It’s the middle of May and I’m walking along a beautiful country lane. I’ve got a quick half an hour to stretch my legs before getting home to work. The air is warm. The breeze, floral and sweet. As I stride along, I take in the hawthorn blossom in the hedgerows, and the red campion, dandelions and Queen Anne’s lace in the verge.
I pass a riding school with their paddocks and stables, and an extended garden through which the lane winds its way, complete with ornamental statues and a footbridge leading over a winding stream. I smell the scent of cut grass, and look over to see a farmer cutting his field for future silage. He seems almost in slow motion.
As I wend my way along the lane, I try to stay in the moment. To quieten my inner voice and keep my awareness from wandering. There’s so much to observe here, it isn’t very hard to do, and it’s so satisfying to let go of my to-do list for a while.
I continue this way for some a while until I turn the corner once more and I am struck by an intangible sense of the magical. Like a flash, I recall with perfect clarity, a dream I had about twenty years ago, where I came upon an ethereal village that was somehow hidden from the rest of the island. Leafy, welcoming, suffused with the scent of flowers and bathed in a kind of sleepy sunshine, the secret village was like stepping into some parallel realm.
Now, as I wander this lane, I feel I am back there now. And the sense of otherworldliness is overwhelming. I pass a farm, some cottages and a handsome Victorian house, all of which exude the same sense of the extraordinary. How and why my mind has been taken back to this long-forgotten dream, I’m not sure, but it is an extremely pleasant and mysterious experience. And I choose to linger there, in my daydream state, holding onto this sense of mysterious peace and drinking in every detail.
Up, in the surrounding sloping fields, I catch site of a woman mending a fence, in the full heat of the sun. Her dog is bounding about her. Somehow, you can hear when its hot, because sound seems to travel differently. It has a certain soporific quality. The sound of her distant hammering brings me out of my trance, and reluctantly, I realise it’s probably time I turned back for home. Part of me wonders what I might discover around the next corner.
Whatever the cause of my unusual experience, I expect it was due to my efforts at mindfulness – to quieten my incessant inner-monologue and just be in the moment. Doing this made me more receptive to non-verbal thoughts, and better able to tap into the sensual experiences surrounding me, just waiting to be discovered.
I head back home riding a cloud of well-being.
Newsletter: About nature, mindfulness and happiness
Want to come for a walk? Join me as I explore the natural world and describe to you the fascinating things I find.
Slow down, escape your troubles, and let me whisk you away to somewhere calm…
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