Being in the Moment with Brambles

It has been a glorious autumn day.  I'm staying in the countryside - near where my mother grew up - with a friend who lives on the top of a hill, with views of fields, trees and neat white houses with red tile and slate roofs in the distance.

Left to my own devices for the day, I decided to walk down to the village, something I've never done before - I'm not sure why....busy road, bad weather, maybe?  But the sun was shining and as I set off down the hill,  I felt  I was on virgin territory, exploring new ground.  I was aware of everything around me, birdsong, water somewhere, an animal bellowing mournfully.  I looked at the hedgerows, laden with what I remember as hips or, perhaps, haws, edible (I think) red fruits on wild rose bushes.

Hearing the bellowing again, I looked over a hedge to see in the distance what appeared to be a black bull in a field of sheep, raising its head to complain loudly about something.  It spotted me looking at it and approached.  As it got closer, I saw it was a cow, and I wondered if it was in pain, about to give birth, perhaps, although it did not look pregnant.   We looked at each other for a long moment, until, diverted by another noise, I crossed the road, following the sound of rushing water, leaning over a stone bridge to watch a wide burn in spate, foaming over the rocks beneath, the spray reflecting the sunlight.   I sat on the wall with the sun on my face, just being there, sitting on the wall, listening.

I continued on into the village, passing impressively maintained gardens and handsome stone villas with names instead of numbers, boys in red strips playing football and families eating at tables outside the pub.   I found a coffee shop and sat at the window with an Americano and a chocolate muffin.  

On the way back, I saw the cow again, and trudged back up the hill, on the other side of the road this time, and spotted branches laden with glistening ripe berries - brambles! I began picking, taking off my woolly hat to put them in, eating a few, the sweet tartness instantly returning me to childhood bramble-picking expeditions with my grandpa, crawling through the scratchy bushes to find the best, the biggest fruits.  My fingers were purple, my hat heavy with berries. 

Lost in the moment, I found myself in the side road leading to my friend's house.  Hefting my soggy hatful, I looked up to see a group of young black and white calves sporting blue and yellow ear tags jostling one another against the fence.  I looked back and could still see the cow, calling sadly, head in our direction.  Was she their mother?  Did they hear her? Did they miss her? The smell of wet wool reminded me of my mother's 'jelly-bag', a sort of conical woolly sock, for straining the juice of the brambles to make jelly.  Maybe later, I'll cook them with some sugar. 

Today I found that I still have that ability to be in the moment which we have as children, and tend to lose as adults.   Sometimes in a dramatherapy session, engagement in activity, like the bramble-picking for me, or involvement in a story, like the one I was inventing about the cow, can absorb and divert, making it easier to handle the pace of contemporary life and the constant pressure to think ahead.

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