Join me in the glens, hills and shores of my Celtic island home—the beautiful Isle of Man. This week, we’re exploring a balmy late May walk in the west of the island, starting at my vegetable allotment, in the village of Kirk Patrick.

For a more immersive experience, I’ve included some appropriate nature audio to help you relax and set the scene as you read. And for my paying members, there’s a video taken during the walk, to transport you into our adventure.

When you’re ready, click the play button below, take a breath, and enjoy…

It’s late afternoon and the moon is rising through a shimmering heat, waxing toward a rare second full moon of the month—a Blue Moon.

I heave the stubborn hosepipe back to the tap, and loop it round and around its hook, sapped of energy. Errant splashes from my efforts elicit velvet aromas from the nettle patch. Our friendly robin, king of the meadow, looks on from his perch on the overhead wires, probably wondering why we keep making work for ourselves. The girls and I have spent the afternoon watering our local allotment, and now intend to allot the rest of the day to watering ourselves. The river Nebb is our destination, which splits the valley just beyond, hidden amongst the willows.

It is shorts-and-sandals hot today. The kind of heat that trains the eye to spot tree shade at five hundred feet. And so a walk to the river is in order, through scrubland, wetland and woodland. A little of this and a little of that. And with tools reshedded, we take our leave, to the sound of swifts screeching overhead in chase of insects. Fighter jets verses gnats.

Summer comes early on the island, arriving in late May with a firework blast of radiant heat, which hangs for a while and then invariably spitters and fades into a sullen June. So we’re grabbing our chance to find a place to paddle. It is our hope the Nebb will be in a mood to strike a trade—our excess heat, for its quenching cold.

To keep ourselves from overheating, we adopt a leisurely amble, kicking up earthy dust on the path, and sending pollen flying with our elbows. We listen to the crunch of baked gravel underfoot, enjoying the verge-side galleries and hedgerow entertainments on the way. Dog rose, and cleavers, and the baby blue blooms of speedwell. Umbellifers are starting to open their white-laced parasols, to the approval of the promenading butterfly, and the stems of grass-seed quills wiggle in the breeze, penning private memoirs with cursive roots.

But it’s the horsetail that steals the show. Wonderfully prehistoric and alien. An anachronistic throwback to the age of dinosaurs, when plants were grown to ancient, opaque specifications. Other 100-million year old species have long since perished, but horsetail continues to thrive. This living fossil, scouring stray fingers with its sweep’s brush bristles, feels like the earliest of prototypes—unfinished and sketchy. Flora version 1.0.

A miasma of salubrious birdsong draws us into the cover of shade, as the wetland willows encroach on either side, bringing soft echoes. An excitable throng of ox-eye daisies bob and sway in their bid to catch the eye of a desultory bee. The last thing they expect, however, is a great nose, descending from the azure, but I have learnt that stopping every so often to ‘smell the roses’ (other flowers are available) is an immensely rewarding pass-time.

To cease one’s mechanical stomping and sample the complex notes of a meadowsweet’s attar, or a cow parsley’s farmy haze, is to sip at the cup of bliss. Of all the senses, scent has the most direct route to the brain, with some natural compounds finding themselves ushered right through the olfactory clusters and literally into our brain tissue. No wonder smells can unlock deep-seated memories—they can get right inside and take root. I hope to make some memories today, and bind them to this fragrant key.

As we continue, the air takes on a cool, moist edge, and we hear the distinctive palaver between water and rocks. With liquid, spiralling poems, the river beckons the path closer, so that we come to walk along side one another like fellow travellers, falling into lockstep with the flow.

Now we can see the waters pool and flex as they navigate tree root and outcrop—all the while remaining constant at our side. Somewhere above, a buzzard’s searching squall declares coming, ready or not to the land laid out below. Complacent rodents beware! To our left, blackcaps and willow warblers cast lyrical riddles from the safety of the curragh banks, and a moorhen coos at her chicks to quicken their progress through the undergrowth.

There is slow living in sunshine—a reminder from the sky to take things in our stride. To abandon inert, sterile spaces of concrete and glass, where one-track minds plough unwavering furrows, yielding thoughts of money, stress, productivity and other cultigens of modern life. Rather than monoculture desert, a healthy mind should be a teeming ecosystem. When we pause long enough to let the world in, we allow the coiling, tangled diversity of nature to self-seed in our thoughts. Minds can become rewilded. Our spirits uplifted. And where there is abundance in experience, we experience a natural fulfilment.

Which is why our chatter flows freely and brightly, in symmetry with the throngs of excitable wagtails about us. And soon, we happen upon a caucus of granite boulders, strung loosely across the river, marking a drop in the riverbed. Stepping stones without direction. This is just what we have been looking for. On the grassy bank, we set down our effects and disrobe our feet. A magpie laughs its rasping rattle as my daughters and I totter uncertainly at first, hand in hand, hopping over the water-worn rocks.

Finding a level place to sit and a suitably strong currant, we plunge our feet into rolling waters. A scything rush of cold overwhelms our senses. Slowly, minds adjust, turning down the dial, and we can attend to icy soliloquies with pleasure.

Our feet are such sensitive organs. The river assails us with a thousand currents, pouring over us, about us and unravelling downstream. There are stories being told here. A river is festooned with tales of its past. Of thundery showers and heather-topped moors. There are twisting, spinning yarns that recount rugged bedrocks, stepped falls, and sharp stones that split the waters. It’s all here, if you can feel it.

The river is pulling at our heels now, metric tonnes of water forced into a narrow torrent between rocks. It feels like a hand tugging at you, reaching up from the undertow. An invitation to join the flow, perhaps. To be swept along without a care, through meander and rapid and onward toward the sea.

Moving water replenishes the soul. Pick your flavour—about us, the menu is long. There are trickles and spouts, cascades and spates. There are whirling eddies and long, smooth, glistening arcs that plunge into a blaze of bubbles. This is a watery smorgasbord, and we sample it all—sitting at different points in the river, trying to create the biggest splash, skimming pebbles, creating artful wakes with our hands. We paddle about the shingly riverbed, soles massaged, just this side of painful.

At times, we sit and stare. The water undulates in hypnotic patterns. Quicksilver light spilling and slipping across a braided surface. Bursts of sunlight catch the eye, popping like paparazzi flashes. Bedazzled, I feel like a movie star. There’s something so alluring and beautiful about the transience of light. Its complex patterns, and its fleeting nature. Gleaming gestures too impossible to recall. But there are insights to be had too—quiet reflections of one’s own being. Sunlight on water never fails to mesmerise. I could stare at it all day and be happy.

Running water is equisite. The sound bewitches the attention as much as the light, pacifying the passions. You feel soothed by the burbles, the trickles and the whispers. There are acoustic sonnets, earnest and achingly sweet, but too intertwined to unpick. And there hides the cadence of intelligence within those rhythms and tones, but in some indecipherable tongue.

As we explore different areas, we tread bare foot over the rocks, leaving wet footprints on the granite—our marks melt away in moments. I jump with careful strides, knowing a stumble could be costly. My daughters, meanwhile, confidence at its peak, stand perched in the midst of the river, upon a tiny stone stage, performing graceful ballet moves on one leg.

In time, we retire to the grass, under the flittering shade of an ash, and our soles feel the yielding contours of a moist earth swathed in loose-knit green. Willow seeds lay piled up along the bank in unseasonable flurries—Blue Moon snow drifts.

To the clatter of gabbing jackdoors, we set our idle, cheery talk. Our muscles hang relaxed from our frames. Where our legs are cool and refreshed, our backs feel suffused with sunshine, creating a blissful gradient throughout our bodies that induces a loose contentment. After hot work at the allotment, this is our reward. To wile away an hour surrounded by white noise and white light. Playing, sitting, chatting, noticing. To sit together in felicity, and under nature’s guidance, to simply be.

These are uncommon memories cast under an uncommon moon.

In a few hours, the waters will be dark, and the silver upon its surface will be that of the Blue Moon, clear and crisp and full. It’ll be three years till the next one. In that span, much water will have passed through the river. Through us, time will have flowed. Different bees will drink from different flowers. Different birds will sing from different twigs, hidden by different leaves.

But the river’s music will still be here, and the silent rocks. And the dance of silver light. As it will in my mind, under the lock and key of an ox-eye daisy.

Recommendations and other nature…

To finish off, I’d like to share a few nature related items I came across this week, starting off with this stunning photo of a swallow, chasing insects. It encapsulates the kind of flying acrobatics I saw at the allotment, as the swifts flew overhead…

Three nature facts to impress your friends…

This week, I’ve been learning about plants…

1. Q. How many senses do plants have?
   A. At least 15.
   Whilst we humans have five primary senses, botanists have found that plants have up to twenty different senses. From their sensitive root tips, to the hairs on their leaves, they can perceive many things, such as gravity, soil chemistry and different colours of light—they can even ‘hear’ sound frequencies of running water, or a nearby bee!
   

2. Q. Can plants remember?
   A. Yes.
   Plants can retain memories of their past experiences by making changes to their DNA—that’s right, they edit their own DNA!—helping them to remember weather patterns, recurring threats or specific peculiarities to their local environment. This allows them to react appropriately the next time similar situations occur.
   

3. Q. Do plants talk to each other?
   A. Maybe...
   Plants may use sound to communicate with each other. A recent experiment demonstrated that tomato and tobacco plants emit ultrasonic clicks when stressed, pruned (or nibbled) or dehydrated. That’s too high for humans to perceive, but loud enough to be heard from far away by insects, and perhaps other plants. Since it costs energy to create such sounds, there’s a high chance that it works as some form of communication. But more research needs to be done in this area.

A gorilla lollipop man…

I found this amazing video this week from the BBC, showing a Silverback gorilla guarding his family as they cross the road. The serenity, power and intelligence of these creatures are wonderful to observe…

Getting out into nature yourself…

If you’re new to exploring nature, and aren’t sure how to proceed, I wrote a helpful e-book called A Practical Guide to Walking that is available to my paying members. Here’s this week’s short excerpt…

The Golden Rule: Walks are there to be enjoyed…

If walking in nature is new to you, or your companions, then the number one rule to remember is that the Great Outdoors is there to be enjoyed!

If you try too soon to hike up a mountain, or embark upon a twelve-mile epic, there’s a chance you might be put off for life! So start easy. Start flat. Start with walks that have definite paths. There’s always plenty of things to observe, in any walk, so don’t worry about missing out.

Then, as you build up your confidence and your fitness, you may begin to venture further afield, into landscapes with hills and valleys, coastlines or forests. Places that are off the beaten track or harder to find.

When done correctly, walking can become a lifelong passion. A pursuit of discovery, adventure and deepest pleasure. But relax—you have all the time in the world. The mountaintops, the glaciers, the jungles—they’ll still be there waiting for you in a year or so, when you’ve bought your crampons and pith helmet. So start small, and build up. Have fun!

And finally, if you’re a paying member, you can enjoy the full video I took over the course of this week’s walk. I hope you enjoy it, and I’ll see you next week :)

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So here’s a quick spotter’s guide for one particular species you might find when you’re out and about…

As we explore the miniature escarpments of an old granite quarry, we happen upon this beautiful little creature, basking in the afternoon sun. She is a green tiger beetle, and she’s a deadly hunter.

This particular subspecies of tiger beetle sports a gorgeous metallic war paint, and can be found all over Europe, from Spain to Finland. But there are more than 2600 types of tiger beetles worldwide, found on all continents except Antarctica. So wherever you are, keep a lookout.

Let’s shrink our awareness down to the scale of an insect, and experience what life tiger beetles lead, directly under our feet.

To begin with, you have to watch out for those giant footfalls of other people, looming out of the sky and dislodging avalanches of scree. Luckily, the smaller size of the tiger beetle’s brain means that thought processes have far less distance to travel across the neural network. Hence, she processes her environment far faster than we humans, causing time to effectively pass seven times slower. Some of her thinking is decentralised across her body, meaning her legs can start running on their own, in response to outside stimulus, before the brain is even conscious of what’s happening. I’m not sure I’d like my own limbs acting without my consent!

The nomenclature of tiger is afforded for good reason. The tiger beetle is a ferocious predator. At this small scale, you have to make sure she doesn’t spot you when she’s hungry, or her vicious mandibles will literally tear you apart. She can run up to 60 cm per second across clear ground, making her one of the fastest insects of her size. If she were the same size as a human, this lean green racing machine would be zooming along at 157 miles per hour!

With her long, bronze legs, the tiger beetle moves so fast that she regularly overstimulates her senses, and has to stop to reorientate. So her hunts are both lightning fast, and stop start, as she chases down spiders, ants, or lumbering caterpillars (I guess the caterpillars don’t stand a chance!).

An ant, which can only run at 8 cm per second, will scurry over and under obstacles, trying to outwit its predator. But perhaps the ant’s best chance of escape is to remain absolutely still, as the beetle’s compound eyes, built to detect movement, cannot easily discern forms when they are motionless.

The tiger beetle hides her ears under her elytra, or wing-case, and can hear higher frequencies pretty well, even from sources underground. If you try speaking in a high tone, perhaps you might catch her attention.

This beetle has a great sense of smell, thanks to her various articulated antennae, and the white hairs on her legs help protect her from high temperatures, such as the sun-baked rock on which she stands, whilst alerting her to vibrations.

She is extremely territorial, often facing predators, as well as others of its kind, in order to protect her turf. And during mating, the male will try to impress her by doing press ups for several minutes. Actually, that is pretty impressive!

Tiger beetles can be found in various habitats, such as heathlands, moorlands and even mountains, often out in the open on sandy or chalky soils, or on rocks, bathing in the heat. Different species of are generally the colour of the habitat in which they hunt. You’ve probably passed one many a time.

Tiger beetles are mostly active during May till October, so keep an eye out for that telltale glint of her iridescent metallic forewing—because now you know a little more of her background, you’ll be able to follow her fascinating story, as it unfolds at your feet.

Learn the art of slow living, through nature…

If you suffer from stress, burnout, overwhelm or anxiety, then perhaps it’s time to slow down a little. Modern life tends to encourage us to stay ‘switched on’ all of the time, causing all kinds of mental, physical and emotional problems. Perhaps you’ve experienced this yourself.

Learning to slow down is essential to your long-term health and quality of life. And getting yourself out into nature is the simplest way to do it.

