Nature is the Portal to the Soul

Nature is the portal to the soul – a gateway to the Self. It is through the portal of Nature that we can access higher levels of consciousness, becoming more aware of ourselves and our existence along the way.

If we are to prevent the further self destruction of our species and planet, and transcend out of the darkness of fear, shame and guilt towards the light of love, joy and peace, then the spirit of Nature is the divine force that is going to save us.

Despite our years spent wandering through the darkness in the world of ego and identity, none of us have completely forgotten what we truly are. If you think about your own ventures away from the busyness of society and structure into the world of Nature, I am sure that you, too, will recall feelings of deep peace and tranquillity; a sense of ‘returning home’, perhaps.

Those feelings of appreciation towards Mother Nature are ones that we all share. Beyond race or religion, our nervous systems react in the same way when we walk through a silent woodland at sunrise, and the same emotions arise when we feel the salty sea envelop our weary bodies at the end of a long and tiresome week. Nature is the only thing that unites us all, and it is towards its’ beauty that we must look as we journey towards a collective healing.

Given our natural and innate negativity bias as human beings, we tend to spend so long focusing on the ugliness of ourselves and our own existence that it is all too easy to look past the beauty that comes with being human. The same beauty and innocence that we witness whilst outdoors walking in the natural world, is also innate within every human being.

With every step that we take outdoors, so, too, we walk one step along the path within our inner worlds. Everything that exists outside of us, also exists within. When we learn to recognise the true perfection within Nature, so, too, we can recognise the perfection of our own creation. We see ourselves, after all, through the same lens that we see the natural world. The more sensitive we become to the beauty of Nature, so, too, we become more sensitive towards ourselves, and, in turn, each other.

Mother Nature is our divine mirror. She is our greatest teacher. The further that we look into the soul of Nature, the further we can see into our own souls. When we can recognise the soul within ourselves, we can recognise the soul within other people, too. When we learn to open our inner eye to really ‘see’ whilst we are looking into Nature, we learn to ‘see’ ourselves, too. In turn, we can begin to really ‘see’ other people, leading to a much deeper compassion, understanding and empathy towards them.

As we look towards the seasons outside in Nature in pursuit of further understanding, so we can better understand the seasons within our own selves and others. Maybe then, we will stop applying labels that limit what and who we are, and we will realise that every patch of darkness in our own lives is just a storm that is passing through the open expanse of our inner worlds.

Instead of gazing up at the stars in wonder, allowing our minds to wander far away in a dream state, we humans can easily develop tendencies to hide away indoors within the safe confines of our self-containing prisons to protect the fragile shells that transport our consciousness.

This kind of behaviour is common amongst those of us who are, or have been, disconnected from our soul. I speak from experience having been someone who spent two decades hiding away from the world behind a screen as a child, teen, and young adult.

When we take a walk outdoors into Nature, we witness the boundless nature of this existence — we learn that we, too, are boundless in our own potential and capacity for growth.

By opening our hearts and minds through our interactions with the natural world, we begin to undo many of the beliefs that we hold about our limitations and incapability’s.

When we look towards the trees for guidance and wisdom, and learn to breathe in harmony with them, we begin to realise our true nature which is that of the spirit, and not merely physical matter, as modern science might have us believe.

When we stand atop the mountains and gaze out over the vast, empty expanse, we, too, turn one eye inwards to marvel at the open expanse that is our internal landscape.

The ultimate journey of the human being is one towards the nothingness of this great void. It is a journey to forget all thoughts about what we have been told we are. When we frequent the world of Nature, we are given an opportunity to escape our own minds and the tragic world of thought that is, all too often, responsible for our descent into chaos and destruction.

By allowing our thoughts to wander far away from the four walls that we have built around ourselves within our own minds, we can transcend our egocentric identities and remember what we truly are.

When we stand amidst the force of Nature, we, too, become limitless and boundless because the same love that flows gently between the rocks within the river also flows through our veins. The same rage that the ocean unleashes on the headland in pursuit of constant change and evolution, also exists inside of us. The same ancestral wisdom that is kept safe and guarded by the trees is also innate within the human being.

Nature is the great awakener of the human being. The open, non-judgmental space, similar to that which a therapist would provide, gives us an opportunity to look deep within ourselves to access this divine wisdom and knowledge. When we rekindle our relationship with the natural world, we repair the broken links in the chain of consciousness that reaches back as far as the dawn of time.

When we surrender all thought of who we are, come back to the breath of Nature, look out with one eye, whilst keeping the other lens firmly fixed inside of ourselves, we can recognise the symbiosis between the outer world and our own inner world. When we understand that relationship, we become aware that the same symbiosis is also occurrent within everyone else.

