I was outside this morning in my small front garden noticing that there were lots of dead stems littered around which as I pulled away revealed loads of new green foliage on the surface of the earth beneath. The stems came away easily whereas a few months ago they were tied fast. Now they have heaved a big sigh of relief and let go, allowing the new growth to take root and start to grow.
It is New Year 2022. We have been in and out of lockdown for two years and are now entering yet another year of COVID rampant through the world. We are learning to accept and live with it and with restrictions which we would never have envisaged or accepted before the pandemic. When I began this blog on 2009 my world was simpler, less cluttered with technology and the idea of starting a blog emerged from my need to write and to find a way of combining my love of the land, arts and healing with my enjoyment of words and poetry. I am aware that my last post was in 2018 and that five years have passed since I last wrote here. I can hear Wordsworth in my head and the first lines of ‘Tintern Abbey’ :
‘Five years have past; five summers, with the length
With a soft inland murmur ….’
William Wordsworth Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798
It is not that I haven’t been writing, it is just that my energies have focussed elsewhere. I completed courses in Writing for Therapeutic Purposes and also in 2020 in Natural Mindfulness as a guide. I have also suffered a few health issues especially with my sight. COVID hit: the world changed. My work involved supporting young people’s emotional well-being and going to meet them outdoors often in housing estates, muddy lanes, fields, parks, playing fields, beside the sea, in the woods or on zoom. My belief in nature as healer was strengthened with more and more children and young people suffering mental health issues during the pandemic and spending less and less time outdoors in the fresh air. With families forced to hide indoors, screen time rocketed and became a way of life, with lessons being taught on line via zoom. The screen became the main means of connection with friends, family and the outside world.
‘A recently published study,The People and Nature Survey for England: Children’s survey, carried out by Natural England, surveyed 1,501 children aged between eight and 15 across England between August 6 to 18 2020. Six in 10 children said they had spent less time outdoors since the pandemic began, whereas only 25 per cent reported spending more time outside, and a staggering 81 per cent of children said they had spent less time outside with friends - although this figure may have been influenced by the closure of schools. Despite 60 per cent of children reporting they had spent less time outdoors since the coronavirus pandemic began, 79 per cent of those children reported that spending time in nature and with wildlife "made them very happy."
This extract was sourced from an edition of The Gazette and an article by Rebecca Beardmore 3 Nov 2020.
During COVID, I have been fortunate to live in Cornwall and be able to access nature regularly, although more within the immediate proximity of my home.Not all children in Cornwall live by the sea; not all have access to a car . Spaces like the green on my housing estate previously never used suddenly rang with children’s voices as they managed to get outside and play football or just sat outside chatting with their friends. Families were out on bikes as the roads were suddenly quieter. Birdsong was much more noticeable. Young people camped out and went swimming at a nearby quarry as being inland and three miles from the sea, this was the most immediate wild space. Liminal spaces on the fringes of housing estates, back lanes, footpaths hitherto ignored were suddenly passageways into nature and a way out of town that didn’t involve a car. Our local carn with its heritage mining trails linking moors and woodland to the sea was suddenly a hive of activity.
Cornwall in lockdown 2020 was freed from the heavy influx of tourists that had blocked our roads and beaches for so long and suddenly in the middle of May and June 2020 with the sun beating down and blue skies we could enjoy empty beaches and oceans: wild swimming and flocks of ‘Bluetits’..( mainly women who wanted to enjoy the benefits of salt water swimming for well-being and mental health ) emerged. Cornwall was a haven for those lucky enough to be able to escape the city and move to their second homes to work from home. House prices soared as people realised that they could work from home in a place like Cornwall and be near to natural outdoor spaces. Programmes on Cornwall revealing every hitherto unspoilt nook and cranny regularly filled our evening viewing, increasing this county’s appeal as a tourist destination and haven in the UK, when COVID limited overseas travel and BREXIT curtailed our freedom to live and work in Europe or buy a home on the Costa del Sol. Boris Johnson added to this by selecting Cornwall for the G7 Summit in 2021 placing it on the world stage with President Biden and his wife visiting St Ia Catholic Church for a service and Kate Middleton visiting their local primary school. Boris was inspired to use Carbis Bay with its stunning white beaches and panorama because of his own childhood memories of holidays spent there as well as family links with the granite house Trevose View, home of his great grandparents. It was here that his grandmother went into labour with his father Stanley.
And so the cycle of links with childhood and nature even influenced Boris Johnson to imagine a world greener and bluer and cleaner. Unfortunately, the fact that the hotel built several meeting rooms without planning permission destroying woodland and coastline in the process and ploughing up the previously quiet and unspoilt beach with diggers caused hundreds of people to protest. G7 increased the visibility of Cornwall and brought with it a whole new set of environmental dilemmas.
Back to clearing away the old stems in my front garden. I guess that the flow of my thoughts has cleared my mind of some of the experiences I have had during these years when my writing on this blog remained dormant. Clearing away the past, the old year and making space for the new. Not only space on the page for new ideas and inspiration, but space in this brave new world for hope for a greener future for the planet. My world has been limited and also stretched beyond my imagination during the past two years by the pandemic. The place where I live has changed. Planting seeds, watching for new shoots to appear and spending time just being in nature is more important than ever for us all. The world has changed. Mother Nature is angry and wounded begging for us to listen as she howls in every new hurricane and weeps with the melting of each new ice cap into the deep. We need to listen, clear away the stems of past conditioning, return to our roots in nature as our mother. Children all around the world are starting amazing new initiatives inspired by Greta Thunberg to create a greener future. They are the shoots, the new life fighting to survive through this hard winter of ignorance and greed. We need to nurture the spaces in our lives where we too can grow our own new shoots for a greener future and where better to start than the earth near our front door.
