There is rain on the window pane, and bleakness beyond: the closing in of early winter, with more closing in to come. It is not yet the festive season.
But the geraniums are heralds of change. Leaves may turn brown. Petals may be shed. But the insistent continuity of these flowers is a bright blessing in a grey moment, a vivid affirmation of the life force itself.
Contemplating these geraniums marks for me a distinctive point in the wheel of time, and the timeless Now that holds it.
A Scots pine in Hillfield Gardens (1), 28 November, 10.32 am. It stands out both as a tall tree and an evergreen. It asks me to look up and pay attention to it, and beyond it, almost losing sight of its deciduous neighbour. For me, this representative of the ‘eternal green’ has a commanding presence.
The Scots pine is one of the oldest trees native to Britain. It is also one of the trees associated with ogham lore (2), where the Scots pine is linked to the wisdom of overview. According to The Green Man Tree Oracle, ancient shamans of many traditions would literally climb to the top of a central tent pole or tree and “from this vantage point they could see clearly into the spirits’ inner world and come back with knowledge for the tribe or family they served” (2).
For me as for many people, the end of the calendar year is a time for reflection and taking stock. New year resolutions are a possible modern version of this process, but mine never really worked. They were overprescriptive and a way of setting myself up to fail.
‘Overview’ asks for a less driven and more contemplative approach, one more connected with Spirit. This is a good reminder as I start to wonder about how I am going to navigate 2026: divining what my contributions and satisfactions might look like as the Wheel continues to turn.
(1) Re Hillfield Gardens, Gloucester, see https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2024/11/22/
(2) John Matthews and Will Worthington The Green Man Tree Oracle: Ancient Wisdom from the Greenwood London: Connections, 2003
cold and bright an azure sky
frames the slender masts
affirming light in winter.
Alney Island at midday on 9 November. Looking up, I encountered a bleak majesty of now skeletal trees. Muted sunlight found its way through the grey clouds. In contrast, the river at my side retained a full, lush beauty.
As I walked, the tranquility of the scene was compromised at times by anxiety. The island is a wetland. It had been raining. More rain was due. The paths were puddled and muddy. The grass was soft and wet, half hiding twigs, leaves and slippery earth. I am still not fully recovered from my fall and this walk was a deliberate escalation in challenge. When I reached Richard’s Wood I stumbled over a tree root and nearly fell. At the same time I was able to enjoy a rich carpet of leaves at this late period in the leaf fall.
Among the trees I contemplated branches as living sculpture. It was as if I had reached a destination. Generally the branches were still holding on to at least some leaves. There were even new ones, in this fecund space. Eventually, my encounter with the wood completed, I turned round and made my cautious way home.
Where I live, autumn is becoming wintry. But winter has not yet come. Many leaves have fallen yet the trees are not yet bare. Whether standing against a severe sky or leaning in to water, they still witness their own vitality.
Along the canal bank, there are places where the green-gold beauty of autumn in this locality remains present, here on 5 November. I have a strong sense of continuing energy and life.
This feeling is most powerful for me when I hear the wind blowing through the trees and see leaves holding on even as the branches sway. Soon enough, these leaves will fall. Here and now, they are very much part of their trees.
For the first time since I fractured my shoulder in a heavy fall, I have walked beside the Gloucester canal. The period between 2pm and 4.30 on 28 October was particularly auspicious. Cool but clear. Blue sky and sunshine.
On this occasion, as I tentatively walked the paths, I found myself in a living world dominated by yellow and green. A fall was happening, but was not very advanced. I noticed my confidence in walking becoming more consistent and reliable. I felt good. I was at ease in the woodland world.
The walk was part of my coming to terms with an advancing age, in which the possibility of a damaging fall is priced in. I felt a little nostalgic for a distant past. At a time when I was impatiently looking forward to my fourth birthday I fell down a flight of stairs and simply got up again. I was pleased to have a story to tell my parents, but couldn’t understand their alarm when I told it. 1953 is indeed another country.