If you’re feeling the strain of modern living, learn with me how to harness the healing power of nature…

Here’s another photo-account of a walk from the Isle of Man, this time, exploring the atmospheric ambience of a misty morning.

A thick mist has settled over the island, enveloping all in a numinous hush, stealing away the landscape a piece at a time. First it was the horizon, filched under the cover of grey. Removing distinction between land and sky. And then it was the distant hills, bleached of colour, and then gradually of form. Now it’s the far edge of the field upon which we stare, as we lean on a wooden five-bar gate. Perhaps if I don’t blink, we’ll be safe from being snatched ourselves.

My youngest daughter and I are headed out toward a reservoir, on the east of the island, though whether we’ll find it is another matter. A palpable sense of mystery hangs in the air, and each corner we round reveals another piece to a patchwork puzzle. But this landscape feels like an unfinished sketch, receding into a blank page. Perhaps the reservoir has been imagined, but yet to be rendered. And perhaps we risk unrendering ourselves if we wander too far.

Regardless, we stroll along a country lane, unfamiliar, and lined with newly verdant beeches and horse chestnuts, a translucent green tunnel arching over our heads. Today’s mist, whilst soupy along the level, must be shallow in the vertical, because light pours in from some unseen source, to permeate the air with its ethereal glow. It sets the canopy alight with a glowing leafshine; and where there are gaps, the light of Elysium spills down to quench we mortal creatures of some inner thirst.

With all this otherworldliness, I am minded of the Manx myth of sea-god Manannan, who shrouds the island with his misty cloak in times of danger. For years, my girls would get excited whenever the fog rolled in from the sea. “Manannan is walking!” They would say, with tones of reverence and awe befitting a heroic wizard. And we would each imagine a different danger, from which he was protecting us.

“The dragons must be migrating, flying overhead.”

“Maybe it’s Viking raiders.”

“Or giants.”

And so, as sound falls to ground in the still, dank air, this defenceless island holds its breath. A feeling of hiding under the bed, watching feet walk past as intruders search the room. But also a feeling of hope, that there is someone, powerful and unfathomable, working ancient magic in our favour.

Emerging from impermanence, a handsome sycamore solidifies into a towering green profusion. We are dwarfed by its crown spread—a labyrinthine cupola of leaf and branch. I follow the thrust of its sundering trunk, rising and splitting, rising and splitting, to pierce the heavens with a thousand jabs. I see a wooden lightning strike, inverted, straining upward to conduct the light of the sky, down into its roots. Under the ground, I picture a dark and obscure root system, equal to the canopy, but reaching netherward, gripping a fistful of earth with unimaginable strength.

We trace a ranging bend, following a rough fringe verge of herb Robert, plantain, red campion and yellow pimpernel. Over the dry-stone wall, a pallid crow stands pensive in the meadow, pecking the ground, testing solidity. As it lingers at the edge of oblivion, I see it dissolving away, as if I had merely dreamt it.

Mist brings a kind of intimacy. A closeness with those that remain. A quartz jostle-stone here, a peeling Mouldboard plough there. Whilst luminous nothing contracts the world to just a dozen trees and a blackbird’s muted call, I feel a small hand slip into mine. Reassurance that I won’t be the next to disappear.

A disembodied dog bark carries from beyond the edge of sight, and a flash of fur reveals a hare’s bounding egress into thatched and ferny thicket. Passing a stile, we watch three horses huddle together in a paddock, chewing at the clover and grass—manes lank and bedraggled. On another day, the colourless haze might feel oppressing, but this is springtime, and we feel like explorers in a new land. I taste questions on the moist air. What’s over there? And over here? What will I find next? Curiosity is piqued. Our senses heightened. We are maze dwellers.

Sounds may not carry in these conditions, but scent lies thickly in every direction, leading us onward toward wild garlic, wood sorrel, lilac, and then, oddly, the colourful perfumes of cultivated flowerbeds.

On a grassy side-lane, a large monkey-puzzle looms out from the milky light, incongruous to the pastoral pallet of hawthorns and beeches. It is a tree without context. Have we stumbled upon someone’s private land? A garden perhaps?

We double back to find we had indeed wandered off piste. A little further along the road, we find a pair of gate piers, and a driveway to some stately abode. A manor, unmade by mist.

Even when the horizon is concealed, by treeline or hillcrest, distance usually feels like a given—every direction an unending filament unspooling into forever—across dale and spinney, through hot city sprawl, and backstreet cafe and half-mown suburban lawn, over desolate mountaintop or churning sea. Through living room and theatre and dell and brook. All that and back again. And just knowing this fact makes us feel grounded in reality. But today, the threads have been severed, and all we find are the frayed strands that lead to nowhere. We have become untethered from existence. As if cause and effect have meaning only for the surrounding acre, beyond which they become as diffuse as the milky brume.

I wonder: How would one act if nothing really mattered?

A wren sings into albino spaces, as if asking the same question. But its call seems flightless. Clipped. The rest of its kin must surely lie elsewhere, cloistered in their own lambent chambers, waiting for this bewitchment to pass. No answer is forthcoming.

As we reach the reservoir, a stiff breeze rakes the surface, corralling a flock of wavelets onto the eastern shore, and where they splash hurriedly in quick succession, a mallard tucks its bill beneath its wing, sleeping off the fug.

Out into the lake, the waters quickly recede into the cold murk of clouds run aground. And preceded by wing-slaps, a cormorant enters our ambit, skidding to a halt on the surface. Its rapier head is set into a serpentine neck, precompressed like a spring. Ready to strike at any moment. No intent is betrayed by its gleaming eye, but after a beat, it has rolled out of sight and under the surface. Flying submerged.

We move on, circumnavigating these desaturated waters, as if to prove that they’re there. And I notice three lonesome fishermen sitting at equidistant points along the bank. Hooks do not glint today, so a hiss of lines, whipping overhead, is the only sign we should watch our step.

Then, as we round off the loop, a gift is unwrapped for us. Damp, cool conditions cause insects to keep close to ground, precipitating a stunning display. Just five feet away, four swallows screech past at breakneck speed, skimming the grass at ankle height, following a track that takes them in and out of the grey. As they swoop and twist and bank, they flash between navy blue and gleaming white. Swallows must have performed this very dance for millennia, but this is the first time we have witnessed their acrobatics so close up. And so we stand with baited breath, confounded as to their quick witted agility and artful grace.

There is intimacy in mist. A coming together. An appreciation for what’s right in front of you—because, according to our senses, that’s all there is.

And in this quiet moment, my daughter and I have picked up a frayed strand that leads to a theatre. A circular grass stage, set-dressed with pines. And players of blue and white perform for us a very ancient magic, swooping back and forth, in and out of existence.

Just for us.

Learn the art of slow living, through nature…

If you suffer from stress, burnout, overwhelm or anxiety, then perhaps it’s time to slow down a little. Modern life tends to encourage us to stay ‘switched on’ all of the time, causing all kinds of mental, physical and emotional problems. Perhaps you’ve experienced this yourself.

Learning to incorporate slow living into your routine is essential to your long-term health and quality of life. And getting yourself out into nature is the simplest way to do it.

If you’re feeling the strain of modern living, learn with me how to harness the healing power of nature…

Hey, everyone. Come with me as we talk nature, mindfulness, and the meaning of life. It’s a rainy May afternoon, but that’s no reason not to enjoy the wonderful greens all about us…

Filtering away from the main road, I turn into a side street, crossing a ford to take a stroll along a wet, tree-lined lane. To seek my own quiet spot in town, at the site of an old monk’s cell.

The sound of rain tapping on a foliage sky echoes about me. And these green and thirsty canopies glow with their leafshine—chestnuts, ash, oak—and shelter me from what I hope will be a brief shower. Down by my feet, a fringe of fractal ferns dress the roots of each trunk, looking like Douglas firs writ small.

I pause next to a stooping beech, pull down the supple, tapering tip of a branch and examine one of its leaves. With my naked eye, I can make out a pleasing pattern of veins, spreading like lightning throughout the surface. Starting with the primary vein, my mind’s eye enters through the stem and is swept along the midrib on a tide of sap. I continue past junctions as I might on a motorway, awaiting my turning. I watch it split off at either side with tributaries, and split again, and again. Branch-like. Tree like.

I turn off, into a folding, dividing chloroplastic conurbation. The veins continue where my eye cannot, so I whip out my hand lens and examine at a magnification of ten, following finger-like pathways as they divide, and divide again, into fibrous veinlets. Here, nutrients are brought to and from cul-de-sac clusters of microscopic green cells. And I am reminded of a city, and its flow of human traffic, filtering down from the largest thoroughfares, down and down, to the doorsteps of individual homes, in a vast suburban sprawl.

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Life, it seems, replicates again and again, at every scale, utilising the same mechanics to solve similar problems. Perhaps the cosmos is like the fern at my feet, repeating its fractal pattern again and again. As I stare at this translucent microcosm, I am minded of the fact we humans sit roughly at the middle of the universe’s spectrum of scale:

The size of the observable universe is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (27 zeros) times larger than an average human. The average human is 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (35 zeros) times larger than the smallest atomic unit of distance (the Plank length). In other words, we sit at the sweet spot, where there is as much to explore at down there, as there is up there. Abundance everywhere.

Here, in the rain-soaked air, there is an abundance of scents. The moisture sharpens my olfactory receptors. The soaked earth causes soil bacteria to release that distinctive organic compound geosmin. And plant oils melt into the air, colouring my perceptions with the petrichor tones of bluebells, wild garlic, moss, mushrooms, young glossy foliage, old gnarled roots. My whole experience is enriched by these minuscule molecular strings. My eyes and ears may coax me towards the world of the large, but I have a microscope in my nostrils!

We humans tend to place emphasis on size. Bigger is better. We look to the heavens and imagine exploring the cosmos, setting foot on other planets, or pushing through the tangled thicket of another galaxy. Or we wish to travel further and further afield on our holidays, to explore the big wide world. But when I walk into nature, I am constantly reminded that there is also a myriad of worlds right under our noses. Zoom in, and zoom in again, and there is just as much to see as there is out there.

Indeed, to the gene strands in our DNA—replicating, transcribing, creating proteins, generally getting on with their own idiosyncratic lives—our own bodies are a vast and mysterious universe. As vast as the outer universe is to us. In effect, we are a living, breathing cosmos—feeling, thinking, experiencing, made up of innumerable constituent living entities, interacting, responding, changing.

As I walk a little further, I happen on a tree that is under stress. Its roots, are being crowded out, or perhaps the sunlight is being pilfered by its neighbours. And this external change—this nutrient starvation—is felt inside the tree. Is manifested in its circulatory systems, in its roots, in its leaves. Down on the very smallest level. And then within individual cells, RNA molecules form a response, reading the DNA textbook at the heart of the nucleus and cooking up the appropriate chemical trigger. Which starts a domino-effect, up, and up, through each system, each part of the tree, until it begins to sprout leaves from every viable location on the bark’s surface.

And finally, this creates an effect in the outer world too. Creating more shade, or more respiratory action, responses from other trees, and in autumn, more leaf-mould composting into the loam. Domino effects, moving up and down the universal scale, again and again, like ripples.

As I return home and stare into the creamy swirl in my coffee cup, I am reminded of the spiral pattern of seeds on a sunflower, and of weather patterns on Jupiter, and of our very own whirlpool galaxy, the Milky Way. And I wonder, is my home like the cell on a leaf? Am I like an RNA molecule in a universal body? Responding to the outer world, making little ripples all the way up.

Looking inward, for me, is as valuable and rewarding as looking outward. Like breathing in and out, we cannot have one without the other. And as I walk into nature, I remind myself to walk that line between the astronomical, and the infinitesimal, noticing how both are interconnected—and, like the fern, like the leaf, how alike they are.

How, in each of us, we hold a cosmos.

What do you think about these questions? Is the universe fractal-like? Do we spend too much time focusing on the external, and not enough on the internal? Are we, like the cells in our bodies, part of a wider universe that is experiencing itself?

I’d love to hear your thoughts below…

We step onto a wooden bridge spanning a tree-cloistered waterfall. Dappled light falls about us like warm rain, dripping from leaf to leaf—chestnut splays, sycamore high-fives, a beech’s serrated teardrops. Sharp-edged greenery is fraying the breeze as it roams through the twisted rafters, setting platforms and galleries of foliage into motion. Layer upon layer, and ever upward; flittering, rippling. In this voluminous, three-dimensional real-estate, I notice the elegant efficiency in which each leaf plugs its own little gap in the sky, straining to catch a piece of blue.

Beneath the rustling canopy, a deep rocky hollow reflects the soft green glow. From April to October, other wavelengths fail to reach these depths, and are silently siphoned away into sap-filled arteries—to light up the roots of the Earth. Down here, there dwells a lambent magic. We peer over the railing to watch the sloshing river pick its way over sluiced shelves and transform itself into a piercing fall beneath our feet. A glorious white streak of motion. A watery gannet in perpetual dive, plunging into the pools below.

We stare in vertiginous fascination whilst a column of cool air rises up to meet our faces and wick away the heat. Water after water, hour after hour. Spilling, pooling, churning, descending. And amongst the clash of cymbals and rolling thunder it is as if we stand upon a foundation of solid sound. Rumbling through bone and joint, shaking loose a sense of awe. There is a resonant sense that we stand at Nature’s alter. And so, in offering, I silently toss my worries into the flow, to watch them crash upon the rocks, leaving behind an empty vessel in my chest that can be filled with good things.

We cross the bridge and into the heart of the winding glen, feeling cleansed and awake.

Don’t you just love a mossy log?

We happen upon a fallen tree, lying stricken, at the side of the path. It was once a tree. It is now a log. In some lonely December night, windswept and exhausted, it must have uprooted itself to lay upon a bracken bed, embracing a new chapter in its story. Another fall, another transformation.

Now, across its hide there grows a rich pelt of moss. Spindles and turrets rise from loamy scales, a rainforest in miniature. Ants scurry, following signpost scents toward sweet smelling crags and canyons of rotting bark. Millipedes ripple. Beetles crawl. Where once, a complex respiratory and circulatory system permeated the sapwood, now there creeps the searching strands of a fungal web, fruiting bodies blooming, breaching the dank underbelly with curly-stemmed parasols.

