Notes from April.

If ever there is a time for dawdling, it is now.

It’s no longer so cold you have to hurry through the landscape to keep the feeling in your toes. There is time to stop, time to notice. More than that, there is an invitation. One of reconnection; to the natural world, suddenly multiplying with signs of life, and to ourselves.

The light has started catching the undersides of leaves and blossom, illuminating veins and pistils. The pollen scent pulls me off the path and into the undergrowth, following the colourful signposts of wild flowers. I follow them, aware that in my ignorance I don’t even know the names of many. The spring colours perfectly contrasting with each other; yellows of the dandelions and primroses, and the tiny blue of forget-me-nots and bluebells.

There’s the smell of evening: a smell I can’t quite describe, and my memory struggles to grasp it the moment it’s gone, but it instinctively tells me that the sun is low in the sky and the shadows are beginning to stretch far beyond the reach of the their creators. I can’t remember now whether I keep imagining it, it feels so whimsical. But when it fills my lungs it reminds me to release the breath I’ve been holding – for how long? I don’t remember if it’s days or months now. Slowly oxygen is reaching those places I’ve been holding so tightly.

One day, with heavy legs that have forgotten how to climb hills, we’re out of the city. The sun casts its blue haze over the quiet horizon. It’s a different silence; companionable. One where walkers’ voices – so far away they are no more than specks – carry on the wind to your shoulder.

For a few moments I feel the pain as I slide my feet into the stream of water. So cold it hurts, and then, just cold, as the wiggle of my toes begins to feel sluggish. That still so tight part of me tells me to pull them out, back into the sunshine and the dry warmth of the rock. She’s too busy; already preoccupied with the the anticipation of wrestling clothes back on over damp, stubborn skin.

Instead I slide further in. The shock forces breath into my lungs – the deepest breath I’ve taken all year. Every pore of my skin at that moment reminds me to be here, now. After that, pulling my damp underwear back on just reminds me that I am alive and this is good.