The Peace of Wild Things

Copied and pasted from my weekly Facebook Lockdown ramblings. 
With some editing to avoid personalisation.

Weekly Lockdown Ramble.
Scroll past if you want.


~ The Peace of Wild Things ~

We've almost completed three weeks living in a surreal world where life goes on, but life, as we know it, has stopped.

After Gratitude on week one, and Hope in week two, I pondered upon what week three would bring.

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It's been a week that myriad emotions and themes could have been my choice; frustration, anger, sadness, anxiety, boredom...the dark list goes on.

However, every morning we have the fortune to wake up and look over Loch Leven.
It's always there.
Even on foggy or rainy days, we know that it's there.
Waiting.
It is our constant during uncertain times, and around the loch, and in our gardens, Nature continues her work daily as Spring creeps on to Summer.

We know we're lucky to have this right on our doorstep. Whenever I step out and look towards the Loch, I do remember the Gratitude and Hope we are fortunate enough to know.
Every time I also think of those in much more difficult circumstances than we are. There has been so much amazing humanity on display in the face of this crisis and I do hope that this can continue, and grow, as we pull ourselves out of the current situation.

We're all human, and sometimes it feels like the dark stuff will overwhelm the good.
And that's when I use my allowed daily exercise time.
Walking is not making me fitter, or thinner, or less sore in my joints.
Walking is not getting easier after all these weeks and miles.
Walking isn't a panacea for life's challenges.
It does, however, help calm the mind, and it encourages me to slow my thoughts a bit.

A section of fence on the lochside has collapsed and there is a wee path that has formed. It takes me right to the water's edge.
I've found a boulder to sit on that numbs my bum but gives me a great outlook over the water.
Watching the birds has always been a source of solace for me, and I am allowing myself to indulge more and more.

Watching the light change on the loch, hearing the geese come in to roost, looking up as the great swan's wings thump overhead, tracking the flighty woodpecker as it visits multiple trees, getting a little bit excited by an unusual silhouette of a less common species...

All of these allow my thoughts to settle and a transient sense of calm to alight for a while.
Sometimes, flitting through the shadows of the tall trees, a deer, or a squirrel is caught in a solitary sunbeam (usually too flitting for my camera!)

As the human world stumbles through the uncertainties and fear and our normals are lost, albeit hopefully temporarily, Nature and the Wild Things endure.

Buds open, flowers bloom, nests are built and tidied, fallen trees feed the ground they grew in and nurture the next cycle…

The Wild Things are also taking full advantage of the quieter lives that humans are leading.
It’s a two-way thing.

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So, I am choosing Nature as this week's theme.
Looking around us and appreciating the natural world allows us all to step back and focus on moving onwards.
We can all learn to appreciate Nature during these Lockdown days.

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I have loved this poem since discovering it a couple of years ago.

Very apropos for current times.
Photos of Nature and her Wild Things from Loch Leven and her environs…


The Peace of Wild Things
~ Wendell Berry ~

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

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