“We let our feet take us…”

“We let our feet take us out of the small local settlement and along a little lane into the North Pembrokeshire hills.

It’s the kind of single-track lane with a rogue strip of moss and grass growing down the middle of it, running between drystone walls and tumbling hedges.

It climbs up and over the boulder-strewn shoulder of a mountain and then down into a valley heavily wooded with broadleaf trees.

At a certain unremarkable bend in the lane there’s a greenway branching off to the left.

We take this track and leave the tattered tarmac behind.

Trees line the way, arching overhead.

Buzzards and crows call from the blue sky.

Echoes in forgotten languages still sound around the neolithic standing stones that have been incorporated into the dry-stone walls lining some of the way.

On our right runs a little stream which sings on its journey from a spring higher up the mountainside down to the sea.

We follow it down, our own oceangoing songs in our hearts as we meander out of the everyday world and into the timeless halls of the whispering woods, along a narrow ribbon of path, oaks rising taller and older all around us, holly and hazel clustering amongst an increasingly jungly gathering of sylvan revellers.

The light takes on a green hue and the air is alive with woodland scents, birdsong and the buzzing of insects wings.

As our feet feel the many textures of the ground beneath us, we let our awareness open to the fact that the ground can feel us also, transmitting our presence through the soil to the multitudes of insects and microscopic creatures that live there, to the stones and the interwoven root systems of the trees, as well as to the badgers and rabbits and voles and mice in their dens and underground nests.

Wonderfully, we are at each footfall communicating our life-walk to the intricate web all around us, each step spreading out like the flap of a butterfly’s wing through concentric circles of connectivity to all beings on the planet and beyond.

Yes, the Earth knows us as we walk her textured surface, is aware of us, feels each breath we take, each beat of our heart, each thought that flowers in the gardens of our minds…”