Living in North Somerset, it’s currently easy to become immersed within nature. It’s practically on our doorstep, perhaps even literally. But for how long?
Already I receive light pollution from the airport (or is it Hinckley Point?), when I look out of my bedroom window at night. This is a new thing and it doesn’t make me happy. Already I can hear a steady stream of cars along the bypass which is soon set to increase.
I’m afraid that soon I will walk out of my front door and no longer see the vast green 360⁰ beauty all around me. That wild walking routes will be interrupted with human habitation. That the rich abundance of wildlife will have lost its freedom and safety it relies upon for survival.
Plans for many more homes and roads are underway locally and I feel like the peace and spaciousness of our beautiful home is being violated and I feel pretty powerless. Not to mention the animals and plants of the land that form a biodiversity that we depend upon much more than we could ever fully appreciate.
Along with the sadness, is also confusion. How is it possible that people can feel at ease with the destruction of our natural world? Many of us live in North Somerset because we absolutely adore the countryside. It’s hard to face that our green spaces are being trampled on and stamped out.
I expect those heading the Bristol expansion scheme, (or cancerous growth into healthy spaces), don’t live in North Somerset. The development feels like an invasion of foreigners who want to claim land that they have no right over; they don’t even live here! I am sure there are people working tirelessly to prevent such ecoside. Except these days we only have a representation of a town wall and guards which many overlook as they aren’t that well fortified. We don’t have an adequate way to defend our home. Neither do our furry friends, bugs allies, trees guardians or plant nourishers.
But viewing the issue in terms of a battle never did sit well with me. I always think surely after all these years our wisdom has evolved to be able to find more mature ways of dealing with conflict? The trouble is, the competition/debate-to-win ethic is so ingrained people may have a crisis of imagination for other methods. Or perhaps are just sitting in denial due to the depth of sadness, disbelief and sense of powerlessness. Often though, it’s simply due to being an overworked parent, and/or disconnected and lonesome.
And this is a big thing. This sense of disconnection.
Disconnection from nature. Disconnection from self. Disconnection from others.
This is what I seek to change. I believe that through connecting with nature, we can reconnect to ourselves, and in turn, better connect to each other.
Years ago I read George Eliot’s Mill on the Floss. I was touched deeply by a description of our connection to nature that has never left me. It gave me understanding into why our beloved vibrant abundant green wilderness is less and less valued right where it is, here on our doorstep. This is what I read:
“We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it – if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass – the same hops and haws on the autumn hedgerows - the same redbreasts that we used to call ‘God’s birds,’ because they did no harm to the precious crops. What a novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved because it is known?” (Chapter V, The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot, 1860. Continued at end of blog).
We may have been blessed to have experienced this nature connection as children. Equally we may not have. Now is our chance to change this and foster stronger relationship with nature all around us. Let it become known to us.
“where everything is known, and loved because it is known”
This, I really do think is key. How can we love something that we do not know? How can we know something that we have never experienced? Life has become more and more disconnected from, well, life. Living things, be that plant, animal or human. Face-to-face, in person, involving all of the senses, able to be immersed, connected, to touch, be touched and to feel alive.
I can’t help wondering if we are just plodding along in survival mode. And what do we depend upon for survival? Our phone? Our car? Our distractions?
In truth, we depend upon nature thriving.
And what would it take for us to thrive also?
Could we perhaps view this quest to thrive as one of mutual standing? What does nature offer us in order to thrive? To me it is beyond simply food and shelter. To me it is therapy on my doorstep that nourishes my soul. As I connect to nature all around me I feel at ease, I literally breathe in the happy hormones. Every level of my being is receiving and I am uplifted.
Blue and green spaces simply nourish. They expand our mental and emotional resilience.
Nature gives so much.
And what do we give to nature?
I would like to offer something. I know the trees. I know the wild herbs. I want to introduce you to them so you can get to know them better. The more they are known, the more they are loved.
And what we love is what we value.
And what we love, we care for.
I have a few upcoming walks planned, please join me in the local park if you can:
Medicinal Tree Walk, Peel Park, Friday 13th May, 7-8pm £7pp https://fb.me/e/1vU89Pp0E
Herb Walk, Peel Park, Tuesday 17th May, 7-8pm, £7pp https://fb.me/e/4tPNQE7SV
Wild Herb Walk, Gatcombe, Sat. 21st May, 10am-12pm, £10pp https://fb.me/e/2qhnOu565
Summer Herb Walk, Peel Park, Tuesday 7th June, 7-8pm, £7pp https://fb.me/e/35N2wIImc
I’m looking forward to the addition of a little social time over a foraged cuppa at the end of our walk, so please bring a flask of hot water so we can relax in each other’s company for a while!
Please email dandelionherbs@protonmail.com if you would like more information.
“The wood I walk in on this mild May day, with the young yellow-brown foliage of the oaks between me and the blue sky, the white star-flowers and the blue-eyed speedwell and the ground ivy at my feet - what grove of tropic palms, what strange ferns or splendid broad-petalled blossoms, could ever thrill such deep and delicate fibres within me as this home-scene? These familiar flowers, these well-remembered bird notes, this sky with its fitful brightness, these furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given to it by the capricious hedgerows - such things as these are the mother tongue of our imagination, the language that is laden with all the subtle inextricable associations the fleeting hours of childhood left behind them. Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass today might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years, which still live in us, and transform our perception into love. “ (George Eliot, Chaper V, The Mill on the Floss, 1860)
The opening of a new leaf bud on a linden tree. I think they resemble little beetles!
Used as medicine to calm and relax, reduce nervous tension, anxiety, high blood pressure, headache and fever.
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