How are you staying connected with nature and the outdoors during the lockdown?
It takes me 10 minutes to walk to the supermarket. Usually I’d plug into a podcast: it’s an unrewarding traipse down litter-lined main roads which inspires in me nothing but a hankering for expansive moorland , tumbling gritstone edges and squelching beneath my feet.
But as lockdown has made the Peak District (which I had always considered ‘local’) seem very far away, I’ve started to explore my urban landscape. To my surprise I’ve found there a new connection with nature.
Earlier this week, rather than taking inspiration from some recently recommended podcast, I found inspiration in the wild plants that inhabit the 0.5 miles of main road between my house and the supermarket. If I’m honest it’s the first time I’ve noticed them, because these plants have a public image problem: they’re also known as weeds.
Armed with my smartphone, I stopped umpteen times on the 10 minute journey to capture yet another angle of these often overlooked plants. I stopped so many times that my 10 minute walk became a 25 minute adventure, with myriad diversions to investigate what this street or that might offer. All of a sudden, a dreary yet necessary traipse was full of colour, life and stubborn little plants that I couldn’t help but root for. If I can find all this life on the way to Aldi, what can I find elsewhere?
Since then, I haven’t left the house without my phone, but for taking photos rather than listening to podcasts! My new mission is to discover even more of the nature with which I share an urban jungle.
We’d love to know what you’re doing to stay connected with nature and the outdoors during the lockdown! Tell us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, or if social media isn’t your bag you can drop us an email.
Hati