The array of greens here is intoxicating, too bright to believe. It is as if I have stumbled upon the epicentre of a spring explosion. So varied are these tangy tones, I can almost taste them—spring-onion, fresh lime and pickled gherkin. I see leaves at different stages of opening, some a week or two old, some not yet free of their carapace. And each a different note upon a green scale. Surely, a newly-sprung leaf must pass a dozen hues, as it unfurls over the course of a morning.

Dewy wood sorrel spills out from the beneath the log like green velvet. Bluebells and yellow pimpernels decorate the scene. Little ferns-to-be celebrate the season like tiny party-blowers, uncurling too slow to perceive. And above me, I see a youthful sycamore standing tall against the blue, leaning over its fallen kin to stretch out a bough and provide a riffling shade.

This verdant diorama makes me feel like I have stumbled into a workshop in glorious disarray. Nature’s messy haberdashery, as she tirelessly stitches the seams of spring.

The beach is singing when we approach. And as we and the river cross paths once more, the terrain transitions from the close quarters of a jagged gorge to the boundless shifting of pebbly beach. Rushing and spilling, the river blossoms into a snaking delta, and I hear the joyful melody of a river set free to ramble, with the sustained tremolo of skittering pebbles, pulled along for the ride.

Like cows constrained in a cattle run, and then let out to pasture, the cursive currents frolic and skip out across the shore. These waters are nearing the end of their journey. It has been a long pilgrimage that has seen them navigate the vast, rarefied skyways, blown from who-knows-where on foriegn winds. To hitch a ride on a sodden dust mote and spin a raindrop. To plummet through cold air from unimaginable heights—in a hurtling, heart-stopping limbo, as the curved horizon flattens, and as two-dimensional map becomes three dimensional landscape, with hills and roads and fens and fields. And then, splash! A fall broken by green blade or mossy finger. And then, to seep, and quench the earth. Slinking under the peaty mire, pushing, pressing, slipping inch by dark inch, for days, or weeks. To finally emerge into the leaf-dressed flumes and gullies, to run with the tributaries without restriction. To burble, and embody the path of least resistance.

And now, finally, the water is seconds away from rejoining the sea. From returning to the motherland and becoming suffused with those familiar salts and minerals. To shimmer with the vibration of surf and whale song. The river is an eternal homecoming.

I crouch down close to the sea-bound torrent, and I notice that although the waters are in constant motion, the shapes that they fill, the paths that they draw, over pebble, over driftwood and jutting tor—are consistent. Here lies a watery mountain range. I lean in closer, to inspect a handsome standing wave, where the rolling, colourless landscape quivers across a boulder’s shingle shoulder. Water pours through this terrain, rushing past me on the last stretch, and what I see is a landscape of both motion and stillness. A beautiful, paradoxical oxymoron.

I love the hypnotic power of rushing water. I could stare at it all day. It’s far too complex to behold fully, so I blink rapidly, and my vision takes a dozen snap-shots. I see bubbles and a folded, chrome-like meniscus frozen in time. The river becomes a glacier. And even here, at its freest and most boundless state, I see that the waters still follow the sheet-music of the land. Only as it reaches the sea, does it experience true and utter freedom.

The openness you feel as you look out at a glittering sea is like nothing else. Right there, before us, lies the whole world. Every shore is bridged by blue, waiting to be known. Possibility suffuses the air. I breathe it in, and a lightness forms about my shoulders.

Out on the horizon, a cargo vessel skirts the edge of obscurity, an apparition in the haze. And a fishing boat, a couple of miles out, flashes rhythmically in the sunlight. I imagine conversations transpiring upon these decks, as I watch. Silent words passed between crew mates. Closer in, a seal’s wet pate parts the water, gleaming black eye pointed our way. I wonder if we humans are as endlessly fascinating to seals, as they are to us.

The sea is host to all kinds of activity today. The kittiwake’s reedy call peels out across the bay, and the cormorant is an arrow, cast along the surf to hit some unseen target. We face the beating sun, and it reminds us of its majesty, and of its power to parch and sear, out here where shade is at a premium. So we tread a shingle line towards the cool rocks that bookend the bay, crispy ribbons of seaweed crunching beneath our feet.

A craggy, spalling cliff rises half-heartedly on a stop-start incline. There are plenty of ledges here for wildflowers, grasses and nesting birds, overhanging right-angled chunks of friable rock, multilayered and flaky—like lithic puff pastry. As we round a sea-smoothed outcrop, I see colonies of broody fulmars squawking their warning to stay clear.

So, we find ourselves a spot on the rocks where noone objects. A jaw of rocky molars, worn and rounded from biting the sea. Our chests soak in heat from the sun, our backs wick it away into the stone. I am a human-shaped standing wave, and the flowing heat is an invisible river. And as I have this thought, it occurs to me just how much is going on around me, out of sight.

Somewhere out there, under the sparkling cloak of sky’s reflection, there will be cetacean chatter, and and herring burp, and crab squeak, and starfish pucker, and all manner of natural industry. Unseeable. There is often a sense of sweet heartbreak, in realising the limits to which my meagre senses can touch the world. So many good things to experience. Too many things I cannot perceive. And of what I can, there’s so much I shall never truly understand.

That’s all for now. I’ll be with you again soon to share more finds and moments from our adventures across the island.

Until next time, be sure to do something that gives you joy, and I’ll see you soon!

Reading distressing news articles about climate change is not good for mental health—and it’s not the whole picture either. For my own sanity, I thought I’d bring you some climate & environment news that can give us all a little hope…

There are millions of people out there, trying to turn this around. Here are some reasons to be positive…

Renewables meet world’s increased power demands

Last year, we learned that 91% of solar and wind projects green-lighted by governments were more cost-effective than their fossil fuel equivalents. In other words, renewable electricity displaced fossil fuels as being the cheapest form of power generation. That’s significant.

Now, think-tank Ember has released its seventh annual Global Electricity Review, and for the first time, we see an important knock-on effect. A threshold has been reached:

Record-breaking solar power growth has meant that the world’s increased power demands have been met by renewable sources, not only halting, but shrinking fossil fuel growth by 0.2%.

Year on year, the world’s energy demand increases, but this is the first year that the increase in green energy has matched the increase in demand, meaning that fossil fuels consumption has flattened out.

This illustrates that when green economic foundations are laid, the money follows the path of least resistance. We’ve all heard about climate tipping-points, but in this instance, the signs are good that we’ve reached a beneficial tipping-point for renewable energy.

Renewable energy is now officially king, and fossil fuels may finally be facing a marked decline, as existing coal, gas and oil power-plants reach expiration over the coming years.

Electricity is 25% cheaper for countries with renewables

Oil prices are becoming ever-more volatile, and mitigating oil-price shock is something governments are having to seriously plan for.

With the Iran conflict causing oil prices to soar, electricity prices have also increased, causing misery for consumers, businesses and the economy at large. But with each country having its own unique energy-supply mix, there has been plenty of data to draw from and compare, to explore whether renewable energy has a tangible effect upon this equation.

Think tank Positive Money released a report this week, demonstrating that countries with a larger share of renewable-energy enjoyed electricity prices that are on average 24.2% cheaper than other, oil-dependant countries—insulating them from price fluctuations.

There are many debates online, over whether wind and solar farms are worth the investment, but it seems that governments are responding to the cold, hard facts of economic data and reading the bottom line, recognising the need for greater and greater energy-independence.

SolarPower Europe calculates that Europe saved €100 million per day, since March 1st, and could save up to €67.5 billion by the end of the year, should oil prices continue to be elevated.

These numbers are hard to ignore, and hopefully, we may begin to see a doubling-down on solar and wind investment over the coming months.

Fungus absorbs equivalent to 1/3 of our fossil fuel emissions

Dr Toby Kiers received this year’s Tyler Prize, which is the Nobel-equivalent prize for climate science. She has been pioneering research into fungi and their ability to absorb CO₂, urging policy makers to roll out legislation that could protect existing fungus colonies and encourage the growth of new ones.

Mycorrhizal fungi forms vast underground networks of interconnected mycelium—hairlike tendrils that spread through the soil and connect the roots of trees and plants. This is where the term Wood-Wide Web comes from. As well as exchanging huge amounts of nutrients across wide areas, this system is also responsible for a staggering amount of carbon dioxide absorption.

“These networks move massive amounts of nutrients and carbon,” Dr Kiers explains. “They are responsible for drawing down 13 billion tons of CO₂ into soil systems every year – that’s a third of emissions from fossil fuels.”

Not only is this an astonishing fact, but it’s also one that’s under-represented when it comes to the carbon-sequestering conversation. Dr Kiers is exploring ways in which fungus can be utilised as a crucial part of restoring ecosystem diversity and helping habitats to better absorb CO₂. She is fighting for fungi to be brought to the climate table:

“To incorporate fungi into climate strategies, conservation agendas and restoration efforts, decision-makers need access to high-resolution fungal data on a global scale.”

When it comes to tree-planting projects, rewilding initiatives, agriculture and parkland, we have often neglected fungi as part of our planning. Now, with ever clearer data on fungi’s crucial role, we can not only start to increase our carbon sequestration, but improve the productivity of our crops, and the health and diversity of our natural ecosystems.

The potential benefits cannot be overstated.

Protecting nature, even in wartime

Finally, a beautiful, inspiring rewilding project in Ukraine.

Despite years of war, and an uncertain future, Ukrainian conservationists are continuing their crucial work, rewilding a huge portion of natural wetlands in the Danube Delta, in the south of the country.

This short documentary, shows how, even in wartime, great feats of conservation and environmental work can continue, not only helping repopulate species, but helping to heal the Ukrainian families and veterans who have been affected by the war.

It’s a truly inspiring watch…

Top tip on how to help…

It’s easy to feel powerless when it comes to doing something about climate change. The problem can feel overwhelming. But you’re not alone—millions of people worldwide pulling together. Here’s an easy way you can help too…

Switch to Ecosia—the climate-friendly search engine

Changing your search engine might be one of the easiest ways to help combat climate change. Ecosia is a search engine that spends 100% of its profits on environmental projects, such as reforesting and global conservation.

Tree Counter: I love that approximately every 45 web searches equates to another tree planted, so that in the top right corner of the page, it keeps a tally of how many trees your web browsing has produced.

They also have an interesting blog, that details their ongoing work.

It just takes a moment to hop into your browser settings and change the default search engine so that Ecosia is your go-to provider. Here’s a video showing some of the projects they’ve managed to complete over the last 17 years. It’s amazing!

That’s it for now. I hope this bit of good news helped lighten your day. And if you think other’s could help with a bit of good climate news, be sure to share.

I’ll return soon with more hopeful climate updates, but until then, look out for more of my nature walks as I explore the Celtic landscape of my island home, the Isle of Man.

This walk takes place on the western coast of the Isle of Man, on a very blustery afternoon in early April.

All is in motion today.

A willow stands bare against the greening hillside. Wind-stricken limbs flail and flex in a thick squall. These are not conditions for flying. And yet, in apparent defiance, a hooded crow drops stone-like from on high. At the very last second, and with a deft gesture of its wing, it cups a billow of air, and in doing so dissolves all momentum, alighting with perfect grace upon a branchlet.

It is a moment of sheer ballet, a beautiful whitecap splash on a roiling sea. Sometimes life slips unexpected gifts into your eye, to nourish the spirit.

We are scrawling a line along the west coast today, where seaward hills rise and fall like civilisations. Finally, after what seems like an interminable dark age of winter, life is waxing once more. Piney greens, spinach greens, lime greens, greens too numerous to name, sprout amongst the old straw. A green-shoot renaissance. I see emerald blades ripen and sharpen—unsheathing—readying to brandish and slice the matted tangles of yesteryear’s heath. The grass is dead; long live the grass.

At the base of rocks, the first worts and stonecrops lay out their stalls to attract the early diptera. And the wren-bard furnishes the land with liquid poems—all cascades, and trills, and burbling flurries. To passers-by, it recounts ancient wren fables: telling sad tales of feathered kings and their reigns over this Celtic landscape.

The blustery wind comes in from the sea today. And it agitates and scarifies the moorland, setting all but the jutting rocks into a maddened jig. Ragged hedgerows bravely hold their lines while violent gusts deal the blows of a dragon’s tail. They pummel me this way and that, trying to knock me off my feet. This gnarled and knotted air has crossed continents, after all. Growing in sinewy strength all the while. Who am I to halt its progress? I am restored of the reality of my insignificance, and acknowledge the great forces that govern the Earth. Do what we may, we serfs plough our meagre furrow at their mercy and whim.

And if this is just the dragon’s tail, then at the other end, there must be a fire-breathing maw, meting out ill fortune somewhere in the world. I think of distant shores beyond the horizon, lighting up with the glow of munitions and incendiaries; on the spitted-word of capricious rulers. Or of tree-dwelling fauna, fleeing in the wake of tumbling forests; adding zeros to a timber-tsar’s bottom line. Or even the swift strike of a noble hawk, that regent of the blue. Appearing without warning, to reap deadly tithe upon mouse or shrew.

Heads or tails? I’m thankful I am at the dragon’s tail-end today. Away from dangers I cannot control. I’m thankful the light on my face is cool and diffuse, and gentle. A soft seep of silver that illuminates the patchy cloud-cover and spills out across the sky. We often yearn for meaning, in moments of calm reflection. To ask, why this? And not that? With insight as our blade, to cut through that matted, tangled heath, and uncover the verdure of bright, green truth.

But if spiritual insight is not forthcoming, we can do well simply to be grateful. Gratitude, I have found, is one of life’s most profound teachers. Reminding us of the happy truths we are apt to pass over.

I remember a time of great pain, where, at the top of that neighbouring hill, and at the peak of grief, my wife said softly: “Be in the moment. What do you hear, right now? Tell me…”

A passing bumblebee, inspecting the heather. The breeze rummaging through the undergrowth, for something lost. And innumerable tiny leaves hissing in response. A distant fishing boat tilling the sea. Seagulls, squabbling on the shore. A stonechat. A pipit. My girls, laughing together as they disappear over the crest, in search of blaeberries. An arm slipping about my shoulder…

I’ve always remembered that simple moment. Sunshine in parted clouds. To find something, anything, to be grateful for, and to savour it fiercely, like September’s first apple.

I turn my attention back to the beautiful, diligent crow, with London-City plumage of charcoal and slate. Trying to ply its trade amidst the winds of fortune. The insolent branchlet bends under its weight, but continues to buck and squirm. Gripping with scaled claw, the bird becomes an extension of the tree’s convulsive dance, but for its head, which remains steadfast, and fixed in space. Aloof to the bronco willow.

