Not as mindful as I like

The forecast chance of rain turned into a downpour walking up to Hareshaw Linn waterfall which did create some great photographs and it had a wonderful mood about the place which I loved. My camera is not weather sealed so I had to be careful but I am and I loved sat in soppy mud taking a picture although grateful for the rain stopping on my way back.

It’s now dark in the mornings and with the rain its darker and I knew that I had to take my tripod with me. I am just not going to get hand held photographs even with stabilisation in this light. Tripods do not suit me , I love scampering around like a squirrel finding things to photograph , erratic but with flow. The flow with being able to see things is my preferred woodland setting. I associate tripods with being finicky and middle class perfectionism where you have to mess about for ages setting up for one shot.

I had noticed a few times , once whilst painting and the last time I went to Bull Crag that I had a need to rush and get home. I have developed this feeling a long time ago , an attachment to being in my safe place creating a condition that I am ok as long as I am in my place of comfort and safety.

It is counter intuitive as that safe place doesn’t create a life your want. It is not easy going out from that security mindset but when I do that draw to get me back can be really demanding.

I realised that I wasn’t as mindful and with peace with life as I hoped I was, especially now being in my own home. I couldn’t slow myself down with the tripod and felt rushy and inhibited carrying something which forced me to slow down. I felt anger and frustration and also , that feeling of wanting to get home and safe had reappeared, quite strongly.

I need to create some space and allow myself as long as it takes to go out allowing to slow my flow state down so I may incorporate a tripod and realise it’s just a tool for when you have longer exposure times and isn’t an identity or a bad memory of controlling people. My first step is to remember my mindfulness teacher “ be with the uncomfortableness” and “see what it is telling you”. A walking meditation helps with discovering and relishing in every single motion of your body with awareness. It helps you be more deliberate and to savour each morsel of action so I am planning just to do that without the need to make something.

The need to get home created the pace of my flow state of photography in nature. Slowing further down to each single movement and action opens up further things to see and to look differently at things which evolve your senses and instincts. It is a good practice regardless of process. I am not doing my old work anymore where the constant time sensitive pressure is incredibly high especially with ensuring everything is considered and checked.

I had mentally created a place , on my sofa , that did not have time pressures or demanding selfish people. I needed that space then , it was a place I evolved , meditated and sat just in silence. It was timeless space on that sofa and I knew if I could get there I was OK. I had outsourced all my wellbeing to a sofa but at that time it was my needed sanctuary. I could create space and within that space I could feel life without dread.

It seems that the clock is still ticking for me like an old wound and I need to get done whatever to get back to my safe place.

But now , I want the joy of being timeless in my work. Just a simple sit in silence when old feelings and memories arise wherever you are, allowing anxious energy pass without getting involved with whatever words pop up. A flask of coffee , being deliberate of creating a mobile safe space of being in your body : Letting your body hold you and your heart beat to settle.. As my mindfulness teacher says “ nothing to do , nowhere to be, just rest “.

It is work in practice for me

Hareshaw Linn

The rain invigorates the flow of water revealing the iron content in the rock as if each waterfall is bleeding. It is time to bless the water so it can heal the earth from our mis-deeds of industry and greed. Water remembers and resonates good and bad intention so we must balance out with goodness. The earth itself calls for help.

Remember to visit the stream , the brook, the river and the sea and place your hand in with intention of giving your love and compassion.

Dear water

May you be clean

May you flourish

May you flow

May you nourish the earth

May you remember love

May you sustain life

It is the droplets on plants and boggy mud draining into ditches , the saturated lichens on the trees coming alive and competing with each other to the best hue or tone , soaked fallen trees calling up the mushrooms which bring this place alive. I was angry at myself for not buying the dearer weather resident camera so I could experience this event in all seasons.

It had began as a curse when it bean raining trying to keep my camera dry but I had come alive , I was that mushroom poking its head to look around kneeling in the sodden earth being dripped on. I had been feeling low and these 2 hours of rain bliss brought me alive , I had reawakened to new vigour. This is why I am here to show nature in its joy of life.

Bakethin Nature Reserve

Despite the hard frosty ground there is a softness to the energy , a quietness and stillness that is like a grace note after the initial coldness. You have to just let it arrive through just letting in the place by your own silence : Its grounding and reassuring. Savour the moment and let in all your senses.

The plants look brittle and vulnerable with their tiny spines of frost attaching themselves muting the greens. It reminds me of abstract painting where a wash of white covers the intensity of intention , toning everything down. and transforming your senses into something which is only an illusion.

There is nothing like the saturated colours of an autumnal woodland. I have tried in summer but it is the depletion of colour and the softer light which creates something other worldly , something other, an other dimension. It is showing you that not all is as it seems , that there are layers to us all, some manifested and some to be revealed. Those layers are not memories but integral to us all and manifest in my Embodied Nature paintings , we have to reveal them to ourselves and include them to become whole.

In the Wild Painting

Fallen giants

shadow masters of the mist.

reaching out branches drowning

in ancient moss.

helpless dangling roots

lamenting their past.

bleached sodden earth

crumbling into a watery abyss.

its too late now

the earth has claimed you.

Christopher Evans

Left : Oil on 50 x 65 cm

Middle

Right

Bull Crag Peninsular

Out of the three places I visit this one is the hardest to capture , it is lovely walk and has a cadence of different notes of ecology whilst you travel through. But it is nuanced at this time of year and you have to go looking for its late autumnal story. It is for me to go looking , to make crappy experimental photographs and to re-connect back to loving what I see rather than anxiousness of a good photograph.