Contemplative Inquiry

This post is about Hillfield Gardens (1,2) and the taste of psychic rejuvenation. Just being there, actively opening to the elemental energies of place and time, I felt confident, happy and strong.

The early morning of 20 November was misty and dark in a slushy, miserable kind of way; closed in and confining rather than magical and mysterious. Elaine and I catastrophised together in gloomy harmony about skies made unfriendly by perpetual drizzle and pavements made treacherous by hidden ice. The term stir crazy came up for me. We have begun to expect fresh air and activity outside the home. This time we planned to be in separate spaces. They are good in themselves and healthy for us as a partnership. So the tension of anticipated disappointment was in the air, for a long moment in a dull morning.

Then everything changed, with clear blue sky and sun. After an early lunch, I could wheel Elaine to her creative arts event and then fully stretch my legs in a walk to Hillfield Gardens. When I got there I slowed down again and shifted from a doing mode to a being mode. I became porous to the world – at once disappearing into it and expanding to embrace it. The snow on the ground looked beautiful to me and a crinkly fallen leaf both modified the picture and enhanced the look. William Blake once famously wrote: “if the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is, infinite” This brief eternal time (being in two worlds at once) – with the snow on the ground, and the fallen leaf – was like that, or at least something which pointed towards it. I feel tremendous gratitude for the experience. In its afterglow, I found myself feeling confident, happy and strong.

At a reduced level of intensity, I continued my walk. Below, My attention was drawn by a seat, and the snow around it, in a secluded corner of the gardens. Sun shone freely on the buildings, and the bushes, but reached only a small area on the seat.

In the most wooded and unmanicured section of the gardens, I found snow still present on a section of cleared space and pathway. Elsewhere there was no trace of it, even in this relatively shadowed space.

On the buildings below – blue sky, sun and shadow. In the picture below snow is just discernible on a rooftop and in a garden. During the period of my walk (1-1.30 pm) the gardens visibly changed. The snow was retreating and shadows continued to shift.

It wasn’t a long walk – twenty minutes each way for the sake of my legs and thirty in the garden. It was enough. I took away the psychic rejuvenation I named at the beginning of this post. The experience was both mystical and ordinary, a place where the ‘spiritual’ and ‘mundane’ are one – and big part of how I live my Druidry.

(1) SEE: https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2024/04/11/images-from-a-town-garden/

(2) NOTE: At the beginning of April 2024 I discovered Hillfield Gardens – a little outside the centre of Gloucester, yet still in easy walking distance (or an easy bus ride) from where I live. Originally the gardens of a large house, Hillfield Gardens are about 1.6 hectares in extent. They are managed by a Friends Group on behalf of Gloucestershire County Council. For me the gardens are a tranquil space, different in feeling-tone from other local parks.