On this week's Tea with a Druid, Philip Carr-Gomm made reference to the fact that having recently passed Samhain we are now only six weeks away from the winter solstice. SIX WEEKS? I don't want to mention the other winter festival that people celebrate around late December, but it is worryingly close to the solstice and apparently only six weeks away. Eek. Yesterday I opened my 2023 diary for the first time to note down some meeting dates, and then today in our first exploratory Pan Lanarkshire Climate Action Network session we were arranging our next meeting which will take place next year, and my mind was blown. (If you weren't able to join us today, then please do email me if you'd be interested in getting involved.)
Perhaps I'm just not very good with time. Last week I was on my annual "summer" holiday and while I was away a reminder on my phone popped up to tell me it was a year since the photos I took on my last "summer" holiday. Whenever you take holidays, it's always good to visit new places especially those by the seaside, and I had a great time noticing nature while I was away, including on the above nature trail. I'm already wondering about designing our own nature based font because I love the one on the sign so much. I think I have mentioned before that I have the pockets of a seven year old boy, always full of leaves or stones or conkers. This holiday I was inspired to do something with what I collected having started following Tanya Shadrick on twitter earlier this year. She saves her wee collections in tins, calling them Concentrates of Place, a way of storing your memories in a truly tangible way and enabling you to use many of your senses when you re-visit your collections. This links wonderfully into the contact pathway from the five pathways to nature connection, engaging with nature through your senses. I didn't allow my usual procrastination to take root and ordered some tins at once, and have gathered my stone from the beach, the mermaid's purse I was so excited to find, the acorns from the abundant holm oaks on the nature trail by the sea, and a magnificent leaf. I'm glad to have been introduced to this way of connecting to nature as well as of storing happy memories of places I have been. Speaking of which...
Fancy doing something different? Please do check out our eventbrite - particularly those of you in Motherwell and East Kilbride. On Sunday 20th November we've the third of our four walks from Glen Esk Pocket Park in East Kilbride and then the following week on Wednesday 23rd we've another storytelling event (thanks to the Scottish International Storytelling Festival’s Big Scottish Story Ripple initiative for the funding to enable us to run this event) this time at Baron's Haugh RSPB reserve in Motherwell. It might be winter but let's continue getting outside and seeing what is happening in nature right now.