Cocking its head to the side, the crow examines its temporary perch. A pit-black eye catches the light—absorbing what it needs, discarding a residuum as silver glint. Contemplating what it sees, its deliberate movements reveal a sharp intelligence, and it hops from branch to branch, wings tucked behind its back. A factory floor inspector. And inquisitiveness soon yields its reward. And the crow spies a thing to pique its interest.

With a stab of a baselard beak, it snaps off a twig and turns it around. Weighing it up. I wonder what it thinks, as it appraises its find. Is this stick to be tool or nest? Is it to be wielded as sword or as wand? The greedy wind makes a grab for it. But the crow is determined. Determined to use this twig to improve its lot, and with it, to exert a subtle change upon world—in ways pertinent only to avian minds.

Purpose is a hypnotic thing. To watch any creature with a purpose is to watch a mind at work. It is to watch ideas and decisions wrought from the inbound threads of light and sound and touch. It is to witness ingenuity and hope and aspiration, calcined in the crucible of sentience. It is to watch the very universe unpick and re-purl itself in ever more meaningful ways.

I may never know what the crow thinks. But I have witnessed a dark-feathered magic all the same.

We leave the crow to its corvid conjectures, to forage for our own purpose, finding an inviting trail that peels away toward the coast. It follows a stolid dry-stone wall, dividing the opposing ramparts of two hills, and running headlong toward the cliff’s edge. Gorse hummocks pepper the path, and a wayward step causes me to yelp in pain. Thankfully, a gust snatches it and throws it inland, before the others catch wind of it.

The dense grass slaps at our shins, and my youngest daughter has to take exaggerated steps to make progress. We crouch down to examine an exotic moss garden, stroking spoked minarets and curvaceous campaniles. All is dew bestrewn, as glass gleams across a city. Alpines intersperse in artful conclaves. And pebbles, winter-sculpted, stand as art, or monument. A careful aesthetic reveals the mark of some diminutive gardener. The black-backed scarab, perhaps, seen beetling back to its hole. We continue on our way. But the racing wind is bent on conjuring in us a fervent haste, and if I don’t slow down I shall miss a dozen such garden-cities in a single stride.

Soon, a sparkle-stippled sea lies spread out beneath us like finest cloth. Its royal blues are brocaded with foaming peaks, glowing in the afternoon sun. Above us, a splay of loose-spun clouds reach out fingers from the distant mountains of Ireland. The hand of an Irish giant, casting clod into water. As told in our island’s creation myth.

A cold air battalion hits us full in the face. Having marched, unimpeded, across hundreds of miles, it breaks ranks to flow around our party. I imagine a long wind-shadow trailing behind us like cloaks, rippling out across the sloping valley. Perhaps one such curl precipitates a bird into a last-second adjustment as it alights upon a tree. Such is the interconnected way of things.

My wife sits down amongst the springy heather, finding the air at knee-height to be still and warm. No wonder the roving bee and flickering moth stay close to ground in these parts. Having hit the cliff wall and deflected upward, the wind overshoots as it reaches the top, leaving a small pocket of undisturbed air. My youngest daughter plonks herself down to enjoy the calm. And my eldest ploughs onward with me, towards the cliff’s edge, and to experience the mighty gale at its fullest.

Clinging onto handfuls of grass, we anchor ourselves onto a slope, overlooking a two or three-hundred foot drop. The wind is a smith’s hammer, and might have beaten the breath from our lungs, had the view not taken it first. So it settles for our hats, which seem intent on eloping together. To get hitched, in the brambled wilderness.

The waters below seethe and swell, as if the sea-god hand of Manannan swipes from timeless depths. And where the waves crash upon the rocks, whipped egg-white foam is sucked back into the swash and folded into a meringuey mix.

Drawn to the carnival of movement, our eyes try to unpack what we see. Up and down have no meaning inside the torrid currents; gravity’s pull eclipsed by an unassailable churn. And uncountable millions of bubbles strobe and scuttle in all directions. The result is a watery band that extends some hundred metres out from the cliffs, fizzing with rippled, translucent strata. Each globe of air is a shining world, sunlit, hermetically sealed, and replete with the ingredients for life, turning the sea into a thrashing turquoise galaxy, in the first moments of violent creation. Awesome does not do justice. Each wave is an epoch, and we are witnesses as old as time.

Wherever one looks in nature, in every corner of existence, and at very scale, there is meaningful movement—an irreplaceable sequence of consequence and connection. Whether it’s a bubble-bound triskellion protein, unfolding in milliseconds, or the stacked, banked clouds playing out over an hour, or the lichen inching along the wall, and across centuries, or the vast and stately nebula, beyond the azure and unfurling over an aeon—constant, meaningful motion.

Strands of mycelium cause-and-effect spill out across each surface, into every crevice—frost-ferns and filigree—to manifest as an endless array of form and beauty. And dynamic systems too, some of which breathe and feel and think for themselves. So that when your eye is drawn to the whitecap splashes in this roiling universe, your perception flits between elegant science and unfathomable magic. My intellect proselytises rationality; my heart sings its spellsong.

I look out into the depths this of vast, unfolding sea. Each ripple borne of inscrutable world-sweeping currents. I look at my daughters and see two fragile eddies, spinning for themselves a purpose and a life, in the brief moment between waves.

This thought blows across in my mind, and its wind-shadow precipitates a sense of joy. Such is the interconnected way of things. Who am I to look upon this boundless ocean-universe and not perceive purpose in every action? Great minds, unseen and unlike our own, and tectonic connections too fine to discern.

I am reminded of the Celtic myth, that says all things—ancestors, lost loved ones, the old hooded crow, the ancient wren-kings; even the willows, and the grasses—return eventually to that great undertow of cognisance.

The dream that is dreaming us.

What magic might we discover today, amongst the green fire of spring? About me, the boughs seem to erupt in flame, licking each surface and spreading throughout the woods. Springtime in a forest is the work of some viridian enchanter. Sylvan incantations drifting on the breeze, coaxing life into the open, after a long, silent hibernation. All about, there’s a heady profusion of translucent chartreuse and piney scent. A slow and stately explosion.

The air is cool and still, but the shafts of sunlight bring a warmth to the back. To the arms and face. There are blue tits, robins, chiffchaffs and chaffinches hiding in the burgeoning umbra of firs and spruces. Before me, a sweeping brushstroke of baby spruce needles. Tiny starbursts, absent of sting, they are as soft as velvet. Yielding to the touch.

Have you ever dreamed of the perfect place to come and hide away from the world? A place that not only spirits you from the world’s troubles, but lifts you in a upswell of goodwill and contentment. This is that place.

I stand a while, in silence.

Tracing a path that skirts a silver sea, we come upon a rounding, and a lobed coast is revealed to us, in resplendent recursion, as echoing slopes of blue into blue.

Footsteps mark a gravelly beat. Crunchy and textural. Four-horned sheep, bleat to their tottering lambs to stand behind as we approach.

I turn seaward, into a blaze of phosphorescence. The sea is a broken mirror, smashed into a million shards, in the process of falling, spinning—forever and ever—each piece reflecting the sun. I raise my binoculars and plunge further into the distance. The sea now becomes mercury. Endless, innumerable wavelets are tipped with starshine, receding into infinity, blending into a sky of pure, radiant light. It is breath-taking.

That magical feeling of finding the edge of the wood, to discover another forested valley before you…

We stalk through sloped, soft-lit woodland, on turnabout paths and desultory tangents. We are walkers without purpose, only to meander where our fancy takes us. Following the coaxing call of a warbler, or a coal tit, and the hypnotic tide of air that sweeps through the canopy above.

Forest floor, similarly, is labyrinthine—carpeted with celandine, wood sorrel, fern and carnivals of moss, but hedged with bramble, gorse and spiked branches of spruce. Openings promise paths but lead nowhere.

Somewhere along the way, our sense of direction has been pick-pocketed. The forest seems endless now. And when we happen upon the edge of a glade, we find only a steep valley dropping away into shady parts, and more forest carrying ever onward, beyond, and beyond.

In the absence of any real danger or consequence, it is a glorious feeling to find yourself dislocated from wayfinding senses. Spatial awareness evaporated. No longer do I feel that eternal knowledge of where I am on this island. We are unspun.

Below, I hear the sound of water, moving at stealth through folds in the forest. I look out at this unknown landscape, as a stranger. At the precipice of adventure.

An arm grabs me. My daughter. Look up! Sometimes, without warning, you find yourself falling upward into an archipelago of green and blue. Forest inverted. Gravity inverted. To pause in your walk and look up is to remind yourself that there is another world up there, outside the palace of trees. Up there, the birds follow their airborne roads, clouds pass by on their watery errands.

Nature’s architecture seems preconceived to elicit awe, at every scale. But here, with heartwood pointing to the heavens, it isn’t only my daughter’s outstretched hand that beckons me to look up. These pine trees are love-songs to a distant sun, striving for a little radiant reciprocation to rain down upon them.

We stand there for a time, watching. The forest has uplifted my gaze, to appreciate a third dimension. And so, I ride a hundred sky-elevators, converging upon a blue starfish infinity.

Needled spires and a crown-strewn sky.

That’s all for now. I’ll be with you again soon to share more finds and moments from our adventures across the island.

Until next time, be sure to do something that gives you joy, and I’ll see you soon!

This walk takes place on the southern coast of the Isle of Man, on a warm afternoon in early April.

We reclined upon the soft knitted grass by the rocks, overlooking a wind-sired sea. The air was southerly and Sahara-warmed. And I felt the rare delight of wanting for nothing.

We had spent the last hour walking off our packed lunch, exploring the slaked rump of coastline called Scarlett, site of a prehistoric volcano. We picked our way over stepped, cracked shelves of hardened lava, and petrified mudslides riddled with fossils, scratching our palms on barnacle husks and basalt rind. To the rhythm of the tide’s ingress, we inched along a grike ledge, where I fought against my parental urge to hover protectively. Sharp rocks below rang, claxon-like, but years of wandering and clambering have instilled in my girls a caprine surefootedness.

Soon, we were up and over, into a series of natural trenches—left, right, left again—home to ancient lichen continents, forelands and peninsulas reaching deep into folded fissures and dank nooks. I found myself traversing a nation of bone brittle antlers, yellow rubber ears, pocked orange zest… I paused to open my hand-lens. Holding it up to my eye, I was instantly reduced to the size of a gnat, exploring yawning caverns, and galleries of living, lurid stalactites, beyond the reach of all but the elephantine red mite.

Three-hundred million years ago, this island would have been at the equator. A tropical paradise. Now, after the most dilatory migration, we are nearer the Arctic Circle than the Galápagos. But there is a rocky foreshore a little further along the coast, where the intertidal erosion has peeled back the layers and the years, to reveal a bedrock of fossilised sea floor, replete with ripples in the sand, coral fauna, and the echo of a palm-strewn shore with its exotic menagerie. To stand there is to enjoy a balmy, equatorial Tuesday afternoon, preserved for all time.

We scrambled down into another rent in the lava field, onto a shingle corridor wending its way seaward. To my delight, I spotted a driftwood choke, and after some rummaging, became the proud owner a staff, eight-foot tall and sea-parched. I wielded it as a third leg over unsteady ground, like the happiest troglodyte.

I stopped to inspect one of a plethora of rocks that seemed to be equal parts basalt and hole. They looked like oversized sponges, or prehistoric potatoes, wireworm blighted. Some of the holes were large enough to insert a finger, and rounded secret bends into parts unknown. I have seen profusions of such rocks all over this coast, and have always assumed them to be the petrified remnants of boiling lava, shot through with bubbles of searing off-gas. But my potato hunch was much closer to the mark, for these, I have learnt, are the homes of bivalve molluscs—tiny clams, mussels and scallops who painstakingly burrow holes in the shear rock, for protection against the relentlessness of pounding breaker and hounding predator.

With echoes ricocheting along the rock-face, furtive waves could be heard slipping into the channel ahead, pilfering pebbles on the retreat. Our route, however, lead us up and away from this hidden cove, and onto the springy matted grass that would be our temporary bed.

After hearty trek, we were glad to find the perfect spot for a sit. To sit and observe, to soak in every sound and scent, is the keystone to a good walk. It forms the sought-for destination, the point of apogee in a wide arc, the halcyon promised-land you’ve been picturing in your mind’s eye. Einstein said that two objects, moving in opposition, are in distinct relative frames, and thus, they experience time, space, and reality, differently from one another. To the landscape, we humans are simply motes flying past. To us, it is the landscape that rushes by, sometimes in a blur.

Only when you slow down, to match that thing you observe, do you enter its own frame of relativity, its reality, and truly begin to understand its point of view. So, to cease, for a time, our eternal fidgeting—our constant motion and frenetic human busyness—is to unfurl, like the petals of a flower, and become part of the landscape’s experience.

It’s so important to slow down, I believe, just long enough to stop being in your own relative bubble. To cease being just another piece of flotsam , and to live, briefly, as part of something much larger than oneself.

And so we plonk down our behinds, into the comfort of a yielding red fescue futon. With that unbidden groan of relief that seems to come with increasing regularity these days, we segued from transit, to long-sit. From free radicals, reacting to everything, to inert groundlings, wanting for nothing.

To recline is to open out your senses, to let go of secret burdens, and let the world do the rest. Now, instead of chasing view and horizon, I could let the sea come to me.

I watched the water, as incumbent purls drew closer, swelling in anticipation as they awaited their turn to splash against the rocks. Toward the front, lambent waves curled about themselves, sunbeams ensnared in their midst. They hung momentarily, at the peak of their arc, casting a blinding flash. Turquoise sea-glass held up to the sun, before breaking against the shore.

The four of us lay in various stages of repose. Eyes closed, my wife attended to the patterns of a white-noise symphony. Audial kaleidoscope. My daughters, on their backs, stared at a pageant of fluffy clouds. And propped up by my elbows, I gazed out to sea, matching my breath to the sigh of the tide.

