Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott on a really blowy autumnal day up here on Dartmoor.
I'm looking at a bird that's struggling to fly across the moorland against the power of the wind and I've got my back to the wind at the moment.
To my right hand side is a hedgerow of beech trees and the blowiness of the wind as it rushes and gushes through those leaves.
It's so loud!
I've just been caught in a rain shower actually.
I'm not wearing quite the right clothing but the rain came in and it blew across the moor in this sort of swathes of grey smoke-like rain.
It just looked like it was smoke going across the moorland and I was with my back to the rain sort of trying to walk as fast as I could,
Getting wetter and wetter in the back of my legs and my legs are still a little bit damp.
But then as soon as the rain rushed through in came the wind and the sunshine and blue sky and yes a right old mixture of weather on this autumnal day and I can't help but feel the energy,
The pent-up energy of the season that seems to be captured on this particular day as I go walking.
And you know I had a real strong sense of wanting to come out today.
I had been at a lovely event but a sad event.
My neighbour died a few weeks ago.
She was a very poorly woman in her 60s and there was a celebration of her life at the house where she used to live next door to us and her husband and her dad were there plus lots of friends and family and neighbours and it was a really well-attended event,
Beautiful event.
And I guess as I was at that event and I listened to the husband and the father talk so fondly of their loved one,
I saw in that room as they spoke,
I saw a whole range,
The spectrum of human emotion as they remembered this really beautiful woman from sadness,
Laughter,
Tears,
Gratitude,
Joy,
Grief.
It felt like there was the whole mix of human emotion that was present in this short period of time in this small room in this house and it was like an intensified magnified sense of what it is to be human.
It reminded me a autumnal day with sun,
Blue skies,
Clouds,
Wind,
Rain.
It just feels as though the whole weather system is rushing through and that's what I felt a bit like earlier today with the rush of the different emotions of what it is to be human.
And as we were leaving the house,
The father was saying goodbye and thanking people for coming and he just said,
Look you know where there's life there's death.
Quite a philosophical saying and I know for him he's been very reflective and saddened by what he's experienced as a dad to see his grown-up daughter die.
And that is so true isn't it,
Where there's life there is death.
And as I look around me here as the ferns are turning to orange and the leaves are turning to gold on the trees,
There's a real sense that the season is moving from a place of life,
The life of summer,
To the slowing down,
The sleeping and the ultimate death of winter.
And the season remind us of what it is to be human.
We aren't here forever.
And as I left,
I felt this incredible need to get out.
I felt a real need to walk,
To walk quickly up a hill,
To feel my feet on the ground,
To breathe in lungfuls of air.
I just felt the intense need to experience my heart beating and to walk quickly and that's what I've been doing today.
I felt the need to feel myself be alive.
And so today is just a reminder that,
You know,
We aren't meant to feel everything as human beings.
Our lives aren't meant to be a flat terrain where nothing much happens.
Maybe we just feel a sense of contentment day after day after day.
That's not what life is about.
Life is about being human.
It's about diving into being alive and with that you will experience intense feelings of love and joy and sad poignant feelings of grief and sadness.
That is what life is about and being human is a bit like this autumnal day.
Get out,
Be human,
Feel what you need to feel.
Feel all those emotions because it is a wonderful and blessing and privilege to be alive.
