Thistles and Wild Roses

Come, sit awhile. Here, on this mossy rock, this hunk of granite hewn from the earth and placed here by ancient ice, laced and splotched with lichens and moss in black and chalk and green and grey. Come, sit awhile. Sink your bare toes into squishy, moist mounds of red sphagnum moss beneath the coarse heather that scratches at your ankles. Breathe. Inhale the upland currents humming with the sounds and scents of the landscape: the busy buzzing of bumblebees, hawk’s wing rushing on the wind and stonechats’ chatter, aromatic fragrances of bog myrtle and heather. Allow your gaze to wander, far, over rugged hills of silver-green, olive, deep evergreen and shades of grey—shimmering grasslands and greening heath broken with ridges and crags of shale and quartz—and on to distant, shadowed mountain peaks. Soften. Melt into the landscape, feel the thrumming of the Earth. Let your senses ripple out around you, widen your awareness. Feel the breeze rustling through the grass and through you and …