My new favourite place

...in the whole world.

https://youtu.be/dyFvb1mVRDg

I walked here on Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon. Repeating some of the paths on day two, but also ranging far more widely.

I sat with an oak tree and had a conversation:

Speaking from knowledge that is rooted in the world––and it grows and adapts with what is lived.

Not the idea of an abstract or concept that then seeks to find its confirmation in the world––but something that arises from the earth and life itself––and it has to be adaptable given the experience and greater knowledge. It has to be humble against the great fact-checker of life and experience.

Life is to find out how to get your central nervous system in a state of relaxation––you have to exert stress for life but the vital part is to realise that you have to also relax and the relaxing is as important as the exerting… Free thought in green places with birdsong and running water brings thinking that is as vital as the thinking with effort and texts and concepts.

Look to the world for the right stresses and the right relaxations. Don’t invent them. Don’t seek them inside.

Inside is not stress or relaxation or knowledge or nurture. Inside is the creative soil that allos the growth given these factors. And that soil must be tended and fed and it must be allowed to create. It is the compost-maker.

And later, I came across a wonderful beech. This tree had a peculiar colour - like a mix between a copper beech and a normal green one so underneath, looking through the leaves, they shone like gold. Anyway, the wind raised and lowered the elegant lower branches such that the tree seemed to be reaching out to me and offering and invitation. I sat inside this gold-shimmering veil as the leaves rose and fell, expand and contract, like breath, like a beating heart. And I saw how when the branch blew out the lowest leaves floated horizontal on the air, like individual wings. It was incredibly.... resonant.... I felt nurtured and held and so HAPPY to be held.