I ended the last post with a picture of me standing naked in the snow and the question, “What’s in it for me apart from cold feet?”
This idea of getting something back is the prevailing attitude in society., that everything we do has to have a payoff. I’ve been practicing some form of meditation for the last forty years and remember in my early days when I was being trained within a Buddhist Monastic environment being advised this way of practice was not helpful.
Instead we were invited to investigate the process, to an adopt a childlike sense of awe and wonder. In short as is the case in Zen Buddhist tradition to have a “Beginners Mind”.
So this was how I approached the idea of being meeting Nature on Nature’s Terms; I only coined this term recently. At the time I didn’t realise what was happening and its only with hindsight that I can see how I have allowed the process to unfold.
I moved to this current house with my wife and our old dog in October 2017 and the motivation to buy the place was not the house but the land. It is heavily wooded and has a river that forms the eastern boundary. The water drew me in from the first and I began daily bathing throughout the year. Very quickly I fell in love with the river and every aspect of the embrace of the water, in fact my wife refers to it as the other woman. I got to know its moods and idiosyncrasies from when it is a trickle to a raging torrent and how if I approached it in the correct way I could enjoy the varying moods.
As a druid I hoped for that the same relationship would grow with the land itself and I seemed to be continually invited by the spirit of the land to engage but it was not until I began to walk naked and barefooted in the woods and the wild places that are just behind my house that this process started to manifest. Looking back I realise that with my interaction with the water I was making myself vulnerable to the cold and its ever changing moods. Walking in the woods clothed and with shoes was insulating me from the very spirit of the land that I was hoping to develop a relationship with. So the decision to walk the land naked, barefoot and in weather that was not always warm and sunny was the key. It was allowing myself to have that same vulnerability that opened up my relationship and allowed it to become a reality.
So I return to my opening sentence. “What’s in it for me?” it was with an attitude of curiosity that I began this, to some, unusual activity and what has emerged are a number of unexpected changes, the most obvious of this is a sense of place the like of which I have never known before. I spent 64 years living in Hertfordshire but after five years in this house and nine years in total in the area I feel so much part of the land I cannot envisage living anywhere else. Although in the conventional sense I own this property in fact the property owns me;
“I am the land“.
With this understanding and deep conviction, it occurred to me a while back that if I have both a deep love of the land and see myself as part of the land, then do I have that same feeling for myself?; this is the other part of the story. I have noticed how I have a real sense of self acceptance, maybe I could call it love? for myself.
So these changes have spontaneously arisen from my responding to the water and landscape around me. They were not expected and it’s only with the wonder of 20/20 hindsight that I can see how the whole process has unfolded.
I wonder where it will take me next if I remain open and curious?
Muddy Feet 
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