Nature – the Gallery

This week’s gallery post from Tara was one I couldn’t resist. ‘Nature’. Trouble is, it’s another one of those prompts that I could fill up with a 100 pictures.

Nature is what we, as a family, do best I think.

Whenever we possibly can, we head off to as far away from anyone else as is possible.

We’re lucky living where we do, that it’s possible to some extent even for a Sunday afternoon pootle. But when we go on holiday, we take it further, and go where there’s big skies, big hills… and very little of anything else at all.

The Brecon Beacons. The Peak District, The Lake District. The Yorkshire Moors…. Anywhere that we can find the freedom that space, and air, and quiet bring. Out on the moors we just… walk. Boring, yes?

Well, actually, no.

We don’t just walk.

We explore.

We experience.

We climb, and scramble, and breathe and… just be. We never actually even considered that when the children came along they wouldn’t actually enjoy hiking and walking the way we did – we just took them too.

And they truly love it.

Out on the moors, the only sounds from Red Kites wheeling overhead, Grouse exploding out from the heather under your feet, deer scattering across your path, unexpected waterfalls roar close by – the only rule is that you watch out for everyone else.

And they get to totally, truly relax.

Do whatever is in their nature to do.

They can run and climb as far as they wish.

They can scream from the very bottom of their lungs.

They can (oh joy of joys) spend a whole day building a dam across a stream.

They can stop and watch a weird blue beetle for half an hour – there are no clocks, no timetables; there is nowhere else we have to be but here.

They get to feel the earth breathing and smiling at them – and they get to smile back.

This post is part of the gallery over at Sticky Finegrs – do please go, explore, see what everyone else has done.