However most of my attention, on this walk, was on the walk itself. Pragmatically, it needed to be, and I was also increasingly held by the spirit of place and time on this benign late October day. I had a strong sense of here, now and home.
I had a goal of reaching a newly refurbished bridge for pedestrians and cyclists only. This would give me time to turn around and get home before sunset (roughly 4.45 now that the clocks have changed). A slowish two and a half hours is as much as I can manage as yet. From a recovery perspective, I feel on track.
I have now lived in Gloucester long enough to have a territorial sense of the city. When walking from a southerly direction, an elegant square and its garden signal my nearness to home. This signal is physical, emotional and psychic. My cognitive knowledge is secondary.
This signal is soon followed up by another, stronger one, closer to our apartment. Under looming grey clouds stands a tall, mature hornbeam. Once indoors, I will be able to look at it through our balcony windows – majestic even as it sheds its leaves.
The hornbeam is an iconic (I might almost say totemic) marker of ‘home’. Elaine and I do not individually own this tree and nor would we want to. But our city council does, with obligations towards it. That’s probably why it’s still there.
This sense of home and blessing: where does it come from? We are not migratory birds. But we used to be a bit more like them. Nomadic, but often within defined territories, however large, which we could get to know and love without the need for exclusive possession. There are people in the world who still try to live in this way but it is becoming increasingly difficult.
I speculate that part of my bodymind finds this arrangement natural, even though culture here is (mostly) very different. The feeling tone of my walking varies dramatically with different levels of newness and familiarity. In the approach to home, signalled not only by distance but also by landmarks, this is particularly strong. Perhaps this is the residue of a long lost pattern of life.
“All things ripen and rot that rose up at first,
And so the year runs away in yesterdays many,
And here winter wends again, as by the way of the world it ought,
Until the Michaelmas moon has winters boding brought.” (1)
Even today, deep autumn opens the door to winter. This was even more the case in the North Staffordshire and Derbyshire regions of 14th century England, where Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written. Even in castles, people were less sheltered from the growing cold and damp than we are. So readers and listeners of the period are reminded that the coming of winter is both natually and divinely ordained.
Here and now, the sight of the apple harvest in its later stages (pictured above) seems quite different than in the early ones (2) – less bright, less novel, less shiny. Rotting apples lie on the ground, now fallen outside the wall of Gloucester Cathedral’s orchard. From Nature’s exuberant perspective, this is all part of the plan. Waste is built in.
This time draws me further into the declining year. I am in the cathedral’s grounds, now looking at a yew tree and its associations with death. I’m thinking of the approach of Samhain (aka Halloween/All Hallows) at the turn of the month. Once it marked the 3rd harvest of the year – the blood harvest, where animals were slaughtered in preparation for winter. Now it is more a time to remember our ancestors, and our dead more widely.
Yet the seasonal moment, and the yew, can also be linked to wisdom and transformative change in life. I launched my contemplative inquiry at Samhain 2011. Like many people, I find that this period can be a resonant and creative time.
Below the yew, I have included a section of the cathedral itself. I have old personal associations linking medieval Gothic architecture with the feeling-tone of the declining year. I am also aware that this building is linked to the trees I picture and discuss. Gloucester Cathedral was a monastery when Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written but many of its features were already in place.
In the same space, I find both holly and ivy, with berries on the holly tree. I immediately thought of the Christmas carol The Holly and the Ivy. It is an ancient folk carol, which interweaves Christian themes and others that belong with the land. The version which is now popular was collected by Cecil Sharp in 1909 in Gloucestershire from Mary Clayton.
Many people think that the indigenous Pagan themes are the oldest, and that the central focus here is on the holly. The authors of The Green Man Tree Oracle say: “Holly’s connection with the Green Man is especially strong. In his guise as the Holly King – an ancient giant and symbol of fertility – the Green Man makes a notable appearance in the 14th century poem Gawain and d the Green Knight. Here he takes the form of a fearsome knight, who comes to King Arthur’s court to offer a midwinter challenge, carrying a club of holly and wearing a holly crown (as symbols of his true identity).” This challenge happens every year, where the Green Man/Holly King demands that we encounter him through our dealings with the natural world.
