I felt profoundly connected to the land where I grew up. The shape of the stepping stones across the stream, the spiky gorse bushes to the left that caught on my jumper as I clambered up the muddy path. These places still feel like a part of me. 

Moving at aged 11 felt like a rip away from one way of knowing the world, to a duller and more quantified adult reality, where of course the stones weren’t your friends and the forest did not speak to you. 

For most of life I dismissed my experiences as a childish overactive imagination. However encounters over recent years have brought me to re-explore connecting with the more-than-human world. The result has been a wildly beautiful journey of discovery and homecoming. Beginning with letting go of what I think I know about the world, followed by allowing myself to listen in new ways, paying attention to intuition and trusting my senses. Since then I’ve grown to acknowledge that mystery is around us all the time. And slowly a new world is unfurling.