Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
Up here on Dartmoor on a grey,
Grey day,
Low cloud and it's sort of mild but blowy so there's a dampness in the air and that's so typical of the weather that we have here is that it can be kind of mild but cool because it's damp.
The whole air is damp,
We get moisture off the Atlantic Ocean so often we get rain or mist,
In fact it was very misty this morning when I went out on my morning walk.
This is a very typical day,
We've had some wonderful spring sunshiny days recently but this is much more typical of the weather that I'm used to and as I'm slowly ambling across the moorland with my very elderly dog who just wants to absolutely everything.
I've noticed a group of gorse trees,
These are thorn bushes and they're very prevalent here on Dartmoor,
Spiky prickles on them and beautiful yellow flowers that come at different times of the year but because this moorland is grazed by sheep there are little straggles of sheep's wool that have caught on the thorns and have been left behind on the bushes.
I mean maybe the sheep have been using them to scratch themselves or maybe they've just brushed past them as they're grazing and it's almost like there's it's almost like bits of washing prayer flags blowing in the wind,
A residue of the sheep that have passed here in the last few days and weeks with the wool that's just blowing gently off the thorns and off the branches of the gorse bush and as I saw the the wool on the gorse bush a question just arose in me and I want to share that question with you and the question is this,
It's what are you leaving behind?
What are you leaving behind?
And I was just reflecting as I was looking at these bits of sheep wool fluttering in the breeze and I was thinking what do I leave behind?
You know what traces do I leave behind?
What traces do I leave behind of my energy,
Of how I touch people,
Of the impression I have with people,
Whether I connect with them,
I listen to them,
Are there bits of me fluttering in the breeze with other people in circumstances that maybe I don't even realize and it might be that those things that I leave behind,
The residue of what I leave behind is positive,
It's what I hope is maybe kindness or compassion or a listening ear but but equally maybe without me realizing there are times that I leave behind a residue of sadness or disconnect or times I didn't listen to someone or times when somebody reached out and I turned away so maybe that's also what I'm leaving behind,
Not deliberately but maybe that too is the residue,
The leftovers of the spirit of what I leave behind as I move through life.
So the question really I'm asking you as I watch these little bits of wool flutter in the breeze as they're on the the gorse bushes all around me here in this particular part of Dartmoor is what are you leaving behind in the world?
In your day-to-day travels what brushes off or is left behind of you and your interactions with people and your connections with people and the way that you engage with people in the world,
What are you leaving behind?
