bewilderbrain
-
Into the dusk, into the changing season…An Autumn Walking Diary
The deep blue skies are clear but darkening, a soft beckon, a gentle thrall – the energy of day, and of summer – meeting the darker enigma of autumn. I seek to pause, to absorb, to let nature’s breath back… Continue reading
-
Exit planet dust – Our views are as parched as our landscape…
In a summer like no other, the only thing more startling than the searing heat has been the actual human people bathing in lukewarm insouciance and denial… Continue reading
-
The high summer healing of woodland shade…
The ancient bones of the forest have weathered storms and seasons, heat and cold, they remember when to rest, and they prompt me to do the same… Continue reading
-
The wild rose, the willow warbler, and the rabbits: Summer walking diary
Delicious summer drizzle, rabbits on misty fields, heady perfumed flowers, a bounty of birds and the worlds best highland cow… Continue reading
-
The weird horse and the buzzard – a brief encounter…
The horse begins to sidle, and I think its fair to say I’ve never seen a horse sidle before, along the pathway towards me… Continue reading
-
Walking diaries*Summer*Stolen streamside solace…
A few metres onto the track, I stop, take a deep inhalation of the rain washed greenery… the air takes on that deeper, fuller quality under trees… Continue reading
-
The Call of the Valleys – Walking a landscape to belong…
Those of us with nomadic pasts may struggle to feel rooted …Home is where the heart sings, the mind opens, and the footsteps are trodden fearlessly… Continue reading
-
Love letter to May…
In May, nature simply lifts a veil, and life flows in with wild and natural fervour. At this moment, the vibration of spring unleashed fills the air. Continue reading
-
Walking Diaries*Spring*The secret waterfalls…
The pungent dampness in the air becomes sharper and fresher – the landscape here is yet to fully greet the morning – and the rambling dandelions are still tightly closed – awaiting the first rays… Continue reading
-
Walking. The gentle therapy with warrior power…
Walking is more than an obligate therapy. It is connection, transformation, empowerment. It heals with primal pathways, bringing us back to our true natures. Continue reading
-
Walking Diaries*Spring*The Sunlit Mountain…
The coppery stream winds steeply through the ancient woodland, enormous moss covered boulders, flecked with sunlight, casting imposing shapes across its banks. I felt the magic ancient sense of this spot once before, and I feel it again now… Continue reading
-
Walking Diaries*Spring*The Forgotten Woods
Low sunlight pools into open stretches of land, reflecting off jewel-like deep green holly, and sending slender golden trails through bronzed leaves. Somewhere in the woods a secretive Jay emits a rusty call… Continue reading
-
Walking Diaries*Spring* Conquering the lost footpath…
The golden shafts from the canopy glitter with intensified force and mystery – reinforcing the feeling that the forest is mistress in these depths – and they illuminate a suddenly clear track ahead… Continue reading
-
Love letter to the Winter Spring crossing…
No other season change evokes this feeling. An infinitely peaceful, quieted world, that thrums with fierce hope and expectation. The close of winter offers a bold open landscape, a tribute to nature’s evolution. The first burst of spring absorbs its… Continue reading
-
5 ways walking the winter landscape will inspire and uplift you…
Pathways open to sweeping landscapes that were once hidden. We become masters of the land around us – for the first time seeing and understanding its contours – its rise and fall, the very bones and essence of its form.… Continue reading
-
Walking Diaries*Winter*The Wild of the Moorland
Beyond the trees, the land opens out, untamed and barren – tussocks of long grass the only relief to open plains of waterlogged ground. The wind travels unhindered across these flat moors, insisting on its wildness with every breath… Continue reading
-
Walking Diaries*Winter*Chasing the sunlight…
Dry stone walls ramble, reassuringly ancient, over the bare winter mountain, accentuating its stark seasonal architecture. They are innocuous but immovable, like tenacious bones of history – holding the landscape together. Continue reading
-
Bird Therapy – The RSPB Big Garden Mood Lift…
As we sit, we soak in the melodic interludes of song, accompanied by the ethereal swish of the wind through bare winter branches. You can smell the rain in the air, the damp chill freshness, combined with the earthy scents… Continue reading
-
The layers between us – Phones, connection, choice, and curated lives…
Our engagements are no longer being led by our base feelings, instincts, or preferences, and even they themselves are being perpetually modified by what is fed to us. Re-curated each day by the endlessly morphing algorithms of our life feeds.… Continue reading
-
Walking Diaries*Winter*Into a frosty wonderland
Winter opens such different vistas – landscapes once obscured, appear in different scale and detail, birds otherwise hidden amidst green canopies become suddenly and joyfully visible… On the forest side of the road, further evidence of autumn’s resolution not to… Continue reading
-
The Joy of January – why we should embrace the deep winter dark…
The dark invites us to fold inwards, to give ourselves time and grace for recovery and reflection, hunkered sleepily in a warm moment before the axis turns again. But January also holds a mystical sense – a brooding thrall from… Continue reading