From the eighteenth century onwards, British doctors prescribed to a gamut of patients a prolonged dose of restorative ‘sea cure’. Whether suffering from tuberculosis or melancholy or leprosy, people were sent to the coast to imbibe the remedial properties of seaside living. Today, cold-water swimming is enjoying a renaissance (one I sometimes partake in myself), recognised for the science-backed health benefits it brings. But if that all seems too bracing, there’s always the wave-smashed aerosols that suffuse our coastal fresh air with a mineral-rich tang. Simply inhale, and be healed.

However we label it—alchemy, adjuvant, or ameliorative ambience—it’s true that people living within one kilometre of the sea, are 22% less likely to develop mental health issues.

And so there I lay, recharging. Convalescing from modernity. A salt-stacked breeze laved my face. It’s cool hand scrubbed clean the residue of a busy week, leaving spirits bright. I could feel the sweet suppleness of a body drained of tension, and a mind at peace.

Over there, sifting through rock-pool pickings, a little egret lurked, apparition-like, over the blennies and shrimp. It’s so rare to sight this chalk-white heron, here on the island. It’s ghostly form is laced with an almost preternatural air. The worldly guise of a forgotten goddess, perhaps, or the soul of a long-dead sailor. Dotted about the sodden foreshore, the oyster catchers gossiped. Legs motoring like wind-up toys. Their skittish calls—lobed and serrated—are one of my favourites, evoking the evening soundtrack of our former home, just across the bay.

Somewhere about, I heard the herring gull’s anguished lament. Besieging Why? Why? Why? across the water. I dared not dwell too long on what precious things it might have lost. You see, it is for these perfect moments, almost dreamlike, that I live for. Snuggled up like mice. Mammal heat sensed and shared at our sides. Magical moments penned in the margins of daily life, they reveal to us a glimpse of what it’s like to really live without need or want. A moment of contented transcendence. Like that briefest feeling of glorious weightlessness, at the apex of a playground swing.

Out here, we are free from that engineered feeling of lack, that our phones and TVs promise us is real. Out here, on this spit of lunar coast, there’s no point looking for a phone connection. Mercifully, there are no signal bars, zero Gs. We sit in absentia of wi-fi hotspots. Which means there is no temptation to take a cold dip in a sea of information; digital anxiety, packaged as truth. So, in as much as eyeballs and ears, the Great Outdoors has, in us, a captive audience. Nature’s IMAX. And I am richer than the kings of antiquity.

I am grateful this sparkling seascape isn’t sullied with interruptive ads. It does not try to sell me anything. It guarantees me nothing—for I must enjoy the sunshine as long as it lasts. The comfort of my green grass bed, the rainless clouds, the toothless wind. I am not entering into a transaction, for things to which I must feel entitled. There is no small-print to read. Only the take-it-or-leave-it invitation to make myself at home and enjoy—to enjoy the hen harrier scouring the links, the sunshine surfing the waves.

To enjoy being, for this moment only. And the next. And the next…

As Spring awakes, something too awakes in me. A fresh breeze stirs in my chest, and I feel the need to get out there, into nature. As much, in fact, as is humanly possible.

We park up next to the Rhenass River, as it slips under the road and away into marshland, coiling through tussocked pasture and fringed with porcupine rushes. It’s one of my favourite views on the island. The kind that tugs at a wanderer’s heart like a land-bound siren. I see a pastoral idyll unfolding, of squamous walls and sunlight splintering on water, inviting the eye to meander and explore. But walkers—as I have lived to regret—will quickly become lost in a patchwork quagmire, a maze of waterlogged false trails that lead you ever away from the safety of the next stile.

Which is why we are heading up the road today. Up, and further. High into the hills, to seek elevation and be uplifted in the process. But first, a quick game of pooh sticks, to divvy out bragging rights. Twigs are cast into the flow. A sidelong glance between father and daughter. And a dash to the other side to witness a champion emerge. Having been handed an inferior stick, I lose, as usual, but I watch with a sympathetic thrill, as my twiggy vessel rides the tumult and off into that impenetrable landscape.

We begin our walk, and we are surrounded by a thriving moorland busying itself for Spring. It is the first truly warm day of the year, and it may yet prove to be a false start. With this caveat in mind, it evokes the kind of excitement found at a dress-rehearsal. In the light breeze, a cast of debutant greens, veteran straw yellows and scene-stealing blossoms take to the stage and jostle for position before opening night. We stride alongside, separate from the performance, like Broadway columnists at a preview.

We tread a grey tarmac ribbon, stitched with uniform white markings. It is interrupted by a blaring yellow cattle grid—across which we tiptoe and wobble—and decorated with a triangular red and white traffic sign prophesying bends. The contrast between grown and made could not be starker, and I yearn to be off and away from all things civilised. Into the thick of it—into the wildness of nature.

Though I have to admit, quiet byways and their weathered furniture do add a certain something to a landscape. For who does not feel pulled by the invitation of a country road, as it slinks off into the promise of distant things? It’s just, I’ve had a week filled with right-angles and smooth, regular surfaces, and predictable time-slots. I’m in the market for unfettered, beautiful, living disarray.

We pass a ruined farmhouse, or tholtan. It’s still in decent shape, but a family of young beeches has recently moved in, and are in the process of renovating it to their needs. Upon the still-intact gable, there lies a smattering of white lichen colonies. When viewed on a moonlit evening, they appear as bright stars against a black rectangular void—as if I stare upon a doorway unto foreign constellations, Kubrick style.

A pair of Sphinx-like sycamores guard the road, statuesque. They allow us passage, and soon after, we spy our footpath into the hills. It accompanies an unbending dry-stone wall that marches upward, away from the road. The path seems deceptively easy, though I know from the map that it breaches a generous sheaf of contour lines.

Here is a lithic line of intersection extending for a kilometre, as straight as a rule. It is an incongruous imposition on a terrain of curlicue gestures. And it is impressive. At times the wall falters, then stumbles, spilling out across the neighbouring pasture. Discombobulated rocks. Evidence of a shattering blow landed by the landscape. Defiant, it picks itself up again and continues its assent, without deviation.

As do we. And as the climb progresses, so our legs burn in protest. Our small party becomes strung out. A strand of striders and stragglers. We take ‘beauty-breaks’, to stop and admire the view. To concertina inward, and to catch a rarefied breath in the process. A shot of brown fur crosses our path, field mouse or rat, I know not.

Rodents not withstanding, I am happy here. Surrounded by singing grasses and their dry, rattling forebears. Yesteryear’s heather protrudes in puffs—tangled and confused, and burnt black by winter winds. The gorse is getting going though, sending forth tendrils of unseen coconut for bees and noses to follow, into yolk-yellow blooms wearing crowns of thorns.

I take out my binoculars and scan the vista before me. A fine haze is draped silk-like across loping hills. Just over there, a fairy tale cottage nestles into a stand of firs, and I recall, from a bygone age, my father weaving it into a bedtime yarn. And westward, a handsome farmhouse overlooks a dogleg reservoir, and I spot the path where my eldest daughter once slipped on the ice. And shimmering in the distance, the peak of Snaefell hosts a hibernating cafe, a mast, and a windowless hanger for the Ministry of Defence.

With the wall as our guide, we stomp ever onward. On its other side, ewes chaw and lambs frolic. At once, my youngest daughter stops in her tracks, her arm outstretched, signalling us to halt as if she were a black-ops Marine. We approach in silence. There, with black-bead eye glinting in the sun, lies a lizard. No, two—three! Basking at the base of the wall, their tails and bodies a study in sine waves. I spy tiny scaly hands with elongated fingers, engineered for gripping at shear angles.

We watch in wonder, hardly daring to breathe. It’s so rare to be afforded more than a blurred glimpse of these beautiful creatures. Stolid and motionless, they adopt the repose of a photo-shoot model. One of them sports a mosaic hide of green zigs and tope zags. The other, a Navajo loom-pattern in clay reds and ochres. Skulking in the crevasse between stones, there’s a third lizard, stubby-tailed and skittish.

Over a period of minutes we watch, as my youngest daughter inches closer, her hand outstretched. Four inches away from her fantasy, they turn and flee.

At the top of the climb, the wall ends, and we are on our own. Boundaries are for dene-dwellers. Up here, on the central pate of the island, there is only freedom. Up here, a congress of hilltops clash heads, allowing ramblers to crown-hop without limit. Or to drift as grains of pollen. And so much silence! Broken only by the contemplative Wheatear, as it chirrups its philosophy on timelessness. By the sprig-skipping pipit, and the raptorial harrier, and a hesitant breeze whispering soliloquies older than words.

We catch a ride on a rutted path that tapers out into a fine filament arc, stretching up and up into the sky. The slope is slight, but hillside keeps peeling away, the crest invisible or not yet made. A bumbling bee barrel-rolls through our party sounding as thunderous as a biplane, and then is off on some daring quest. I believe it’s the first I’ve seen this season. Perhaps it is the only wakened bee on the island. There has to be a first.

As we reach the top of our trail, the silence seems to swell even further, to a crescendo. It alloys with the sky, and the last audible strains sublimate into the azure abyss like impurities burnt off in the forge. The soundlessness is dazzling silver. It is thrilling, and flawless. Brilliant and tricksome to the ear. It quenches some need deep inside of me—to hold and to have such a precious thing. And it is assuaging too, smooth and cool upon the soul, like a balm. This—this shining silence is what I have been searching for.

Utterly relaxed, we pad softly, as if over sacred ground, so as not to disturb the peace. Now, we are truly elevated, in body and in spirit.

Underfoot there are now forests of moss, swollen and lush. Rivulets emerge from effusive ground, pooling, trickling, gathering. I watch as the feathered flows conjoin like an inverted delta, running off into the valley below as the first sketch of Ballaugh River.

When conversation bubbles up once more, no longer do we grouse about inclines and breathlessness, but rather speak words of hope. We share our plans for baking, or creating new clothes, or conjuring protagonists and villains for stories yet to be penned. Height, I have found, lets you literally rise above your problems. When you are hill-walking, the world of money, or the pressures of work, or leaky chimneys and packed calendars seem like abstract shapes from a murky dream. When houses appear as faraway specks, then the bills on the kitchen table are but specks within specks. Politics, and drama, and stress are merely the folly of ants.

No more are we bogged down in our tangled quagmires and waterlogged labyrinths. Up here is where the truth of it lies. And the air tastes so much the sweeter.

How often do we sense that cold rise of stress wash over us when we feel hurried or late?

Maybe you’re trying to brush your teeth, tie your shoelaces and feed the dog all at the same time. Or frantically work through your to-do list, only for more tasks to fall into your lap at an impossible rate.

Stress arises when we’re faced with challenging situations. And time pressure is one of biggest culprits there is. A recent study revealed that 58% of adults feel they “don’t have enough time“—that they are constantly rushing around.

I think that’s the key—a perceived lack of time. If you feel pressed for time on a daily basis, then you’re probably experiencing time poverty, and it’s a huge problem in society.

I certainly feel the pressure. My own life is filled with an unending array of commitments and interdependent responsibilities that seem to arise from the very substrate of modern life and entangle like a devilish cat’s cradle. Wondering how much of our stress comes from genuine time poverty versus perceived time poverty, I decided to try an experiment:

Can I change my perception of time, so I don’t constantly feel like it’s running out?

I came across a study recently, in which two groups of volunteers were given the same tasks in the same amount of time. One group, however, was artificially made to feel more rushed. Unsurprisingly, those under greater perceived time pressure performed much worse and reported more stress.

In real life, we do this to ourselves without the aid of scientists. A cup of tea takes 3 minutes to make, but if I’m feeling hurried, I try to speed up the process until it feels like a Formula 1 pit-stop—and inevitably, I begin to cut corners.

When we feel rushed, we make mistakes. We take risks. Neurologically, we disengage our higher faculties and rely instead on ‘automatic thinking’—a kind of shortcut mechanism intended for emergencies. Humans become cognitively impaired in proportion to their stress. Which explains why I knock over the milk bottle and spill milk all over the counter, giving myself another ten minute chore.

Making a cup of tea is one thing, driving is something else altogether.

According to one survey, one in five of us admit to speeding at least once a week (it doesn’t say how many others looked sheepish). We’ve all felt the pressure of being late for work, praying to the traffic gods for green lights. But there’s also that other, constant background pressure—not to waste a single second, even on the way home.

My wife drives long distances for work, and has learned from experience that a 25-minute journey varies by no more than 2 minutes, despite how it feels when stuck behind a slow vehicle. She witnesses drivers overtaking on blind corners—only to be caught up minutes later along the road. This is because, over the long run, traffic defaults to the slowest common denominator. It’s why we’re much more likely to encounter a cyclist going uphill rather than downhill.

Our judgement becomes impaired when under time pressure, and cannot be trusted. So this past month, I tried to stop rushing, and see if it helped. To do this I made three simple changes:

Change One:
I allowed more time before leaving the house. Actually mobilizing everyone five minutes earlier, to reduce that frantic, everything-needs-to-go-right pressure that makes driving miserable.

Change Two:
I allowed myself more time per task. Like Scotty in Star Trek, I began doubling my time estimates. So much stress comes from underestimating how long things take. I made a concerted effort to manage expectations—my own and others’—more realistically.

Change Three:
I deliberately slowed down. This was the hardest task of all. Sometimes, every fibre of my being wanted to rush on to the next thing. But since I knew that rushing doesn’t generally help, I kept telling myself: “it’s just perceived time pressure.“

The results?
After a few weeks, my stress has dropped noticeably. I generally leave the house on time. When driving, I can enjoy the scenery, or have proper conversations with my girls. And if I get stuck behind a lorry? No problem.

Choosing not to rush feels liberating. Household chores stop feeling like wasted time. I’m more likely to see them as experiences in themselves—not just barriers to the “next thing.” And if plans don’t work out? Well, there’s always tomorrow.

That’s the keystone to this whole process: letting go of the myth that we must make every single second count. We can’t be 100% efficient. Trying to be is exhausting. Yes, we have complicated lives, but there is an upper ceiling to what we can do with our time.

Of course, some time pressure is unavoidable. But if you adopt this mindset, and manage expectations, you can reduce a big chunk of it—and I’m sure you’ll really feel the difference.

Give it a try and let me know what your experiences are—I love to hear back from my readers.

I sit by the lake, watching the daylight melt away into dusk. The first wisps of evening mist roll in over the water, and I listen to the echoing exchanges of Canada Geese and Great Crested Grebes and Common Loons as they settle in for the night. All the while, amongst a backdrop of chatter and calls, I breathe—softly, rhythmically.

