
Yesterday I walked alone. I took my time, as I had thoughts to clear. The tumbling, chattering mind as always - so full of things that must be considered, chewed over and clung to. If I am not my own watcher, I can walk the whole way with no awareness of my surroundings at all. If that happens I feel cross when I get home. I feel as if I have been out with my very best friends and ignored them all. So I need to be conscious, and I need to be vigilant.
The river has fallen considerably, and the eroded banks look so strange to me. I have never seen them like this before. The exposed rocks at the sides are quite bare - stripped clean of their cloaks of moss and greenery by the river itself, in its most ferocious and destructive state a few weeks back. Now it gurgles by in all innocence, folding and surging as it finds its way around new little beaches that have formed in the bends, deposits left in the wake of its fury. Now it hums and sings to me as I walk alone - we are content in each others company. I walked upwards again, away from the sound of the river. At the top of the hill, there is a little deciduous wood. It is a baby forest in the making. All the trees are youngsters, many still enclosed in their rabbit proof collars. It made me smile. I could sense the sweetness of it - somehow it felt just like a human nursery, full of playful beings, exploring what it is to be alive and growing on Planet Earth. A bee came along and joined me as I stepped over blackberry limbs stretched out across the un-walked path, catching me out when I didn't pay full attention. At the top of the wood, someone had built a cage out of chicken wire and 4 x 2. It was neglected. No one had been there for quite a while. Who had lived in the cage, I cannot tell. I turned back, and made my way to where the old trees stand as silent sentinels, looking out across parkland to the setting sun. I love these trees, and I tell them so. Sometimes they tell me things too.
Yesterday they gave me two visions. One was a page of a book - I couldn't read the writing. The other was of another woodland elsewhere. The trees in the other wood were beech, and I knew the whereabouts, although not the exact location. I have never been there - but I was told the name of the woods begins with an H. When I got home I looked on the map, and sure enough there are woods in this location whose name begins with an H. I shall pay them visit. After all, I do believe I have been invited!