the contrast of the blue against the green of their leaves against the fresh green of the leaves on the trees and we just sat there for a while and listened and what a difference it made staying still because suddenly we could hear,
I was no longer hearing the rustle of my coat and the the tread of my feet on the ground,
I could hear the wind,
I could hear the birds,
I could hear the sound of leaves rustling,
It was truly beautiful and we're wandering right back to the car now,
It's got a very cool edge to the to the breeze and I just thought I'd stop because I wanted to share this moment with you and what I really get from today with the different terrain that this little walk we've been on has opened up with the bog land,
The marsh land,
The steep paths,
The wooded areas,
The rocks,
The stream,
It's just like a little microcosm of a journey through life.
I love the metaphor of a journey,
Because I do so much walking it's such a rich metaphor to use for me and today as I was walking there were times I had to slow down,
I had to be slow as I walked through the marsh,
I had to watch my feet because I didn't want to get them wet,
When we were scrambling over rocks I had to slow down,
Sometimes I'd sit on my bottom and slide down off the rock so I wouldn't trip over,
When I got to the stream I knew that if we couldn't find a bridge I was going to be paddling across and getting my feet wet.
You see when I'm out like this I absolutely know and adjust myself to the terrain that I'm experiencing and sometimes I'm you know I'm lucky and there's a boardwalk or there's a bridge across a stream but equally I know that even if that wasn't the case I would find my way and I might get wet muddy feet or I might just get wet cold feet crossing a stream and for me it's such a great reminder as I make my way through life.
Life is not meant to be a footpath that's easy to walk along,
Life is like this walk today it's just got a variety of terrains of experiences and circumstances and as I adjust to each circumstance without bemoaning that it's not too hard or not too easy but just real just adjusting to whatever is in front of me I'm able to really enjoy and walk lightly through life and even that moment of sitting down on the rock and hearing the peace and the quiet it's a reminder for me that it's good to take time to slow down to stop to listen to hear and to be and equally to be very present as I'm walking through life too.
So today has all been about the metaphor of a journey of a walk of the different terrains that we go through in life and for me the learning is just to adjust to the terrain and just to be present to whatever I'm experiencing in the moment.