Above the horizon, I see Venus chasing the vanished sun. It hangs there, twinkling clear and cold, like a beacon—though in this particular moment, I perceive it as a symbol: that my troubles, however large they may loom, are but an imperceptible ripple in the wider surface of time. A reminder of cadences and orbits set into motion aeons before the rise of society, when the largest, oldest mountains were just tussocks on an empty plain. A dance of worlds more ancient than I my imagination can do justice. And as I contemplate this notion, I continue to breath—gently, deeply, contentedly.

I came late to breathing, so to speak. After breaking my nose in my youth, my airways were blocked for many years and I became unable to breathe comfortably through my nostrils. So I lost the knack. I forgot the art of breathing, that seems to come so naturally to most creatures. Labouring under a cloud of modernity, breathing became just another struggle. Most of my oxygen came via my mouth—unfiltered, dry, unprocessed by the carefully evolved structures of the nasal cavity. And so in doing, I gulped in far too much of the stuff, taking in more oxygen than my metabolism needed, subtly raising Ph levels, throwing off the careful balance between oxygen and carbon dioxide, heightening my fight-or-flight responses. I also developed asthma.

In the modern world, most of us breath incorrectly, it turns out—especially when we stare at screens, or feel stressed, or anxious, or when driving, or when distracted or preoccupied with multi-tasking and deadlines. Which turns out to be the majority of the time. In these periods, we tend to default to breathing through the mouth, without even noticing. In this way, breathing becomes the first of our natural processes to be interrupted under distress. It is our most immediate and crucial connection with our environment, and yet the nature of urban living keeps applying the pressure. We breath fast and shallow, signalling to our nervous system that we need to prepare for danger. Our adrenaline kicks in. We hyperventilate, ever so subtly, but consistently—like a drowning swimmer, gasping for air.

So in this first lesson, I want to turn our attention onto breathing: this most basic of all processes; the continuous ebb and flow that is our constant companion, fuelling with oxygen the fires of life burning in each cell, for the entirety of our existence.

I want you to be able to cultivate a true appreciation for breathing—even a love of it. Especially the slow, deliberate, deep breathing in which we learn to savour every lungful. As I sit here, the sky is darkening every minute, and I draw in the evening air by pushing out my belly to its fullest extent. Most people tend to breathe with their chests only, filling just the upper part of the lungs. It means that we do not fully exhale the excretions that build up in our alveoli. But full-belly breathing is so satisfying, and beneficial too.

As I fill my lungs, I sense the coolness of the gloaming—the moisture, the bouquet of fresh scents carried on the breeze as evening dew starts to form upon the thirsty mosses, and the grasses, and the forest of low-lying shrubs about me. Sometimes, after a time of deep, slow breathing, I feel my awareness begin to shift. A floating sensation invites me to relax my muscles. A feeling of deep tranquility washes over me and I ride a wave of well-being. Something physiological is happening here—a release of feelgood hormones, telling me that I’m looking after myself. That levels are aligning, and complex systems are coming into balance.

I get genuine pleasure from breathing—something that I would have scoffed at ten years ago. But with practice, I regained my ability to breathe comfortably through the nose. That’s because the soft tissues in our palette and nasal cavities are malleable, adaptive. Now, with each breath, it is as if I can feel the tide lapping against the shore, receding into the sea, crashing once more over shingle and sand. I feel the endless cycles that ebb and flow—the procession of stars, the orbit of moons, the migrations of birds, the great cycle of ice-ages, the flowering and withering of seasons, the lifespans of humans, the gathering and unspooling of galaxies—all in a breath. I have rediscovered something precious and deeply meaningful. I feel intrinsically linked to my environment. I feel more grounded, less stressed.

The breath takes a central role in many spiritual practices and beliefs. Taoists believe that through the breath, we may experience the contentedness of all things. And indeed, there is a sense, when you contemplate upon crest of a breath, that you are sharing in the world. You take into you that which has passed through a million other beings, plant, bird, insect, human; air that has migrated countless times around the planet, as desert winds, super-cells, cyclones, eddies snagged in litter-strewn backstreets, the great trans-continental currents that sweep the teeth of the Himalayas.

To take pleasure in something so basic and ubiquitous as breathing seems at once bizarre and also the most natural thing in the world. Whenever I am feeling less than optimal, my first recourse is to reestablish a connection to my breathing. To get it under control, to place my awareness on it and nothing else. In this way, breathing forms an anchor, and a path to equilibrium.

In moments of stress, or anxiety, I re-centre myself with breath. In moments of quiet, contemplation, of deep thought, or meditation, breath leads me to peace. But ultimately, no matter where I am, or what I am doing, I can gain instant pleasure with breath—which is a great card to pull from your sleeve, to counter the stresses of a normal week. If I can afford to be aware of my breathing, then in that moment—no matter what else may be on my mind—all is well.

And of course we should enjoy breathing—it is the stuff of life; our most immediate need, the constant reminder that we are alive, that we are mortal with a finite number of breaths—that life is precious and every moment counts. It is our most delicate tether that keeps us joined to the world. Stop for one moment, disconnect ourselves from our environment and we begin to feel the pain of a burning, aching chest. Abscond from the world for too long and we simply perish.

But in continuing to breathe, in drawing in deep, slow lungfuls, we can experience all the good things that the moment has to offer. On it are carried so many things. The perfume of a loved one, the spicy scent of cooking, the refreshing cold air on a starry night, the floral air of the heathery hills, the tang of the sea…

Breathing is free—it doesn’t require a license or a recurring fee. There is no tax to be had, no limits to your usage, no end to the bodily and spiritual gains to be had. It is outside of capital markets and targeted ads and billionaire gatekeepers. It is yours—always.

For my paid subscribers…

The rest of this guide unpacks the core teaching of this lesson and gives a practical exercise for you to try during the week, so you can put these ideas into practice.

If you you find modern life challenging—if you feel stressed, strung out, or a general sense of lack, then my ongoing series A Path to Meaning might be just what you need.

If you’d like to access the rest of this guide, consider upgrading to a paid membership. I’d love to have you along!

Read more

The late autumn sunshine beats down on a sleeping sea, and we stand elevated upon the slope of the hill, enjoying the utter silence. The air is chill today, and with it, comes perfect visibility. Perched on the horizon, Scotland and Ireland reach out their arms from behind the edge of the world. We see mountains behind mountains. We see snow-capped hills and quilted fields and the faintest pixelated fragments of coastal settlements. This is the setting in which I will eat my apple.

My daughter carried the apples in her rucksack, up the steep slope, having taken them from the fridge. Now I hold it in my hands, and it feels cold, like a stone plucked from a mountain stream. The countless atoms that constitute the apple have been bereft of heat for days, and now drink it thirstily from my palm. I can feel thermal energy slipping away with each moment, and I wonder how it might look under an infra-red camera.

Turning an apple from one hand to the next is one of the most simple and satisfying pleasures you can experience. The hard slap against your skin, as you feel its heft, its smooth, waxy surface—as you hear the pleasing timbre of sound-wave rippling through its seeded core. This apple is of the Gala variety. It blushes pink to red over much of its surface, but is flecked throughout with patches yellow, and speckles of gold. Like veins of lacquer, deep wine-reds adorn its lower hemisphere, tracing lines of longitude upon an edible globe.

The reflected light from the sea rebounds once again off the apple, in a delicious diffuse sheen, and I cannot resist any longer. I take my first bite.

A perfect apple crunch echoes in the chamber of my mouth and a burst of sweet fizziness washes over my awareness—made all the more intense by the cold. With each chew, more apply juice is released, and by a process I barely understand, a torrent of fructose molecules trigger a domino reaction of nerve and synapse, to light up the pleasure centres of my brain. It tastes good! Refreshing and satisfyingly complex in the subtle blend of its notes, I sense August sunlight, and autumn leaves, cut grass, pomegranate.

I picture the apple growing in an orchard upon a stem, upon a twig, in a foreign land, in a foreign soil. I see raindrops falling over its surface, reflecting grey and green. I feel the worm plough its furrow to aerate the soil betwixt forked roots, delivering the minerals and nutrients I now taste; that I now experience and conceptualise and ruminate upon. I hear birdsong and thunder, and feel an unfamiliar wind carry unfamiliar scents.

And as autumn’s sun gleams off gold-leaf foliage, I picture the fruit picker—hand or instrument; human or device, I do not know—and the fruit tumbles down into a old reed basket. Or it tumbles into a articulated net. And it is examined by eye and placed carefully into a crate. Or it is weighed and rolled and sifted on a conveyor belt.

I imagine a thousand hands helping it on its way. Or no hands, but a thousand minds, designing a thousand automated mechanisms to fulfil the process of delivery. I imagine the engineer at her drawing desk, conceiving of the perfect propeller for the perfect cargo ship. And the freight captain studying for his navigation exams. And of the German lumberjacks who fell the wood for the crates, or the supervisor on the factory floor inspecting recycled cardboard inserts with apple-sized divots.

All this feeds into the story of the apple, into which I now step. Into which I now bite and examine, with my senses, what no other being in the universe will ever experience—how this apple tastes. And how it really tastes is beyond any telling, so it must stay with me. My secret truth, and what a privilege. Other people may taste other apples, may experience other pleasures. But this one part of the story is for me alone, so I must do it justice. I must savour and attend…

The air is so still today. I hear no sounds. The three of us, father and daughters, silently eat our apples. Breathing softly, putting down our worries and fancies, I am mindful of the apple. Truth, can be hard to pin down. So much in life is uncertain, or contested, or denied. But there is truth in experience. And in this experience, the apple’s story parts ways. Its flesh I take into myself. The core I discard.

The world was brought together to make this apple, and I now take it apart. With a flick of the wrist, I cast the decimated core into the landscape, and it falls amongst the heather. The story passes from me. And through me. I hope that a bird’s keen eye may happen upon the core, or a shrew, or a rat—and carry the seeds in their gut, and so carrying the kernel of a new chapter.

Maybe a new tree might follow from this. That is something I will never know. In eating the apple, and partaking in its narrative, I glimpse the notion that meaning is to be found in the process—in the unfurling of being. For a time, my story entwined with the apple’s, and in doing so I entwined with everything else.

A fishing boat reaches me with its distant chunter. Conversation awakes once again. And we head for home.

Using Mindfulness to change how you experience life…

When I venture into nature, I use mindfulness techniques I’ve honed to help me gain a sense of true peacefulness, and to experience profound meaning where I might otherwise have been too distracted to notice. I also use it in everyday life, and my mental well-being is so much improved.

For my paid subscribers, I’ve created a comprehensive e-book explaining everything you need to know to get going with mindfulness—to lower stress, increase happiness, and gain a greater sense of meaning and connection in life.

You can download the 35,000-word e-book onto a Kindle or other device, print it out or even read it on your phone.

Yearly subscriptions are just £50, and are well worth the value. When it comes to self-care, I often think about how much we spend maintaining our cars or homes, compared to how much we are willing to spend on our own well-being.

If you’re struggling with stress, anxiety or want to find ways to experience more meaning in life, then consider subscribing today—let’s explore this together…

Even though I live on an island that’s immersed in Celtic culture and music, I also love to listen to music from around the world, and find great power in its ability to heal and uplift. Traditional music from India is particularly good for mindfulness and meditation, or even just to relax to in the background (I often put it on when I’m cooking).

If I’ve had a stressful day and want to be transported away to somewhere distant and peaceful, music from different cultures provides an easy portal through which we can step. Which is why I’m sharing with you six of my favourite compilations that are available online, featuring the unmistakable tones of sitar, tabla, bamboo flutes and Indian chants and solo singing.

These beautiful, haunting melodies are perfect for:

• Deep relaxation & Visualisation

• Mindfulness & Meditation exercises

• Mood-lifting ambience

• Productivity and workflow

Let your awareness be transported to a far away place, allowing its calming harmonies and rhythms to create a sense of inner peace.

Enjoy!

Video 1: “Classical Indian Music”

Details:
A relaxing collection of traditional Indian music from a variety of artists and albums. Great for when you want the musical flavour to change over the course of an hour.

Video 2: “Hariprasad Chaurasia – Raag Shivanjali”

Details:
A late evening raag with a wonderful devotional mood. Perfect for meditation and mindfulness. This pentatonic scale raag is relatively new to the Hindustani tradition, being originally a Carnatic (or South Indian classical) raga, and its status remains somewhat low among the classical ragas. It is treated more as a semi-classical or light raga. It is sung from late evening to midnight and has a plaintive, hauntingly pretty melodic profile.

Video 3: “Classical Indian Music”

Details:
Hindustani music style is mainly found in North India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. It exists in four major forms: Dhrupad, Khyal (or Khayal), Tarana, and the semi-classical Thumri. Dhrupad is ancient, Khyal evolved from it, Thumri evolved from Khyal. Dhrupad (or Dhruvapad), the ancient form described in the Hindu text Natyashastra, is one of the core forms of classical music found all over the Indian subcontinent. The word comes from Dhruva which means immovable and permanent.

Video 4: “Ancient Ragas for Calm Healing & Inner Peace”

Details:
This spiritual Indian music is more than just background noise; it’s a journey into the mystical heart of India, where every note is a step towards calm and healing. Let these ancient sounds wash over you, releasing stress and fostering a sense of profound well-being. Perfect for meditation, relaxation, or simply unwinding after a long day, this mesmerising soundscape will become your go-to oasis for inner calm and reflection.

And now for my two favourite albums…

I have been listening to the final two albums for more than twenty years, and they contain a deep significance to me. They have formed the backdrop to many significant chapters of my life. Some years ago, I was renovating our new home. It was the first (and only) house my wife and I had purchased—an old fisherman’s cottage—and it needed to be totally stripped back to the old stone walls and re-pointed, plastered, re-roofed, re-plumbed—you name it.

I spent countless long hours every day for eighteen months bringing the building back from the brink of ruin to the vibrant heart of the family that it is today—and with a dusty, mortar-splattered cassette player I listened to the final album, sometimes again and again.

It took me from the dark, cold loneliness of my building-site and transported me far away. I spent so much gruelling time in solitude, cut off from the outside world, I’m not sure I would have got through it without my cassettes…

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1. We tread through the yielding leaf-litter of woodland, in search of mushrooms—pausing to crouch, to kneel, to investigate. Craning to see under root and thicket, we are rewarded with Shaggy Ink Caps and Amanita Muscaria. And as we approach the magnetic call of a brook, we discover a single tree that has decorated itself with a fringe of golden fungi. Adorned with copper leaves and a sprig of fern, dripping with moss and bejewelled with mushrooms, this splendid tree looks as if its on its way to a ball.

