Chasing bees

A couple of thursday's ago I took my camera for a walk. Having dropped the children off at the sports centre I had two hours to kill. Normally I go for a nice coffee and sit with some knitting but I wanted to use the time differently.

 It felt kind of odd, going for a purposeless walk by myself. For me much of the joy of walking is in the shared experience so to set off in a strange place with no place to get to felt, well just weird. At the very least there is usually the dog with me.
I tried to look for beautiful things to take pictures of, but I was trying too hard. It seemed like an age before I relaxed into just being in the space, and the thing that did it in the end was trying to follow a bee. This bee was whizzing about between blackberry flowers going about it's business, but it was far too quick for my amateur attempts at wildlife photography. Every time I got the camera even close to the right flower, the bee had already moved on.

As you can probably see I am no photographer, but the photo's are not really the point of the exercise, taking pics just gave me a focus and when I am focused I am in the present moment. I lost all sense of time trying to get a picture of that bee, I lost the sense of it being a bit odd to be out on my own doing nothing in particular, I lost the sense of the time constraints of needing to pick up the children. My whole world became getting a picture of that bee. Like the world of a toddler or child at play.

I even chased a different bee in my determination to get a good bee picture. In the end the best picture was of a flower. I have always loved daisies, they make me feel cheerful, childlike. they are so bright and sunny, really simple to draw and really abundant at this time of year.

And I did loose track of time I only wandered for half an hour!! It felt like I had been chasing the bee for twice that time at least. When I arrived back at the car bothered that I might be late for the kids, I was really surprised to find I had been out so short a time. The moment had passed though and I went back to my knitting and my coffee.

 I had thought I might be inspired by my walk into something creative, or that I might come home somehow changed and ultra-relaxed. In the end I think the value was in getting right into the hear and now, right into those moments when I was unaware of my surroundings, the inevitable joggers and dog walkers, the weather, the time - just focused on that bee. There is a real knack to this present moment stuff, it takes practise to be really present to what you are doing but it brings peace, breeds contentment and puts to rest some of that striving that we all spend so much time doing.