Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
Every day in February you find me out and about enjoying nature's wisdom.
And today I'm walking in the sunshine which is absolutely glorious and I'm walking up a lane which is very close to my house and this lane takes me eventually up onto Dartmoor,
The national park,
Which is just about a five minute walk from my home.
So I feel very blessed that I can get out of my house and in five minutes I'm on the wide expanse of Dartmoor.
It's a bleak landscape in many ways but it's very beautiful.
It has a real sense of spaciousness and as I'm walking up this lane you might be able to hear the gushing stream beside me.
We've had so much water recently,
So much rain coming out of the but the contrast today in the sunshine is a delight.
And as I'm out and about I'm reflecting on the power of being with others and sometimes it really helps to have someone by your side in life and I'm reminded of a walk that I recently did with my sister.
We were walking alongside the River X and it had been raining a lot for several days and the walk was taking us along part of the flood plain of the River X and we were walking through fields that were absolutely squelching with mud and the river and various places had broken its banks and it was it was hard and slow going there was no doubt about it and it was still raining as we were walking and we got to a point on the walk where we were about to reach a bridge that was going to take us over the River X and we were then on the final stretch of our walk so we needed to cross the X.
It was really important for us to cross this bridge to mean that we didn't have a huge detour to go on and as we neared the bridge there was a man walking in the opposite direction and he was obviously a walker and he paused and he stopped to have a chat and he said look just to let you know the field where you're probably aiming to get to the bridge is absolutely flooded with water he said I just took one look at it and I've I've turned around and come back I think it's inaccessible so just to warn you that and I looked at my sister and the man walked on and we were in this place of like what should we do should we turn back and find a longer detour route or shall we just crack on and see how we get on and even in that moment just looking at her we knew that we wanted to check this out together that sense of camaraderie that sense of doing this together and we went to the field and sure enough it was flooded with water and in that moment we looked at each other again and my sister said well how about I try and make it over to that particular rock and see how I get on and if I get on okay you follow me and she made it to the rock so I followed her and then we made it to another platform and eventually we found our way on a high bit of ground that was that was away from the flooded river water until we eventually found the bridge we made it together and I was reflecting on that I was thinking well if I'd been on my own would I have done that would I have turned around when the man had warned us about the flood would I have attempted to paddle through the flood on my own there was something about being with someone else that sense of connection that sense of shared adventure that sense of shared willingness to support each other and I think there's something really important to learn in this for me and maybe for you too because I'm the sort of person that likes to do things on my own often I like to go walking on my own and I like to try and work things out on my own and there is nothing wrong with that I thoroughly recommend it if that's something you enjoy for yourself but equally there are times when it makes a huge difference if you buddy up with someone someone that you love and trust and they become your partner for that particular part of your journey in life it could even be a practical walk a physical walk a physical journey in life or it could be that you're navigating something tricky in your life so today nature's wisdom is reminding me about the importance of connection connection with others and support and finding a way through life together sometimes it's really important to reach out to someone
