EMBRACING NATURE

Only a thin wall separates us from the night, from the yellow-flowered broom shrub blooming in the world outside, the blackberries, grasses and scabiosa, the trees, the stream flowing between the stones. The bats were already gone earlier as we closed the tent flap behind us and to the sky seeming to fill space with changing colours, transcendent in their effect as my eyes adjusted to the dusk.

I lie and listen to what I can no longer see, but its voice reaches me, so too its murmur and quiet movement. While the thin wall separates, it neither excludes nor includes, and it does not make us deaf to the outside or suggest a break from worldly concerns.

It’s the night wind that sneaks through the hazel bushes and rustles the leaves of the small walnut tree. You hear its soft step. The fine voice belongs to the dormouse. Now it rustles between the stones.