-
New year nurture – re-imagining our resolutions
The turning of the year is a crux, a mental turnstile…nature’s inertia pulls us to look inwards, allow ourselves acceptance, reflection, inspiration, from the stripped bare world… Continue reading
-
Don’t let the Twelfth Night bells end! Why January is the best of Christmas…
To anyone else sitting amongst the Blackpool illuminations while every neighbour’s windowsill now displays a single well- polished bonsai tree: I see you….and I salute you. Continue reading
-
ADHD and the call of magic – how wild senses singularly channel the world…
Mornings like this one stir something deep in my senses, a slumbering winter goddess fashioned from shiny holly and wild air, smelling faintly of spiced hot-chocolate. Our view of the world, when we let our imaginations roam, unveils hidden shimmers… Continue reading
-
The 10 second brain spa- Micro mindfulness to calm and fuel the brain…
There are tiny moments we can feast on, if we let them in. To Fortify. To Edify. To penetrate the mists of everyday and offer sweet and fleeting haven to our brains… Continue reading
-
ADHD intuition – The world’s secret communication force – and why we should listen to it…
Across the airwaves, in living rooms, cafes, offices, schoolyards throughout the land, tiny networks of sparking ADHD intuition are leaping synaptically from one brain to another, sending out tendrils of communication, recognition and energy. If the power of such a… Continue reading
-
Walking Diaries*Autumn*A spooky dusk walk into the Wild Wood
It is T-minus 90 minutes till sundown. The impending dusk is creeping up the mountain like an embarrassed ghost. Strange rustles in the undergrowth could be furry creatures preparing for bed, or they could be dark ghouls with the stolen… Continue reading
-
How to spot Neurotypicals in the wild – Part One: Physical Oddities
It is not clear how the neurotypical is able to navigate fully without the useful rebound effects of doorways and table corners, but it must lead them to feel very disorientated to keep missing things wherever they go… Their dance… Continue reading
-
Walking Diaries*Autumn*Season of mists and fellow bootiness…
On a thickly foggy October morning, the high mountaintops beckoned me. The low autumn sun shimmered through a veiled sky, gilding the russet leaves in gold, and forming magical landscapes that emerged and evolved from the mist… Continue reading
-
Walking Diaries *Autumn* Cocooning calm on the canal-side…
Is there anything more tranquil than the gentle plop of a duck into the still waters of a canal? Soft autumn colours, tranquil reflections and comical birds in a gentle leaf-dusted ramble… Continue reading
-
Walking Diaries*Autumn*The secrets of the mountain..
A journey into a cloaked landscape. Skies overcast with the palest of greys have rendered a flat, still light, hiding the depth and contrast of the hills. It is like nature, in the midst of its magnificent tumble into autumn,… Continue reading
-
Walking Diaries*Autumn* Forest life from the coal dust…
Today’s walk heads into the land of deep evergreens grown upon the spoil of our mining past. A mountain whose landscape has changed and evolved through the mists of time… Continue reading
-
10 everyday ways to fight depression…
People call it the black dog. I think of depression more as a haunted Victorian governess who has been repeatedly washed on an old sock cycle. Continue reading
-
Walking Diaries*Autumn* The magical light of Equinox
The night has fought at last to equal length, and the shadows of the year are creeping up behind the trees. Despite this, the morning light of the low autumn sun is bright – iridescent – and this landscape on… Continue reading
-
Walking Diaries*Autumn*The bracken turns to bronze…
The mountain landscape, gilded in low autumn sun, is at the very cusp of change. Verdant green oaks spill their prolific bounty to the ground below, mingling with the first russet leaf-drop. On the open hillside above, the bright green… Continue reading
-
Walking Diaries *Autumn*The first whispers on the wind…
Enter that liminal time where summer flowers are fading, but autumn colours have not yet ripened. It prompts us to rove the landscape for bright splashes, hints of magic, and bold defiers of the lengthening night… Continue reading
-
Pivot! PIVOT!! Season change, ADHD, and the dark compulsion to move the furniture around…
That season change feeling… the sense of something indefinable, bigger, beyond our reach, shifting its mystical bottom. The earth moves on its axis and therefore the sofa must follow… in a slow-motion revolution to the dark side of the room… Continue reading
-
5 simple reasons why anyone should be bird-watching for mood and mental health…
It was just me and that blackbird on the grey dawn street, and it looked straight at me and started to sing again. I can’t completely put into words the strange little swell of feeling that filtered through me… like… Continue reading
-
Walking Diary *Summer* Cliffs, Coves and Choughs in wildest Cornwall
There is no walk quite like a Cornish cliff top. And today’s weather has furnished us with that most quintessential of Celtic weather systems, a blowy mizzler. .. Continue reading
-
Pack hard with a vengeance…The Action Epic of ADHD and neurodiverse holiday stress…
The pinnacle of the year… That coveted prize of a well earned holiday… Oh my poor dears, if only it were so simple… At exactly 2.45pm on the last day of the school term, I placed a cup of tea… Continue reading
