Wild flower, what is your name? Curiosity as a practice.
"I'm always one per cent more curious than scared," Elizabeth Gilbert
Hello you,
How is May treating you? I didn’t know what to write for you. When I stopped trying, this arrived.
My bones click as I lean in, taking a moment to witness the tiny flash of colour in the moss and rocks. I take a photo then look up to see how far ahead he is. He waits, my love. Waits for me to take pictures of wild flowers I don’t know the names of.
On the way here we’d listened to a podcast about this place, Haweswater. Lee Schofield shared stories, long-term projects and mysteries.
Somewhere under the lake are the wrecked remains of Measland and Mardale Green, villages which were deliberately flooded in the 1930’s to make a new reservoir to serve Manchester.
Golden Eagles lived here until 2015 and there are alpine and rare wild flower species flourishing here.
I’m already heaving breaths as the path gets steeper and rockier. This is no genteel stroll. I’m not sure what I’d been expecting.
A hint of icy lilac at my feet is a welcome reprieve. I pause to take another flower photo and to breathe Cumbrian air into my lungs.
I recall, again, the lesson that is reverberating within me from earlier this week.
“The opposites of fear and anxiety are not peace and calm. They are curiosity and creativity.”
shared, paraphrasing the key premise of Martha Beck’s latest book. So me today, bending down and cluelessly taking pictures of petals and leaves on this ancient ground might mean more. Maybe it’s not just a silly whim. Maybe it’s a practice. A curiosity practice.
I wonder what this flower is called? Is it rare or common?
Is it native to this area? How long has it been here?
Earlier in the week I’d opened up the replay of the virtual launch for
’s The Book of Alchemy (which is amazing btw). Wondering if lessons from creativity masters might help loosen some words in my journal, I hadn’t expected such a profound and loving shove.Suleika and Lizzie were as beautifully vulnerable and wise as you’d expect. Even though I wasn’t watching live, I truly felt that we were in community, writing letters to ourselves from our fear. And then from our curiosity.
“I’m always one per cent more curious than I am scared,”
Gilbert said, beaming on my laptop screen.
Is that really all it takes? Just one tiny percentage point to move from the freeze of; “Who the hell am I to do this? Stop this now.”
to
“But what might happen if I try? What if I just take the first step?”
I keep following T and the time for looking for petals is gone. All my energy is focused on climbing and watching where I can put my foot between fist-sized rocks. My torso is wet from exertion.
Tendrils of cold wind reach beneath our clothes. The sort of wind you only feel when up very high.
So high you feel as though fears and worries have been left below in the boot of the car.
We eat our picnic sitting up against a dry stone wall by the trig. Just us, our sandwiches and the undulating fell tops.
Without planning to, we’ve climbed up to one of the highest points in the Eastern Lake District. And been rewarded with the magic of this particular hugeness.
How might I have been if this had been the plan all along? Would the climb have hurt more? Carrying the weight of that knowledge.
Getting back down the fell requires constant focus and tense muscles. It’s not the walk that tires me, but the mental energy it takes to decide where my foot can land every single time.
For so many months I have been overthinking and overplanning everything. Today was the opposite. I put my trust in the next step and not much more.
Maybe this unexpected climb was akin to being in flow.
And perhaps, like Liz Gilbert, I practiced feeling one per cent more curious than afraid.
Janelle x
“The opposites of fear and anxiety are not peace and calm. They are curiosity and creativity.” A timely reminder for me, and a lovely read on this fine Sunday morning.