There is something rejuvenating about a weekend walk, particularly at this time of year when the air is fresh and cool and your return can be heralded by a cup of tea or hot chocolate 🙂

We’ve been walking through woods and fields and beaches lately. There’s something momentous about finding a new walk with new paths to be trod, new views to glimpse and new nature to discover. We saw two huge deer in the woods the other day, a few times, leaping through the foliage, but they never let us see them for long enough to take a photo or to get particularly close. For the rest of the walk, I had the feeling that they watched us silently as we tramped over the leaf-scattered floor, and listened to us as our voices carried through the trees.

Isn’t the sun through leaves beautiful? All that dappled light across the floor, the bright transparency of the leaves as it shines through them, the shafts of brightness interspersed with the shade. And the sounds of the woods are special too: the stream, the river – you can’t always see them but you can hear them running alongside you as you tread the path. The sound of birdsong and wings add charm to the intense quiet of the forest, and the breeze makes the trees speak, giving a sense of time and history… Nature is so full of poetry.

Beach walks are different: the sea air feels healthy and the views are vibrant, cheery. Others walk there too, with their friends and their children and their dogs. Footprints trail in and out of each other, grasses bend in the wind, and the waves travel in and out with miles and depths behind them, with others standing on other shores looking out at the same vast waters. We are part of something big, vast. It’s that poetry again.

Have you ever been caught in a rainstorm? Looked up at the sky? Placed flowers on your kitchen table? It’s everywhere, nature’s poetry.