2. I look up and an impressionist masterpiece hangs suspended above me. A fizzing, spilling profusion of Monet pointillism. Little cascades of greens into yellows, into reds. A meltwater light trickling down through the bows, from the cold glacier sky.
   
   Here we see change in action—wrought in colour and space. Arranged in a filigreed gradient is the lifespan of a leaf, a hundred-thousand leaves. From the base of the branch, to the tips of the twigs, to the leaf-mould crown about the roots. My heart skips.

3. It took fungus millions of years to work out how to digest dead wood. It was probably just figuring out the most beautiful way of doing it. Here, in a quiet corner, it seems we have happened upon another fairy village. It’s hard not to feel swept up in the sense of magic and alchemy, when all is a-hush, and the air is sweet with the notes of hidden activity.
   
   This log—once a beech—is now the scaffolding for a colony of mycelium, crisscrossing through heartwood and bark and spongy fibre, turning wood into wine; harvesting the essence of what made a tree a tree, and transmuting it with grace, into the next stage of living.

4. We’ve climbed the slope of Cronk Ny Arrey Laa—Hill of the Day Watch. It overlooks the south west coast of the island, with spectacular views of the cliffs, and glimpses of Scotland, Ireland, England and Wales. Once, the Celts would have stationed sentries up here—charged with lighting the beacon fires should they spot Viking raiders. It’s nearing dusk here, and the cairn stands inviting, despite the iron-heavy wind.
   

   My eldest daughter climbs the rocks, facing defiantly into the flow, staring out to sea like her ancestors. This is one of the tallest peaks here, so in this moment when most people are heading in through their doors, she might well be the highest person on the island—taller too than all those in the twinkling towns and cities across the water.
   

   Oh, the thrill of living!

5. We take a walk around the cliff-side castle, watching the waves marching in, and the seagulls testing the boundaries of flight. We watch the wildlife combing the coast for windswept opportunity. And from our vantage point, we watch the churlish waves beat their way onto the beach. Perfect for wind-surfing.
   
   At our eye-line, we see a fearless gull, tacking against the wind, it’s wings flexing wildly with each punch of air. Rolling into a gust, it suddenly dives toward the reeling waters, only to pull up at the last possible second…

   Herring Gulls truly are nature’s fighter pilots.

6. We walk, my daughter and I, past a string of neat industrial-estate units that were once fields I played in as a kid. Now are kitchen showrooms and business-to-business logistic solutions.
   
   I get that things change, and must compete and expand. That’s nature too. But it’s hard not to notice the carefree childhood ghosts, collecting sticks for dens, or hunting for frogspawn, or lying on their backs cloud-spotting.
   
   We slink behind the last warehouse, scramble up a slope and find a wilder trail to walk. I’m in nature—I can breathe again.

   There’s the pond, reeds head high. There’s the river that splits into two, where I once felt that invisible charge in the air that signified the boundary of my childhood territory.

   And there, at the end of the trail—just into the unknown—is an explosion of wildness. An uncultivated, forgotten parcel of land, left to its own devices. What is more splendid than a tract of land that’s good for nothing? Useless as farmland, too wet to build on. This is a place where nature can feel safe. Can run riot.

   We stare at the infinite tangles, the uncountable leaves, flickering, burning into their November glow. Windworn in places, to reveal the inner workings of the trees. Like a cut-away diagram in a picture-book.

   No right angles. No order. Just autumn in its fierce and writhing intricacy.

   With our hair whipped into tangles, we feel uplifted, and cleansed of all orderliness.

   We feel right at home.

That’s all for now. I’ll be with you again soon to share more finds and moments from our adventures across the island.

Until next time, be sure to do something that gives you joy, and I’ll see you soon!

Do you want to learn how to be mindful too?

When I venture out into nature, I use the mindfulness techniques I’ve learned over many years. It helps me gain a sense of true peacefulness, and to experience profound meaning where I might otherwise have been too distracted to notice. You can also use it in everyday life.

For my paid subscribers, I’ve created a comprehensive e-book explaining everything you need to know to get going with mindfulness—to lower stress, increase happiness, and gain a greater sense of meaning and connection in life.

You can download the 35,000-word e-book onto a Kindle or other device, print it out or even read it on your phone.

The following post is the introduction from my 11-day course “Mindfulness Made Easy”. It’s a comprehensive, 35,000-word downloadable-course on how to use mindfulness to help reduce stress, and experience life in more meaningful and fulfilling ways.

I use these principals all the time, having honed the techniques over a life-time of wandering the Celtic hills of my island home, thinking on how I can bottle that sense of tranquillity and well-being, and take it back with me to my everyday, twenty-first century life.

This course, and others like it, are available to my paid subscribers.

If you are interested in reducing stress, and learning ways to live more meaningfully, then consider upgrading to a paid membership. I’d be delighted to see you join the community!

Subscribe now

So what is Mindfulness?

Great question, and I’m glad you asked! Mindfulness is, at is core, learning to recapture the skill of being fully aware, and completely in the present moment—like when you were a kid. It’s learning to quieten your fears about the future, or the angst of the past, so you can experience all the good things right in front of your nose. It’s that wonderful feeling you occasionally get when all your troubles seem to melt away, leaving you with a deep sense of peace and well-being (all without the aid of alcohol, or smoking, or chocolate!). Let’s see, how can I best put it?—

Mindfulness is the taste of your very first ice-cream, it’s the sunshine that warms your face on the first day of your holiday or the last day of school, it’s lying on your back, staring at clouds and feeling as if you are up there with them, floating and filled with diffused light. It’s that perfect moment of clarity you get when you’re six years old and you realise your going to be an astronaut. It’s watching your four year old child colouring with wax crayons, taking such care and absorption that you cannot but help join them in their fascinated trance.

Mindfulness is remembering how to be happy, how to be in the moment, to enjoy what’s there in front of you. It’s the relief from intrusive thoughts you get when you’re kneading homemade bread-dough. It’s the absence of a broken heart. It’s watching a ladybird climb a blade of grass. It’s lying in the comforting embrace of your partner. It’s the feel of a ripe apple in your hand. It’s everything you forgot you loved about the world as a kid. It’s how Yoda feels as he meditates. It’s the comfort of crisp clean sheets. It’s the warm hearth that a rescue dog sees for the first time, as she realises this will be her new home. And you too can recapture that feeling. Or perhaps even feel it, truly, for the first time.

Mindfulness is whatever you want it to be, so long as it isn’t the relentless stress, and anxiety, and judgemental thoughts, and multi-tasking, and worrying about bills, and doom-scrolling, and keeping an eye on the time, and remembering to re-insure your car, and hoping not to run into your boss, and checking your phone less than a minute after you last checked your phone, and being stuck in a crowded traffic jam when you want to be with your family, and trying to live up to some beauty influencer’s bullshit standards—all when you know that your precious time on earth is reducing by a second each second, and that you’ll likely be spending just as much time fretting over worries in your spare time.

Mindfulness is the absence of all that. It’s a feeling of quiet joy, a kind of peace in just being. And you deserve it too—because life is bloody hard, and there needs to be some kind of pay-off, that isn’t just the chance to spend 16 hours waiting in an airport for your annual vacation to materialise.

For example, I’m standing in the echoey, soft-lit space of a woodland clearing. The trees and forest floor are draped in the verdant clothes of spring. To my left, I hear a stream, cascading down into a hollow, to wend out of sight into deeper, more tangled parts of the woods. Above me, there is birdsong, trickling down from the canopy. I feel a breeze stir against my face, and I can smell the scent of pine sap, and wet earth, and fresh leaf.

In noticing all these details, and really paying attention to them, I begin to feel a deep sense of peace and contentment. I feel suffused with a feeling that says: “This is it! This is what living should feel like”. It’s like waking up from a fever dream to find that everything’s actually okay. After a pressured week of to-do lists, stress and background anxieties, this sensation feels like coming home.

So mindfulness, in its most fundamental form, is simply about learning how to notice things again. It’s re-learning that the present moment, your immediate environment, is just as important as constantly scanning the horizon for what’s coming. It’s about placing your awareness, calmly and fully, onto your immediate surroundings, and without judgement, just noticing.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But that’s the problem—we can all understand a concept in theory—we can all envy our kids or nieces or nephews at their ability to be completely absorbed in the now—but without the right know-how, it can be hard to work it into our day, when we really need it. Knowing how to bring about a sense of mindfulness, knowing when to deploy it, and what flavour best suits your situation, is what we’re going to learn about.

For me, being out in nature is like a balm: an antidote for modern life. It is everything that the frenetic, relentless world of twenty-first century digital living isn’t. Just being in nature seems to wash away all those everyday stresses that build up during the week, and so I need to get out into nature as often as I can. It’s the place where mindfulness comes to me effortlessly.

But of course, it’s easy to feel calmed and rejuvenated when you are standing in the midst of a picturesque forest. How about when you’re back in the world of people? When you’ve got a thousand tasks to perform? Emails to send, obligations to fulfil, problems to solve and all the other manner of things to dwell and worry about? Life is precarious and it could come crashing down at any moment, right?

How on earth do we keep our heads, or maintain any sense of equilibrium during the trying times of the week, when you’re surrounded by grey concrete or squalls of commuters or a phone that keeps pinging you with distractions? How do you achieve peace or contentedness then?

Now this bit will scare you...

Well, this is what mindfulness helps us with. Mindfulness is the set of skills we learn in order to help us keep our shit together. Pardon my language. And here’s why it’s so important:

• Every year, 1 person in every 400 dies of a heart attack or stroke, of which stress is usually a significant contributing factor.

• Every year, 20% of people suffer from stress-related mental illness such as extreme anxiety, burnout or depression.

• Every year, 70% suffer from stress-related ailments, such as regular headaches, muscle tension, fatigue, and upset stomachs.

• And every year, 80% of people report a lingering sense of unhappiness brought about from stress—in the form of exhaustion, distraction, a sense of lack of meaning in their lives, or a feeling of being overwhelmed.

Which is why this course is so, so important. Combating stress is perhaps the most pressing health issue of our time. And we can begin to do that today, through practising mindfulness.

That’s what I’ll show you how to do.

Okay, I’m interested, but what else can mindfulness do for me?

Thanks to an ever-growing body of scientific research, we now understand why mindfulness has endured for so many centuries. Throughout history, across many cultures, religions, and philosophies—especially Buddhism—mindfulness has been used as part of a wider way to life. Today, thousands of psychiatrists, doctors and mental-health practitioners employ mindfulness techniques as a reliable part of their approach.

At a deeper level, mindfulness can lead to profound philosophical and spiritual insights. Many people find that it sparks a completely different and more meaningful outlook on life, allowing them the ability to really focus their energies onto things that are perhaps more important and enriching. That’s certainly the case with me.

Personally, I’m quite a sensitive soul, and so I’m prone to getting anxiety or stress. But mindfulness has been such an invaluable tool to help me find an anchor, to restore my equilibrium. But more importantly, it’s provided the springboard to a much deeper and richer experience of life.

Lets explore why it’s so beneficial, and how it can help us lead more fulfilling lives.

Benefits of mindfulness

1. Stress reduction

We already know this one! Mindfulness gives us the chance to press pause in our day. It grants us the space to observe and recognise our emotional triggers. By doing so, we can choose a more measured response, avoiding the trap of reacting impulsively and repeating unhelpful habits. Overall, we can drastically reduce the harmful hold that stress has over our lives.

2. Enhanced emotional well-being

Mindfulness teaches us to better regulate our emotions. By encouraging a habit of self-awareness and non-judgemental observation, we can recognise and accept our feelings without becoming overwhelmed, before they have a chance to effect our behaviour and cause problems. Over time, this can lead to improved emotional intelligence and an increased resilience in the face of life’s challenges.

As you become more proficient, you may find yourself experiencing a greater sense of gratitude in your daily life, as well as compassion or empathy towards yourself and other people. This is because mindfulness teaches us to become more attuned to our environment and more sensitive to the people around us. Consequently, relationships may improve, and you may experience a deeper sense of connection to the world. Who doesn’t want some of that?

3. Enhanced concentration, creativity and cognitive function

By learning to clear our mind of distractions, we can significantly increase our capacity for concentration and cognitive function. By learning to be in the moment, we become more able to find pleasurable states of “flow” and engage in tasks with clarity of thought.

Research has shown that mindfulness can increase grey matter in areas of the brain associated with memory, learning, and self-awareness. This neurological growth improves decision-making, problem-solving, and fosters an overall sharper mind.

Unleashing your creativity is a benefit that has the potential to bring about life-changing rewards. Practising mindfulness can free your mind from all those limiting thought patterns (usually stressful or self-sabotaging ones!), freeing you from worries and preoccupations, taking your creativity to new levels. It can help you become more open to new ideas, innovations and fresh perspectives you never thought possible. Now we’re cooking!

4. Physical health benefits

As well as improvements in mental well-being, mindfulness can be a powerful agent for improving your physical health too. As we attain a more peaceful outlook, it can positively impact our bodies, such as lowering blood pressure, lowering the risk of heart disease, stroke and other cardiovascular conditions. As it removes stress, it strengthens the immune system, allowing you to become more resilient to infection and illness. By combating stress, it’s also effective in treating many types of chronic pain conditions.

5. A sense of fulfilment

Finally, by learning how to anchor yourself the moment, and through developing a non-judgemental attitude, you’ll find you can learn to better cherish what you do have in life, rather than what you don’t. You’ll notice a sharp decline in impulse buying, external validation, instant gratification and consuming in general. No longer are you constantly striving for more, for its own sake. This doesn’t mean that you’ll stop achieving or are any less productive—rather, your new sense of contentment can be a profound source of happiness and fulfilment, one that propels you to focus your creative energies in areas that bring greater meaning to your life, and to others too.

When we get down to it, we all just want to be happy. That’s why we’re furiously scurrying around. And we can become so fixated on the process of fretting and worrying and planning, that we become blind to the happiness we can achieve right here, right now, if only we can learn how.

