State of Mind
Sunshine is streaming through our windows, filling our barn with warmth and light. Jon is enjoying a slow yoga practice in a square of light on the floor. I’m cradling a cup of tea, wondering where my meandering thoughts will take me. The fog of Covid is slowly receding from my mind and each day I feel a little clearer and brighter. Yet early this morning, I still wasn’t able to collect my thoughts and stay focused, and on this first day back at the school run after 10 days of quarantine, I realised halfway down the long driveway, that my youngest was coatless (on a morning where I had to scrape ice from the windows) and missing her school bag. As my mind dissolves, intentions I was holding fly from my grasp leaving me in a dreamy and fuzzy reverie. It is a lovely place of peace and openess where I can step back and give a different perspective room to grow or a creative idea to blossom or where I can observe the flow of life around me. The difference now is that it is like pulling myself through thick mud to return to alertness and no amount of coffee seems to help!
During our quarantine I had watched the leaves turn to orange and yellow and float down from the branches, gilding the woodland floor with a layer of bronze. I love walking or running through the autumn countryside in the first and last light of the day, when the shadows stretch out long from the trees and the low sun spreads glowing light over the fields and woods. I had been looking forward to visiting the lake and gardens at Stourhead and admiring the magnificent trees, but I had missed the moment when the autumn colours are at their most vivid. So though the trees were mostly bare, Stourhead was still wonderfully beautiful. This time we walked away from the lake, following a slender valley to St. Peter’s Pump, a graceful stone pump house from the 1400s that rests atop one of the source springs of the River Stour. The sun poured into the green valley and the branches of the naked trees along the ridges gently rustled in the wind and we walked quietly with the sun on our faces warming our frosted noses, in contemplation, my mind feeling balanced once more.