Days of Summer - Evenings in the Rural English Countryside

With spring abound and the year creeping ever closer to the summer solstice, I love the lighter, longer, warmer evenings. The golden light, the bedtime song of birds, gentle pastel hues of a countryside sky as the sun slowly melts into the horizon. They all merge beautifully into an atmosphere of beauty and serenity, and it's an absolute pleasure to experience. So for this video, I thought I'd take you on an evening stroll with my dog Buddy as we wander the English countryside, past farmer's fields, along woodland paths and through grassy meadows. In life, I find it as the little things that make our days and weeks special, and for me, this evening was full of these special little moments. Can you see all the seeds falling down? Spring snow. I loved the earthy smell in the air released from the ground that had spent its day baking in the sun, the soil patterned in cracks and fissures beneath my feet. I loved the little green shoots of a field just starting to come to life, their tips reaching neatly to the sky and sun, creating a brushed carpet of gently swaying leaves that would transform into a wall of stems in just a few months' time. And I loved to watch my dog run around just for the pure joy of it, his head turning to me now and then with a contented grin. Oh, it's more to this than what you see. Do you know this town's got the best of me? Once you start noticing the little things, it can be hard to stop. As spiders were panging to the footpath's sign, the brambles lay inclined to the barbed fence and making it wild again, the way the green leaves popped against the blue sky, the way they gently flickered and fanned in the cool evening breeze. I felt myself melting away into the landscape as I let my mind run free and my attention land on whatever caught my eye or my ear, and enjoyed every moment of it. We've found the bog. Our boy's a heap-seeking missile towards us. Dirtier the better. By the time we reached the wide open grassy fields, the sun was sitting low and throwing its golden light upon the clouds and plain trails that dotted the sky. Here, the world suddenly felt calm and drowsy as I watched it start to bed down for the night. Every winter, I spend so many of my evenings just willing it to be spring and light again so that I can enjoy evening walks. I obviously love walking at any time of day. There is some unique quality to evening walks that I probably can't put into words. Evening just feels like a time of the day where if you go out, you just have the whole world to yourself. And everything's bedding down for the night yet it's still fairly active. It's peaceful, it's reflective, no matter what kind of day you've had. I find evening walks always feel detached from the day. It feels like you're placed in your own little pocket and bubble of time. It's just like a nice way to end the day. Even an evening walk in itself is a simple thing, a small privilege and joy. I love the freedom evening walks offer. They draw me outside and can offer us a whole new part of our day. Instead of going to work and then staying inside before bed, my evenings suggest that work is only a part of my day and not the whole bit and it gives me the sense that I can live a whole other day and be a whole other person in just one evening. It offers me the opportunity to add even more to a day that's been good or to rewrite the memory of one that was not so enjoyable. The note I end my day on tends to be the one I remember it for and getting outside always makes it a sweet one. As my eyes adjusted to the dimming light, I turned my attention to the miniature world beneath my feet and amongst the grass, full of grasshoppers and spiders, wasps, flies and moths and enjoyed nosing in on their world for a while. Just because something is little doesn't mean it's insignificant. Because our lives, for the most part, are not made of the big things, those ones we call the big defining moments, and are rather made of a million different little moments. A kaleidoscope of sights, sounds, moments, interactions, rushes of emotions and thoughts and experiences. And so it is these little moments that end up being the small pieces that build our whole lives, the way we experience the world and feel about it all. To me, it is being outdoors and in nature that offers me a wealth of these little moments, shaping my life into one of peace and richness. I hope it does the same for you too.