Conclusion

Around the world, right this second, there are countless overcrowded city streets where harried people try to push their way through the distractions surrounding them; and there are a million miles of rush-hour traffic, crawling along clotted arteries of tarmac, wasting precious hours of living; there are high-pressure workplaces where staff are asked to toil anxiously to meet their deadlines; and there are all manner of other adrenaline-inducing, stress-invoking environments that people must endure each and every day. Perhaps you have experienced these types of situations. Perhaps you are experiencing them today...

If so, then you’re in luck! This course will help you learn the ways of mindfulness. It will help you reduce feelings of stress or anxiety. You will begin to find a path towards greater creativity, productivity, contentment and peace. You may even find that sense of genuine happiness and fulfilment that all of us strive for, but so often fail to reach.

Download the rest of this course…

This course is available here for my paid members.

If you’re interested in ways and ideas for living more meaningfully, or would like further guidance on mindfulness, spirituality, practical philosophy, or achieving happiness, then consider upgrading...

After all, aren’t we all chasing meaning and happiness?

Subscribe now

1. We stomp into the high hills on a brisk autumn afternoon. The sky is thick today with a glassy light, percolating through spectacular galleries of cloud.

   There’s an isolated farmhouse up here—pleasing in proportion; surrounded by paddock, outhouse and barn. It’s nestled neatly into the shoulder of the easterly peak, with upper fields that rise into the slope. Protective trees, handsome and mature, form a buttress against the prevailing winds, and perhaps provide a harvest of fruit around this time.
   
   I often look to this homestead in wistful reverie. What might it be like to live up here, so immersed in the landscape, so removed from modernity?
   
   We chat for a while, leaning upon a wall of a million stones. It stretches away into obscurity, zigzagging a dividing line through a patchwork of greens. I wonder just how long it might have taken to build. Up in here, in the wind and the cold. Lithic art that will likely outlast anything I may create.
   

   

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2. In a patch of woodland, I happen upon this perfect button mushroom, secreted amongst a grassy fringe at the base of a tree. If I push it will a magical door appear? Will an opening in the tree-trunk reveal steps down into a subterranean realm, where I could glimpse the inner workings of the Wood Wide Web? Might a portal coalesce, apparition-like on the path before us, allowing passage to an ethereal plane?
   
   Sometimes I like to imagine the wonders that lie just beyond the reach of our senses. I cast myself back to the times, as a child—and even beyond—when I desperately wished the world worked in mysterious, magical ways, of the sort described in my favourite storybooks. Where extraordinary adventures awaited me, should I decipher the signposts that pointed the way.

   

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   Let me whisk you away to the glens, coastlines and hills of my Celtic island home, as we talk nature, mindfulness and How to Find Meaning.

3. We’ve climbed into the hills, half an hour before sunset, chasing a glorious vista, and that luminous swell of freedom and rightness that wild spaces so effortlessly induce. The land, like the year, has begun to rust with old age. The bracken and heather have long since gone over, swathing the hilltops with a layer of gingerbread.
   
   We do indeed catch a good view, from the very peak. We hunker into the side of the cairn and watch great galleon clouds cruise past—ships of the line heading out to sea. With cold, craggy stones at our back, we watch the day’s light settle gradually toward the horizon, slinking ounce-by-ounce into a distant realm.
   
   Snacks exhausted, spirits refilled, we head for home, following a clear line of quartz down the path, glowing a fierce blue in the twilight. And in the crisp, stiff wind, I hanker now for the waiting fireside.
   

   

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4. Even evergreens like to show off a wide variety of autumn colours. Not to be outdone by their deciduous cousins, the pines in this forest are perhaps at their most interesting when they go through their seasonal drop. In order to make way for new growth, the older needles yellow, then brown and drop off, to reveal younger sprigs in their wake. This allows for an interesting blend of mustards, ochres, gingers and spring-onion greens.
   
   We follow a trail upwards, passing moss gardens—lush and swollen—dripping in dew-spangled stars and spurs and fronds. Further on, we follow churning streams that tumble below us into deep, verdant ruts, to disappear tantalisingly out of sight, but not out of earshot. And my favourite corner—a steep tract of loose scree through which a brook slips and lingers, leaving miniature alpine rockeries around each bend. I always stop to say hello.
   

   

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5. Look at these slimy monsters!! If trees did horror movies…
   
   Covered in puss and slime, these Jelly Ears are actually edible (or so I am lead to believe). Used in Chinese cooking, they can appear in soups and noodle dishes, and have a chewy texture. It’s easy to make mistakes when foraging for mushrooms, so I would stay clear unless you really know what you are doing.
   
   In any case, these critters remind me of zombies, feasting as they do on the dead remains of this fallen tree, burrowing with tendril and tangled rhizomorph, to burst out of the tree-husk in a slimy profusion. Just looking at them sends a shiver down my spine.
   
   We press onward on our walk, but we must watch what we say, because in these parts at least, the trees have ears!
   

   

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6. Sometimes I wish I had X-ray vision so that I could see the complex exchanges between tree and mycelium, leaf mould and soil bacteria, moss and water. The Wood Wide Web is such a beguiling idea. The filigreed interconnections, the act of tree nurturing tree, species integrating with species. So much life, and drama, and communion is unfolding quietly, beneath the surface.
   
   It is perhaps within the moist darkness of the earth, that the deepest story of the forest is told. The tribal conflicts, the parental guidance, the mediation, the love stories, the rejections, and that synaptic tangle of congress through which a very distinct and nonhuman form of intelligence might, at this very moment, be expressing itself.
   
   All-the-while, we surface-dwellers stand under the shade of green alveoli, and are left merely to admire their lungs.
   

   

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That’s all for now. I’ll be with you again soon to share more finds and moments from our adventures across the island.

Until next time, be sure to do something that gives you joy, and I’ll see you soon!

Want to learn how to get the most out of nature?

I’ve produced a handy practical guide for anyone who wishes to start exploring nature.

Whether you are with friends, by yourself or with your family, nature walking can be such an enriching and rewarding pursuit—ideal for counterbalancing your daily stresses.

To receive your copy, simply subscribe below, and I shall send you a download link with your welcome email…

Hello all! I’ve been working away this last couple of weeks to produce a printable resource in PDF form for all my lovely subscribers, and I’m really excited to share it with you.

It’s a quick practical guide to nature walking (well, about 6000 words), for anyone who wants to get the very most from venturing into the landscape whilst minimising the the downsides that can sometimes get in the way of enjoyment.

My family have been exploring nature for years, and when I look back, it’s amazing how many tips and tricks we’ve picked up along the way, that help maximise our enjoyment outside.

It’s packed full of useful tips and advice for anyone who is wanting to get out there and discover the treasures in our natural world.

Hopefully, whether you’re a novice or a pro, there’ll be one or two gems to be found in the following sections…

Read more

1. As we traipse through the woods, we happen upon miniature villages of the fairy-tale kind—nestled between giant tree roots, camouflaged amongst fallen leaves. Pictured here are delicate, living parasols, hidden under a log. Gorgeous!
   
   They’re called Coprinellus micaceus, more commonly known as the ‘glistening inkcap’, and I can see why. Even in the afternoon, they look as if they still have the sugary coating of morning frost.

   

2. Further into our walk, we find another tiny dwelling place, tucked away in the fold of a fallen tree. Exquisite beauty, springing up from the husk of a slain giant.
   
   I love this time of year. It tingles the imagination in unique ways. When you creep through an autumn woodland, abound with mushrooms and toadstools, where every log drips with wet moss, where every hollow feels like an entrance, and every leafy enclave is a secret meeting place, it’s hard not to feel a sense of magic bristle over you.

   

   ---

   Let me whisk you away to the glens, coastlines and hills of my Celtic island home, as we talk nature, mindfulness and How to Find Meaning

3. A riot of autumn hues give these woods a carnival feel this time of year. An iron-grey trunk rises strong and stoic into the canopy, but all around it, the land is on fire. Rusts, and auburns, and bronzes and golds blaze in a festival pyre. Bracken flames lick the base of the trees. Beech trees crackle and flicker in the breeze. And contrasting against it all, the diminishing patches of greens shine out—sphagnum, grasses, the youngest sprigs of leaves—defiantly clinging to their summer colours. But how long can they hold out?
   
   About this time, in my coastal town there is a yearly celebration where lines of people march down from the nearby hills with blazing torches, lead by the armies of Winter and Summer. On the equinox, they do battle on the beach, in the light of a bonfire. Summer, inevitably loses to Winter. Vanquished for six months, until the ritual is performed again.
   
   And so we know which way this battle will go. Even though the players may be new—this year’s foliage, grasses, ferns and shrubs—autumn’s fire will eventually prevail, and all will be swept away, leaving behind the bare skeletons of trees, the dry broken stems, the scorched browns of last season’s heather.
   
   But time is cyclical, so hope is never truly vanquished. In the knowledge that spring and summer will one day return, we get to enjoy the colder seasons for all the subtle bounties they offer us.
   

   

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4. I’ve never seen a mushroom quite like this one. It must truly be the inspiration behind the term “mushroom cloud”. When my eyes fell upon this, it actually unsettled me. It really does look like an atomic explosion. Seeing it in three dimensions, from my Godly position above, it struck me how terrifying and heinous our destructive power is.
   
   Autumn is a time of landscapes winding down. Organic matter naturally reaches the end of it’s life, and is brought back into the embrace of the earth. Fungus digests rotting wood, bacteria break down leafmold and lifeless annuals. It is a time of destruction, but in a productive, natural and controlled way.
   
   Even though it is simply an innocent living being, getting on with the business of growing, and maturing, this Boletus Luridus unknowingly mimics the wanton destruction that we humans are capable of. I felt a kind of sadness, that I could not help but see the world’s biggest threat—humans at their most destructive—in its intricate, fractal form.

   

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5. This winding autumn lane is one of my favourite places on earth. I’ve been visiting it all my life. No matter what the season, it looks beautiful. Everything about this spot is spellbinding. The dry-stone wall, the old cottage in the trees, the marshland that pulls away to the north, the stream that cuts a winding path through it, providing a constant dreamlike soundscape of trickles and splashes.
   
   The stream goes under the road, and so as a child I would play Poo-Sticks. Now I do so with my girls. And across the way, there is woodland that seems somehow hallowed and enchanted. Yes, this place carries a magic about it. Perhaps it comes from a lifetime of memories, overlaying and enriching with every visit. Forming a kind of wordless, personal myth that is bound to the place. I can see past picnics, I can see hikes in all directions, conversations with people both alive and dead. And I know that this place has been absorbing such experiences for millennia.
   
   For me, it is a deeply meaningful place. Verging on the sacred.

   

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6. The wide open skies and grassy terrain in the north of the island feels so prairie-like. I often wonder what it might be like to wander the Great Plains of Montana. Here, in this little pocket of flat land, I try to picture myself there.
   
   For a little while, you can forget the sea is just over the rise, where dunes melt into shingle (you can just make out a lighthouse in the picture). And you can forget that behind me are the central hills and Snaefell Mountain. I can forget that I am on a small island not twenty miles wide. But just here, the skies are immense. They draw the eye. I am always struck by the sheer expanse of blue. The parade of clouds marching in unison.
   
   If I want openness and blissful spaciousness, I come to the north. It never fails to uplift the soul, after being enclosed within four walls.

   

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That’s all for now. I’ll be with you again soon to share more finds and moments from our adventures across the island.

Until next time, be sure to do something that gives you joy, and I’ll see you soon!

1. My eldest daughter and I stumbled upon this sumptuous fairy-tale toadstool as we explored a riverside trail. This one pictured was one of a pair that stood bright and bold against the forest floor, a door’s width apart—as if marking the threshold to an unseen gateway.

   I love autumn, and I am so excited by the amount of mushrooms this year. It seems like every time you turn your head, another has popped up through the leaf-litter!

2. A little further on, and my daughter holds up this beautiful leaf for us to examine. Works of art everywhere this time of year. Just lying around waiting to be admired. It’s tempting to bring everything back home and hand it on the wall, though here in nature is where it belongs and shines.

   

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3. Elsewhere, I promised my youngest daughter that we would visit an old haunt I used to explore as a child. We have to sneak across some farmland to get to is, so it very much feels illicit and exciting.

   
   Under the canopy of magnificent trees, we roam a stone-age hill settlement and listen to the quiet magic of the place. There are so many magnificent old oaks here, isolated upon an island of rock that rises out from the boggy quagmire like Avalon. At the top, the are still the boundary walls, where a round house might have stood. You can very much sense the echoes of past souls, getting on with their day.

   

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4. I found this beautiful Petoskey stone on the beach. The fossilised colonial corral from millions of years ago. That’s such a mind -blowing thought, just lying there all unassuming! Am I the first human to pick up this stone since it was a living, thriving underwater community?

   

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5. Another beautiful mushroom. This one looks like its made of wood! I can just picture a small gnome or pixie sitting on top, when no humans are looking!

   

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6. Fingerprint of the sea—the tide may have receded, but it left its unique mark upon the sand. Now, as the four of us traipse along the coast, we too leave a trail—a plait of meandering footprints that mingle in confusing ways.

   

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7. The burbling of a mountain stream on a still autumn afternoon quells all racing thought. This is one of my favourite streams on the island. Whenever we come here, whether to bask under the dappled summer sunshine, or to admire the gallery of autumnal mushrooms, I always take a moment to come and say hello to the stream. Its waters are so melodic, and the cadence of its bubbling steps and falls seems alive with personality.

   

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8. A little further on, and we cannot take a step without finding more of these gorgeous mushrooms, so beautiful and transient. Artful in their imperfection. Mysterious and otherworldly. These ones look exactly like the toffee-coloured beech leaves that lie strewn about it.

   

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9. I found a galaxy on the forest floor, dislodged from the sky and come to rest on a spider’s web. These delicate droplets hung from the invisible strands, playing with my perception. It truly felt magical.

   

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10. A stand of beeches, in congress upon the hill. What do they think of their fallen fellows, who one-by-one succumb to the harsh winds. These fellows, like the rest of their tribe, were planted by the Victorians—many now coming toward the end of their lives. Luckily, we can find dozens of smaller saplings that have been protected from the grazing sheep with chicken-wire. Hopefully, a new generation of beech with grow in their midst, and connect with their wise old roots.

    

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That’s all for now. I’ll be with you again soon to share more finds and moments from our adventures across the island.

Until next time, be sure to do something that gives you joy, and I’ll see you soon!