The Long Mynd can feel bleak at the best of times, and February is a bleak month, but I was delighted to see a Grey Heron hunting around Wildmoor Pool where I parked.
It was windswept morning, but nothing daunts the ponies who are often to be seen on this quieter side of the Long Mynd.
It can be very peaceful just to wait and watch here in the silence.
We were joined by some ravens…
And then from nowhere, groups of golden plover in speedy, chasing flocks, zoomed overhead and settled in a combined large flock in a field just next to the road.
My lesson this morning; don’t under-estimate The Long Mynd in Feburary!
Out walking around Dudmaston in Shropshire I met this beautiful group of geese. It’s not such an unusual sight around the River Severn, but the way they were framed by the colours of autumn made more beautiful by the warm afternoon sun made it a lovely moment.
There’s a lot to be said for just being and enjoying the beauty of autumn when we have the opportunity!
“The swan uplifts his chest, and backward flings His neck, a varying arch, between his towering wings… While tender cares and mild domestic loves With furtive watch pursue her as she moves, The female with a meeker charm succeeds, And her brown little-ones around her leads”
from Wordsworth, ‘An Evening Walk’
Not much can be added to Wordsworth’s beautiful lines about swans, except for this photograph of a beautiful swan family, matching much of Wordsworth’s description, recently seen at Atcham.
It was the first time in my life that I had knowingly seen the small copper butterfly – on a recent visit to The Hollies, a nature reserve in Shropshire, just up from Snailbeach lead mines near The Stiperstones.
With a wingspan of a just a few centimetres, it would be very easy to overlook this little beauty, but its bright coppery colours contrasted strikingly with the green grasses and wild plants all around that it was impossible to miss.
You get the most fantastic views of other Shropshire hills at The Hollies – Pontesford Hill and Earl’s Hill…
And of course The Wrekin…
This photograph of the Wrekin shows holly trees to the left (some of the oldest holly trees in England grow in this spot – 400 years old!) and also one of the many beautiful rowan trees that grow there.
On the walk back to Snailbeach, of course there were views of sheep – this is Shropshire after all…
And some beautiful “tree writing”, as gnarled, twisting branches seemed to want to say something to me in arborial hieroglyphs!
“Even the predictable turns into surprise the moment we stop taking it for granted”
David Steindl-Rast
So a local walk that has been made many times and is completely predictable … isn’t, when you are consciously being alert and mindful and grateful for what is around you.
David Steindl-Rast’s saying is so true!
Glancing at the local, familiar landscape, The Wrekin seemed lit up by the golden views of harvesting…
And just looking up at the sky reminded me to wonder…
And then on the path in front of me was a beautiful common darter…
It was a case of the surprising predictable that wasn’t predictable at all!
David Steindl-Rast, in his book Gratefulness, goes on to say that in the surprising there is also the element of the gratuitous. Humans didn’t make this beautiful earth, or the clouds.
So the least we can do is wonder at, and appreciate, its surprising predictableness!
Lif4Gd 