It’s just near the winter solstice and the earth is cold, it’s been an incredibly wet autumn and early winter and even though the land slopes towards the river there is a slick of water running through the grass. My bare heel touches the soil and due to the muddy nature of everything it sinks in, the earth rising up to form a cup around the heel pad. As my weight comes onto my foot and rolls forward the outside makes contact, then the ball of the toes and finally the compression caused by my passing squeezes cold muddy water up between my toes. The next stride begins. These are my sense impressions as I mindfully walk up beside the river for my morning bathe.

But I see nature as sentient, everything is alive, so, if this is the case how does the earth perceive my passing when I walk on it?

Research is revealing more and more about the connectedness of all life, Suzanne Simard’s book “Finding the Mother Tree” part biography part scientific treatise covers her research in which she proved that trees and plants communicate through the mycelium that forms a web between them.

So I  believe its reasonable to assume that the earth itself plus all the microbes and minute beings also respond in some way to my passing.

The pool where I bathe is situated below a small waterfall and as I enter the icy embrace of the water, which to me has the most obvious experience of “life force” it closes around my body, forms its shape to my shape, how does the water perceive me?

I spent some time last summer trying to film myself in the water but filming from the perspective of the spirit of the water. It was an interesting exercise which resulted in some unusual reflections and translucent film where I could see myself reflected upside down and yet see my head and shoulders through the surface.

It really wasn’t enough, so I did a shamanic journey to the spirit of the water and asked, “how do you see/perceive me? I was immediately knocked off my anthropocentric perch by the response that I was just another obstacle to flow around. I had fallen into the trap of thinking I was something apart, whereas I was like anything else, a rock, branch or a body, simply something to flow around by the easiest route. Simply a part of it all.

Having considered earth and water I contemplated air, in some ways this is the most obviously intimate and ever present element. We invite it into our very lungs with each breath. Unlike water we are constantly surrounded by air and yet we can’t actually see it but we can feel the effects of air moving. Standing naked in the wind I notice the way different parts of my body react to the sensations and yet when there is no wind or air movement I can still perceive air when I move, the small eddies and swirls where I cause disturbance in the air by my passing are detectable. I have got to know the viscous nature of air when it flows around me, similar to water but much more subtle. 

So how does the air perceive me?