Over this past week I have been enjoying some deep, nourishing and much-needed rest. Each year as summer turns to autumn, I feel the urge to slow down, to let go, the yearning to burrow down and allow my body and mind to be restored is strong. This world we inhabit is fast-moving and can often leave us feeling over-stimulated and over-whelmed so it’s no real wonder that burnout and fatigue are so prevalent in our culture. We have to choose to prioritise our rest within systems that do not support or encourage meaningful fallow time, where our bodies can be refreshed, and our emotional and spiritual wellbeing looked after in a real way.

Last night, feeling the benefit of a week of downtime and self-care and compassion, I could see the light once more sparkling in my eyes as I looked at my reflection in the mirror, my body was no longer carrying aches and tension and I felt the call to go watch the sunrise the next day. I told my husband and he agreed to accompany me so that we could watch it together.

Not far from our home is a lovely little spot called Island Hill, a small island on Strangford Lough attached to the mainland by a winding causeway – the ideal spot to watch the sun come up. We made a flask of coffee, grabbed a blanket to sit on and clipped on the dog’s lead so that he could join us also.

We arrived about fifteen minutes before sunrise and laid out our blanket, poured coffee into tin mugs to warm our hands and listened to the calls of brent geese as they skimmed the surface of the outgoing tide. Their sound is magnificent and their arrival in these parts an indicator that the season has turned, that winter is on its way…

The morning is still, so tranquil, the coffee tastes good out here in the fresh air…

A momentary hush falls, silence before the display.

Grey turns to pinks and mauves. Then gives way to warm orange, red, fuchsia and purple.

There’s something so special about bearing witness to the dawn of a new day.

It feels like a statement of intent – to appreciate this beauty and also to feel reassured and grounded by its daily occurrence. It is at once both mysterious and reliable.

We sit together in the moment. A new day has arrived.

The birds once more sing their dawn chorus and resume feeding and we walk across the causeway to do a lap of the island. Chat and silence intermingle in comfortable companionship. I hop down onto the rocky beach, eyes scanning for treasures the tide might have left behind. I hunker down to pick up some rocks, holding them in the palm of my hand, closing my eyes as I feel their texture, alive to this sensory experience. There’s something about the weight of a stone in my hand that grounds me, that roots me down into the experience and into feeling fully awake in my body. How often we close off from what our bodies are communicating as we zoom about on autopilot, so many things to tick-off our ever-growing lists. Such a small, gentle moment that can bring us right back to the centre of who we are.

As we make our way around the beach back to the causeway, the calls of the brent geese remind me of Mary Oliver’s poem Wild Geese and so I go home, make another pot of fresh coffee and sit down to read it.

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Wild Geese

by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine,

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of rain are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

over the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting,

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.