Solace in nature.
It’s fairly early morning. I’ve walked up to my local park, and am sitting on a bench in warm, morning sun – we are allowed to do that now*. I have coffee in my hand, fresh breeze on my neck, and the smell of mown grass which has lately been giving me pangs for camping in open fields with swallows darting across the ground and a sense of retreat from the constant hum of city machinations.
This morning, I have all this minus the swallows, and its 10 minutes walk from my front door, and I live in the middle of Bristol.
[*It is now the ninth week of our Covid-19 lockdown. Just for the record.]
Being immersed in the natural word teaches me a lot about the nature of making and creating (as I’ve shared in my podcast for a while), and in a lovely recent commission, I got to absorb and work with the fantastic botanical drawings of Joseph Paxton while making a short animation about his life at Chatsworth House. So eager was he to get cracking with his work as head gardener, he travelled through the night to get there from London and completed his first day’s work before breakfast. He followed the insatiable draw of being involved in things growing.
Animation detail for Chatsworth House project
I like being a careful cultivator of these ideas. If not actually planting in the garden or at the allotment, working with these illustrations and creating my own to tell Paxton’s story has been such a lovely way to spend the quieter days we’re in.
In a recent article, writer Lucy Jones suggested that ‘noticing nature is the greatest gift you can get from lockdown’.
“Slowing down and observing – these are radical things to do in our accelerated age.”
For a city dweller, it is difficult to accept and make sense of this current requirement to stay humbly local and not go exploring wide open beauty spots. I have a huge urge to get out there and take some really, really deep breaths! But solace in nature is proven, and this morning in a quiet, spacious park, instead of a swallow there’s a blackbird singing – I like to think for me, but he’s just going about his natural job of finding worms with a lovely self-initiated soundtrack.
Whistle while you work.
It is the job of a designer to slow down and observe. Seasons moving. A seed becoming a tree. Fruit coming after flower. Confidence to welcome unpredictable metamorphoses.
I wonder what will spring up next?
{Today’s Soundtrack: Kiasmos – Held}