I woke this morning at 4am and couldn’t return to sleep. The full moon called from outside the van and so, pulling on shorts and fluffy poncho, I wandered outside to sit barefoot in brown, shrubby riverside grass knowing the wild mint threaded throughout the green landscape behind me. I have no photo. I didn’t take my phone. I sat with my face turned skyward for about an hour as the river silvered on before me, as constellations I do not yet know the names of went about their business overhead, and when the monkey-mind-chatter eventually subsided I felt, for one long moment (like a sole piano key left to ring out), my chest open to the moonlight. And in that endless time I experienced empathy, for myself & others, along with a deep sense of belonging, of knowing my place in the world.
I’ve had a realisation over these sweltering days parked by the cooling Dordogne river that I want to use the locked OUTSIDER Patreon pages to go deeper, to share more of these moments, these attachments and connections with nature that I find so difficult to explain. Instagram and the open blog feel like I’m throwing too much of myself out into the world with each piece of writing and it makes my heart go wobbly, my resolve thins.
A new upload has gone up this morning with words on wild mint, tree blessings and a more practical piece on hand-stitching pamphlets. Link to Patreon is here. I took this photo yesterday foraging for wild mint. ????
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