Elaine and I went to the Gloucester Cathedral Close and its surroundings on Saturday afternoon 18 October to outrun an extended period of gloom, wind and rain. We are now in it, so the lessons of the trees in deep autumn, anticipating the coming of winter, are not lost on us. The dark of the year is on its way.
(1) J.R R. Tolkien (translation of anonymous texts) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Sir Orfeo New York: Ballantine Books, 1980.
(2) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2025/08/22/ (3rd photo)
(3) John Matthews & Will Worthington The Green Man Tree Oracle: Ancient Wisdom from the Greenwood London: Connections, 2003
Recently, Elaine and I walked to our local park after a considerable absence. We were both adequately bold and mobile at the same time. We found a park very different, at least visually, to the sad, dried-up space of late August and its premature turn.
Here, above, is lush life against a background suggestive of mist. Close up, we enjoy the patterns and colours of the leaves. They seem fresh, radiant and alive.
Below, the distinctive yellow of the tree of heaven, and its fern-like leaves, provide a powerful contrast that adds to our enjoyment.
Looking from a somewhat greater distance, below, I experience a sense of majesty in seeing the whole tree (right) leaning into blue sky. Its slightly closer neighbour (left) provides a subtle colour contrast with a deep green intermingled with brown leaves ready to fall.
Below, I have stepped back further from the trees. My picture is of a clump of trees in the park. They are largish trees. The person walking past them is dwarfed. But I’m still enjoying leaves. I like the reddish brown emerging from residual green. I see Nature at work in a way that is both understated and beautiful. I know also that it can be a sheltering space within a generally flat and open park.
I still have a particular affection for willow, going back 20 years when I was studying Druidry. I was in Bristol and befriended a willow on the banks of the Bristol Avon, where it moves out from the old city towards the Clifton suspension bridge and the gorge. I became a literal tree hugger. It was part of a process that indeed changed my life. Hence my affection for willow. I am glad that there are willows in the Gloucester City park.
The road we took to and from the park offered leaves of autumnal red. I believe that the tree in the front garden is a stagshorn sumac. When I walk past the tree I get a little distracted by the property’s obvious need for a little tlc. Elaine however celebrates the opportunity taken by the Virginia creeper, as seen particularly in the second of the pictures below. It is great to see such abundance in this unpromising space.
For me, the great virtue of simple pleasures is their simplicity itself. Paying attention to the everyday Nature around us can be deeply nurturing and involves little risk. Yet for some, it can be a portal to re-enchantment in a largely disenchanted world.
‘Being’ can be thought of in a number of ways. One is to say that it simply is what it is. I am. The flowers are. No need for complications. I sympathise with this approach.
Yet when nudged to look at a 2021 post of my own (1), I found the following words based on the work of Eckhart Tolle (2). “Human is form. Being is formless. Human and Being are not separate but interwoven.” A part of my work in contemplative inquiry is to find a balance between human and Being.
For me, ‘Being’ is a way to talk about the divine, whilst keeping a distance from theistic language and its traditional associations. Some people use ‘ground of being’ in this sense. Experientially, silence, stillness, emptiness – the space between thoughts, feeling and things – open me up to Being. Feelings of joy and lovingkindness are likely to enter in. I find that deepening into Being enriches the human dimension itself – with all of its relationships, roles and activities in 3D time bound reality. In older language, it brings heaven to earth.
I like this use of language for its plainness and simplicity. Ultimately its assumptions are a matter of faith within a larger framework of unknowing. It simply describes where I stand within my continuing inquiry. I have also enjoyed being reminded of this use of words by my past self. It’s a personal benefit of having this record.
(1) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2021/03/03/spring-clarity/
(2) Eckhart Tolle Oneness with All Life: Awaken to a Life of Purpose and Presence Penguin Random House UK, 2018 (1st. ed. 2008)
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