Finding the familiar in unfamiliar places

How nature helps ground me while away from home

Hello, I’m Rachel. I write about nature and creativity to encourage connection and wellbeing. This is one of my regular posts about noticing nature and finding connection. To read more - go to my homepage and click the noticing nature tab.

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How do you feel about holidays? Is that a strange question - surely everyone loves holidays don’t they? Time to relax, be with friends and family and explore new places.

Well yes. That’s partly true for me, I do love getting away, especially when it involves places more wild and rural than my home.

But, I often find unfamiliar places unsettling, even places I know and love. I need time to get to know them again. I need to find familiarity, to ground myself, and feel part of the new surroundings. This then enables me to relax and enjoy being somewhere different.

Nature is a huge part of finding the familiar, as I realised on a trip last week. It’s a place I’ve been before, there’s even British TV (slightly embarrassing to admit but familiar TV programmes are hugely helpful in settling my nervous system) but it’s not home, so I don’t fully relax. But, although we were a few hundred miles south of home, in a landscape quite different to Brighton, there is still so much that is familiar. And that which wasn’t still helped as it sparked my curiosity to find out more about it- which makes it more familiar.

The first creatures to welcome us were the birds, as we sat drinking tea in the sun, the air was full of birdsong, nothing particularly rare, definitely familiar; Robins, Great and Blue tits, but because I rarely get them in my garden they immediately lifted my soul. Once we filled the bird feeders outside the windows, their visits became the backdrop to our days so the calm of nature noticing was always accessible. I know there are issues with feeding birds, but I also know the power it brings by enabling us to watch them.

A rare moment of Blue tits sharing the bird feeder.

This window into their world meant I could study them so closely. Many were so intent on feeding, I could stand just 30cm away from them, only the window glass between us. The tiny details, their seemingly fragile legs belying the strength needed to hang their comparatively rotund bodies upside down from the feeder as they stabbed at the fat balls. I can study the individual feathers, textures, and patterns as the wings overlap in rest along its back. Watching their interactions was better than a sitcom. The Blue tits are the dominating bullies visiting the most. They don’t approve of other Blue tits being around as they feed but put up with the Great Tits. Nothing else was around while the Nuthatch picked its way through the fat ball, finding what it wanted. The artist in me marveled at the silhouettes of the Nuthatches, pulling their familiar poses whilst grasping the metal feeder.

Nuthatches were a bit more skittish, so I couldn’t get as close to photograph them

The Robins were a rare visitor to the feeders as they are mostly ground feeders so take what the others had discarded from the windowsill. Though there were some attempts at the feeders, instead of hanging on they continued to flap their wings like ungainly Hummingbirds. Instead, I had regular conversations with one as he perused the molehills or sat defending his empire from the top of the washing line, just as I do with the birds in the cemetery at home. This connection and engagement grounded and connected me, and gave endless entertainment.

This is a limestone landscape, different from the rolling chalk ridges of home. The extra few degrees of latitude mean that some of the woods that cloak the hills are again familiar yet unfamiliar.

The forest floor, almost ankle deep in crisp crunchy sienna leaves leads me to time travel to autumn rather than late winter. These would have decomposed by now back home in our much wetter conditions. The leaf shapes are familiar, the lobes of the Oak and elongated ovals of Sweet Chestnut. Pale bare trunks against a winter blue sky are reminiscent of the Beech Bluebell woods of home yet here the winter forest floor, instead of brown and bare has mounds of bouncy luminous moss, half hiding decaying branches and layers of browning bracken. Spiky sweet chestnut cases punctuate the layers of leaves.

While all this is known, only the moss is common on my patch if not on this scale. The oaks are a different species and there are no woods full of Sweet Chestnuts in my part of the South Downs. These bring a slightly exotic feel, taking me back to childhood summer holidays in this region, memories of warmth despite the need for my winter coat. Yet, I still feel at home weaving my way through the trees, lots of tiny wonders catching my eye.

A delicate curl of bark and the winter light amongst the trees and mossy bumps

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This trip also reminded me what I want - and need(?) from my next home - to have much more nature around me, to be able to see birds and other wildlife from my doorstep, and sofa. To be embraced and connected. To become even more familiar and grounded in the natural world around me to benefit my wellbeing and give me more opportunities to help the world around me.

What about you? Is nature noticing a part of your holidays?

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Until next time,