What simple yet crucial techniques do you employ for your own thriving?

Meditations with Mother Earth

Day 8. Beach. Sunset. Mild and light breeze. 6th September 2024.

Who are the birds that sit on the backs of cows?

I find myself asking this question on my morning walk, looking up at the cows in their hilly paddock with a gang of the white birds all around, waiting, for what?

A pattern is emerging from this writing practice: where I walk each morning reveals the theme or subject of my art that day. Today it was the white birds. I have just noticed their arrival back here after a brief migratory absence during the colder months. They are another symbol of the Waking Season I will never forget.

Looking them up later I discover they are called (amongst other things): Cattle Egrets. I’ve wondered over years why they are so friendly with the cows. What do they gain from this partnership? A kind of protection? Apparently, it is much simpler: food.

They’ve colonised almost every continent of earth. The theory is that it is because of the expansion of cattle (by human colonisers, compelled to bring their own domesticated animals with them) to land previously unpopulated. The Egrets find the pace of cows (similar to other hoofed mammals in Africa and Asia), to be perfectly timed to disturb the insects and small lizards underfoot for the birds to swoop in and gobble them down. Any faster or slower and the rhythm is off. Cattle Egrets use the vantage point of a cow’s rump to watch for the movement of disturbed prey below. A simple, yet crucial, technique for their thriving.

Which gets me thinking about the simple yet crucial techniques I need to thrive (beyond the daily essentials that give and sustain life). For me, one way is daily stillness and by that, I mean planting my body on or between the wild-ish places and breathing with the Earth. It is an expansive stillness, deeper than just not moving (although there is certainly much benefit in this simple stillness too!) Another is my journal and pen. Combined I am gifted peace, attunement and the ability to fully feel myself: in my body and within the land Herself: belonging in the truest sense. Without this practice, I can let myself believe I am alone, yet, with it, I know I am thriving with all of life.

Later when I come to write, the mosquitoes urge me on, to a different spot to sit. Instantly the image of sun setting over sand comes to me. I take our friendly neighbourhood dog with me (not my boy, as he’s away with his Papa), because who can walk on the beach without sharing it with a loyal hound?

As I walk where I feel to, I spot a bird I haven’t seen in long moons: a turquoise Sacred Kingfisher. It sits wistfully on the sand, the sunset as her backdrop. I walk a little way ahead and there is her clone, a strange glitch in the matrix, sitting exactly alike, but a little way along. No glitch and no clone: just a couple out for their sunset beach stroll, like so many others.

After a beautiful, ease-full day, where I immersed myself deeper into the world of pregnancy and birthing, met another Mum on her third child, after a decade long gap (exactly like me), shared giggles with my amazing teenager, wrote and dreamed - I am driving contentedly home. The dry dusty road near our home, from a long day of pelting wind, has kicked up a glitter spell over the land. I look left to my favourite family of low-lying mountains, drawn by their majesty.

The spell of the wind and dust has swelled their majesty, reaching a long arm over the entire vista before me and scattering magic dust over it all. I am compelled to pull over. The car idling on the verge, I try (badly) to capture even a tenth of the beauty of the land: paddock abundant with cows, hillocks of weeds, large boulders strewn whitely across the wild grasses, a flowing creek, hugged by three mountain peaks on the horizon, warmed by the setting sun at their back. I feel lucky to live such a short walk from here.

I am led beautifully into a quiet evening alone. A rare experience for a woman with the ‘Holy Trinity’: children, partner, dog! I will cherish every bit of this day and night, even if it feels odd. I always have the mountains, the Sacred Kingfisher, the Cattle Egrets and my own peace to keep me company, even in the soft safe place of my home.