Respecting Earth

As we whirl through autumn we’ve been watching the changes from the shelter of the trees. One of the best practices I’ve found that helps me find peace in this fast-changing world is taking time to sleep or simply rest outside. Being held by the ground gives a broader sense of home and, without a roof or walls, life flows in.

We are surrounded by living beings that breathe, grow, make love and die in a wild array of movement and form. We miss so much when we get stuck inside. Right now the Galloway skies speak of the coming cold and the clouds are dotted with geese arriving for winter.

I lived for a while in Russia and was struck by the tradition of placing babies outside while they sleep in the day. Wrapped up against the cold and held snug in a pram the children rest with the wind playing over their small faces, soothed by the susurration of leaves and the scents of the season. It seems wise to allow a newly arrived child to rest amidst this always-conversing world. How alien a sealed room is to our attuned bodies and keen senses.

I recently read about the root of the word respect - re-speculate - to look again. Seeing the world with the eyes of a child is to experience it with new appreciation. It’s why I try not to talk about the names of the plants we meet on our walks, instead focusing on how they appear to us in that moment. Our naming and categorising of things - so important in our tight scientific understanding - is loosened for a moment and the world encountered afresh.

A silver birch, betula pendula, becomes a fissured skin of arrested volcanic flow. The lichen covering its skin, usnea, a tangle of slender form, soft and wet. Instead of knowing it with our mind, we can taste it, touch it, rest our tired heads against it. The golden leaves above drift down and cover the ground and us with the wealth of another passing year. How rich the world becomes when we rest and look, and look again.