Hello friends,
It’s been a remarkably busy week and I haven’t had half the time I like to have focused on writing. I am playing with smaller snippets again, partly because I hadn’t had the space in my head to bring something together and make a single piece. Perhaps that’s for next week.
Before I let you sink into these words, a special note of thank you to for becoming my very first paid subscriber. I can’t tell you what it means to me to know someone thinks my writing is worth paying for. This is a free publication; I don’t put anything behind any paywalls, so to know someone wants to support me means the world to me. So, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Now, some imagery and some pondering, and most certainly a wandering of words.
Stepping out into a warm morning, the dew still clinging to the grass, the ground underfoot still damp. We chatter, philosophise and think aloud, but all the while I notice.
I notice the brilliant trill and swell of a bird’s sweet song in the oak tree. The tiny pink flowers standing quiet in the mass of green and brown grasses. The water trickling underneath the footbridge as I climb over stiles. The fresh cold seeping through my trainers and socks to my toes. We pass through damp patches of air clustered underneath the trees and into bright swathes of sunshine, so very welcome after all the rain. The beautiful trees, reaching high into the bright blue, are cloaked in the vibrant green of wet moss, a full-length luscious cape, pooling and covering their roots.
I notice the sheep skull, not quite bleached and dry, on a trail just off a steep road. I notice it despite my burning lungs and legs. I question it, asking why it’s there, who brought it, why is it so close to this footpath.
Around the corner and up another, steeper (was that possible?) track, and there’s the house. It stands behind wrought-iron gates, the kind that private estates use to keep us out. Black and rusted, and kept in place with stone pillars. We looped away further up the mountain (please, will this track ever stop going up?), and on to walk behind the house.
Then I realised it was the house that we call the ‘Scooby Doo’ house and indeed I wouldn’t be surprised to find the Mystery Machine outside of it one day with them meddling kids. It stands apparently empty, built from stone that looks more at home on the bleak Yorkshire moors than here on the edge of Welsh mountains. I had thought the house was higher up the mountain, I hadn’t expected to stroll past its darkened windows and empty gardens on this not-quite-summer day. We can see it clearly from the opposite slope, its strangeness not quite absorbed by the surrounding trees, its blank face watching silently.
Two walks in two days, through mossy forests, over tumbling streams, and past sprightly lambs, taking in the landscape and the place that I call home now. Perhaps I bring a stranger’s perspective with me, awed at the beautiful mountains, silenced by the rivers swollen and hurrying after the rains, humbled by the ancient trees I step amongst. I am a wanderer, my feet taking me all over the world, over the horizon, around the corner and down those roads, just to see what’s at the end.
But what happens when a wanderer finds the place her feet, and her heart, call home? When the pathways become familiar, the trees become friends, and the sound of those streams and rivers carving through the land becomes the beat of my heart? A wanderer can choose where to make a home, but I have this feeling in my bones that this place, these mountains and trees and streams, chose me and my soul to become a part of its weave.
I am awake.
I have always worried, since I moved to this beautiful place, that I will one day grow tired of it, or stop seeing it. Just like we stop noticing the beautiful painting that we fell in love with and purchased and hung and now forget is even there. If it was gone, we’d notice. We’d see the blank space, we’d know beauty once occupied the emptiness.
So far, after 3 years, I have not grown tired of this place, or stopped seeing the beauty. With each changing season, with every new path I walk down, every corner I turn, I see something that captivates me.
Perhaps it is because I notice. Perhaps it is because I am awake.
A low flickering candle flame, not quite guttering. Nodules have poked out of the wick and disrupt the flow of the fire so it looks like 3 flames that meet at the top, not forming that neat point we draw so often, but instead a wispy edge, almost feathered. If I could touch it would it be soft? Would they brush against my fingertip like the softest feathers, the way you can’t quite resist brushing over and again that wonderfully soft edge of cloth or fabric.
The wax is a beautifully creamy white, turning a soft shade of yellow around the flame where it has become liquid. It gives off a smell that is apparently chamomile, says the label, but smells more like just a candle. And that’s OK. It’s a stark contrast to the candle in the kitchen that I burn when I sit there, basking in morning light. It is spicy and warm, and so strong, you can smell it for hours after blowing it out. Occasionally when I sit at the table, for lunch or dinner, or a cuppa when the in-laws visit, I catch the scent again. I wish that candle would last forever. Candles are those things that enter our houses by various means, give us joy and light and warmth for several hours, and then leave again, emptied and purposeless.
