Building a relationship with the land

(Nimue)

It’s good to get to test theories! Since he’s been living with me, Keith has been drawn into some of my ways of doing things, which were unfamiliar to him at first. Recently, while we were planning a walk to look for toadstools, he shared some observations.

Particularly, that when you know a place through repeat walking, you really see how the seasons play out there. You notice all the changes.

Having walked some of the same places many times, for more than a year, he’s developed a sense of place and time that was not previously available to him.

Watching this process has been really interesting for me. I grew up in the area I live in, I’ve spent most of my life on the edge of the Cotswolds. Keith hasn’t lived in this landscape for long, and watching him build a real relationship with the area has confirmed for me many things that had thought were probably true.

Feeling connected to a landscape roots a person. It’s a source of stability. Repeat visiting and re-encountering are key to developing those feelings of connection. You have to encounter a place through the seasons to really understand it. There’s also something powerful about standing in a place and looking at other places you know, and having a sense of how the landscape connects.

The more time you spend doing this, the more internalised that sense of landscape becomes. Being in a landscape that is also inside you is a powerful thing.