Moving Through

Moving Through

Today is New Years Day 2015. It feels very similar to yesterday, the weather is comparable, the grey dull light is familiar for this time of year but it is different. Today is the first day of this New Year, a day that we will be able to look back on, a day that we will be able to tie our different experiences to and that in itself is important. It is a marker, a man-made artifice needed to help us recognise our place in the world, in the natural cycle of life and with each other.

Time and tide worn groyne.

Life and time carries on regardless, I believe that if we are lucky we are able to appreciate this, we may even enjoy the ride. It is a case of moving through, navigating the terrain and enjoying the company on the way.

Today we went again to Seasalter beach and stood on the shore listening to the wind and the cry of the birds on the tide-line. We watched as geese honked their way overhead and traced the familiar landscape of the Isle of Sheppey and the Swale, the Estuary and the receding coastline with our eyes. I have looked onto this landscape as long as I remember, I am fond of it. To me it is my ‘wild’.

 

Louise and I. Seasalter 1973

I unearthed a couple of old black and white photographs at my parents house which show me and my sister on the same stretch of beach, I am aged about 4, my sister is 6 years old. I am quite shocked to realise that both of my own children are older than this now.

Seasalter 2015

Life and time carries on. Today I was probably walking on the same shells that were there all those years ago, the Brent Geese I heard today would have been descended from the geese that would have visited that shore when I was 4 years old, wearing my new purple coat and excitedly showing the photographer, probably my dad, my stone, pebble or pretty shell that I had found! The wind that day would have sounded and felt just as it did today, loud and sharp on the face and ears.

Walking memories

My memory of walking as a family group throughout the seasons is a good one. We used to go out regularly and explore new and favourite places. These included: The Warren at Folkestone, the Pilgrims Way at Boxley, Bysing Woods and of course Seasalter beach. In the winter the walks were fairly quick, in autumn they were always accompanied by carrying plastic punnets and picking whatever fruit was plentiful. Spring walks through bluebell woods were a joy, the smell and colour was magical. Summer walks always seemed to include picnics and boiled eggs and of course there was squabbling, tired legs and probably many other disappointments, but I am glad to say, I can’t remember them now.

Layers of shells pushed up by each tide.

It may be a new year in our human world, but time is a constant, the seasons revolve around and we carry on our life. Shared human experiences are what can build community, especially positive ones. Today I walked on the same beach that I walked on as a child and I still saw the magic of the place.

Me, Seasalter beach, this time, summer 1973.

Maybe my view has been formed by being lucky enough to have parents who made us get out and walk, who showed us the beauty and magic of the turning seasons, the reward of blackberries in the autumn and the thrill of being outside when cold winter wind blew, tangling hair and making noses run. I thank my parents for this love of the natural world and I thank my lucky stars for the power of gratitude I feel to just be healthy again, after a good week of having a rotten cold, I have been able to get out once more and recognise why this is so important to me.

Timescales

Life and time carries on, so do we. Enjoy 2015 and all is has to offer. Nature is out there to be explored and appreciated. It will connect us back to ourselves, (as a 4 year old perhaps), and to everything else. The cyclic nature of the seasons reminds us of our own time and our own timescales. Our lives may be measured by achievements, possessions and experiences; today especially we tend to ask what our new year’s resolutions are?

Let us just have the grace to appreciate the here and now.

 

Tide table December 2014.

Today I went to throw away my 2014 tide table; it ends on 31^st of December 2014. But it is cyclic too; it is just another pattern of spring and neap tides and the space in-between each tide is as regular as our breath. I can look at the months tide table and work out this month’s pattern; I can see the phases of the moon and see how the tides are affected by it. Life and time carries on, the last day of 2014 is not separate from today, the tides are in their pattern, the seasons are in their flow, it continues.

Years ago I heard a radio interview with Claire Rayner, she was once a Matron and when asked how she coped with it all, she said that when she struggled with a situation, she always reminded herself that ‘This too will pass.’ It is a phrase that I have used through difficult times and it has really helped. Life and time carries on. ’This too will pass.’ It continues. I am grateful to be aware of this moment and try to practice mindfulness with grace.

 

Walking on Tankerton beach before Xmas, 2014.

I believe that walking regularly in the real world allows us to adjust to our natural pace, season and thoughts and gain a humbling recognition of our place in the bigger picture. When we walk we find peace in place.

 (I completed my MA in September 2014 and recorded the last two months of it in another blog called www.thesaltwayfarer.blogspot.co.uk

Please feel free to look at that anytime, as it is from that, that I am where I am now.)