I shift perspective. I am awake.
The laundry airer, piled with clothes, mostly jumpers. I feel like every jumper I own is there, hanging out for too long, probably going to smell when I remove them. I can see the robin now, who just hopped onto the acer plant pot, his orange breast looking vibrant against the dull brown of his feathers. It’s a small acer he stands under, but my goodness is it bright. Not quite the deep scarlet red of the acer we now call Sideshow Bob for the strange fluffy appearance it has when the leaves come back. This small one perches in the shade of the lilac, in turn sheltering the tiny pots of baby monkey puzzle trees. It is more a crimson fuchsia, brilliant and a triumph - we thought it had died last year. We thought it was gone.
Just beyond the laundry, on the windowsill, there are my new plant babies. Basil, honeycomb tomatoes and cucamelons. Their proud little leaves are trying to soak up as much sun as they can.
It’s raining outside. I can see it through the window just beyond the clothes. Perhaps the jumpers wouldn’t smell if they could be outside in fresh air. Laundry in the rain, that sad moment when you realise your washing has gone to waste and you probably need to rinse them. Though I don’t think I’ve ever smelled rain-rinsed laundry.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5d16b901-1be9-47b7-81bc-394d3dd7128e_3024x4032.jpeg)
What picture do the details paint of me? The tiny candle flame, and the garden in the rain and the robin under the acer sapling. Laundry drying, blocking some of the garden from view, the clutter scattered on the office floor, the picture frame propped up against the curtain that’s trailing on the floor, I should have hemmed it. The Ikea bag, solid blue and filled with shelves I haven’t put up, pillows and hats I don’t wear anymore.
What picture do these things paint of me?
Writing about the tiniest things has helped me in a way I hadn’t realised it would. When I wrote about the candle, the laundry, the seedlings, I didn’t think too much about it. When I came to read them again, and craft them into something else, that’s when I found things I enjoyed, when I re-noticed things I hadn’t thought about before. The phrase ‘rain-rinsed laundry’ was written, forgotten and then remembered with joy.
I wrote these details to a prompt for Beth Kempton’s Spring Light writing retreat. I also wrote that I felt like my environment wasn’t very inspiring, after detailing my laundry airer and the candle burning. Reading the descriptions and words back again, a few days later, I enjoyed them far more. Editing and excavating. Distilling and crafting.
The purpose was to think about how important a shift in perspective is. Even just shifting one inch to the left can make all the difference, and I wondered. What would someone else see, walking into this room? How would someone describe me from the things I see and the things I include in my words? What would someone else’s perspective be about me, seeing the laundry out for too long or the Ikea bag on the floor full of clutter or the papers scattered about?
Although I haven’t crafted a single piece about shifting perspectives that perhaps might have appeared if you had asked me several years ago, I have enjoyed writing and it has done what writing always does: healed me, awakened me and helped me understand me better.
So, what do you think about perspective changes?
Yes, I could go on into mindsets and subjectivity and whatnot, but I shan’t. I will, instead, return to my view of my garden, with the robin and the seedlings and the acer, and be grateful that it isn’t raining right now.
K x
P.S. If you’ve enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing for some more of my (generally) weekly posts, enjoying a wander through the world and thoughts and the odd bit of poetry (OK, maybe more poetry).
(Extra vulnerability warning now.)
P.P.S. If you already subscribe, and would like to support my writing (and me) more, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. No, you won’t get extras, not right now, but it supports my writing and it gives me the warmest feeling all the way down to my soul.
I’d also love to know - do you enjoy the voiceovers? Would you like more of them? Or are they offputting? Let me know your thoughts!
This is an essay written as part of the Sparkle on Substack Essay Club, run by the wonderful .
That was beautiful Karen, I noticed 🫶
I love this expression of being present, alert, awake. Noticing, embracing, and taking it all in. 💕
A great reminder to slow down and to not move through our environment so quickly.