I spent a lovely couple of days with my new nephew last week.  In the days leading up to his birth I was busy helping care for my young niece and nephew.  This is nice work if you can get it, and I’m in the fortunate position that my brother is also my boss, so I can!  We played games, read stories, and I practiced my refereeing skills, which mostly involved spinning the kids around in circles until they laughed so hard they forgot whatever slight or injustice had been making them mad. 

In four days we only left the house for food and hardware supplies. Before I said my goodbyes to make the long journey home, I had an undeniable urge to grab my raincoat and head out into the changeable autumnal weather to see if my cobwebs would blow away with the leaves.  I think I’ve always had this urge to get outside, but when I was young I hadn’t pegged myself as outdoorsy, so I didn’t really understand what it was.  Tired and irritable after a long day, I would curl up on the sofa with a glass of wine and some comfort food, when what I probably needed was a good walk.

Luckily for me, the older I get the more I understand myself (well, parts of myself anyway, it seems the self has a habit of constantly changing just to keep us on our toes).  It would have been easy to look at the weather and decide this probably wasn’t the best day to go traipsing around muddy fields, but I’m learning that if I co-operate with my undeniable urges, good things happen. 

On this particular day, my commitment to fresh air took me to a corner of a field on my parent’s land that I haven’t visited since I was a child.  It was a very small patch to explore, but it brought back memories of sitting in this small copse of trees with friends, as far away from my parent’s house as we could manage whilst still being within the boundaries of safety, thinking ourselves the only rebels in the world as we passed around cigarettes and substances.  I wonder what that teenage girl would think of me now; all grown up and finding that being outside provides the tonic she once sought, even on a blustery, showery day.

I was rewarded for following the urge to get outside with a double rainbow. I took a photo, I’m not sure if you can make out the faint second rainbow, as is often the way with natural beauty, it’s best appreciated in person.

How does nature reward you when you follow your urge to get outside?

Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.

Winnie the Pooh