It is with this understanding that we see, despite the egos desire to separate and isolate itself, that we are the same heart beating and the same soul transcending towards the light. We are all so deeply connected, our hearts woven together with ancestral twine, and true connection with others is what we all so deeply crave. With deepening understanding of this knowledge, comes a depth of compassion, particularly for those souls that have drifted further away from the source.

In pursuit of ‘more’, of newer technology and further business and economic growth, we constantly spout the word ‘evolution’, but it is, in fact, this very devolution from our true nature that is the cause of humanities collective despair and psychosis. It is, in my belief, that our disconnection from Nature, and the repression of our own wild nature and tendencies is what causes much of our compulsive behaviour and the resulting guilt and shame that follows.

If we are to escape the prisons of our own feelings of guilt and shame, freeing ourselves to ascend towards a state of unconditional love and self-acceptance, then it is imperative that we take a walk from the known into the unknown (but not quite yet forgotten); through the portal into the world of Nature.

It is through this portal that we learn how to sit with ourselves and feel into our own unique inner worlds. We begin to understand how to navigate our own complex, emotional landscapes. By meeting ourselves like this in the mirror that is Nature, connecting with the trees, and coming home to the breath, we learn the art of presence. When we are truly present, we can really begin to see ourselves for what we are, and connect to that which is beyond the limitations of our own ego and identity. By finding true presence in Nature, we connect back to the soul – the one soul of this Earth that exists to unite us all.

Remembering Our True Nature

So much of our lives are spent trapped within the prison of our identities.

Only when we break down the walls that have been built to keep us small can we look out over the vast expanse and endless landscape and begin to remember our true nature.

Only when we can identify the inner narrative that has been programmed in us and plays continuously in the background of our minds, and distinguish that from the voice of the eternal that lives inside, can we begin to realise our potential.

By connecting with the natural world through all of our senses, and particularly through sight, we can gauge the scale of what we are. It is during those moments when we stand atop the mountain and gaze for miles upon miles over open land, that we free ourselves from the mental prisons that have contained us for so long. Only then do we allow for our minds to grow far beyond our own miniscule existence.

The key to this life, I believe, is to transcend the thinking mind and our three-dimensional, physical existence. Only when we are in Nature, can we access the portal to this higher dimension of being and see what we truly are beyond the beliefs and ideas of society and the fears that have been programmed into us from a young age.

Too often, we listen to people who tell us what we are and what we aren’t. We take on their judgments as our own and believe them when they tell us about our own inabilities. We spend so much of our youth obeying orders — being told what we can and can’t do; not to leave the confines of our garden and then, in our adult lives, we continue to apply the same kind of thinking.

Why is it that we are so afraid to realise our own potential and see all that we are capable of?

For many years, I, too, was afraid. I was someone who played it small. Throughout my childhood, teenage years, and early adulthood, I would sit and hide away in my bedroom, escaping from the real world into worlds within computer games. I held on to so much fear — fear that wasn’t my own; fear that was inherited from my parents; fear that was learnt and not yet understood. Fear kept me crippled. Fear kept me small. I would walk around with my shoulders rounded, my heart closed, and my throat completely constricted. I could talk in depth about the weekend football fixtures, but I could not talk about why I felt such intense amounts of fear about the world.

For us to become what we are — for us to remember our true nature, we must face our fears. We must forget all that we think we are. We must spend our time unlearning and unbecoming, so that we can remember that we are, indeed, eternal and abound with endless potential and capacity for growth.

As we stand atop the mountain and breathe in the crisp, morning air, as we lie beneath the giant oak tree who’s branches reach as far as the heavens, and roots as far as hell, we must remember that we are the mountains, the trees, and the rivers, too. With every breath, we become the air that fills the lungs of the earth. The same salt that is in our tears is the salt that fills the seabed and, so, we must remember, that inside of each of us, the sea rages and roars amidst the storm, and her waves crash upon our inner shores until she lays to rest. In that moment of stillness, we know. When the storms within our minds finally subside, and we find a moment of peace amidst the chaos, we can look out over the tranquil waters and allow our minds to expand into the nothingness from which we came. Only then, can we remember our true nature.

Reflecting Upon Six Years of the Creative Life

For twenty-six years, I was hiding. I let the world see only half of me. I didn’t want anyone to know how weak and vulnerable I was at my core, so I would reveal only what I wanted them to see. Behind the mask, I was deeply sensitive and fragile. My heart had been broken upon birth and it proceeded to break many times over as I grew.

Certain people throughout my school life could sense that I was wearing a mask, and they would do all that they could to tear it off so that I would stand exposed in all my fragility and vulnerability. I felt lost and lonely around such people for so many years. None of my friends truly knew me. How could they when I didn’t really know myself? I had not allowed myself to explore the depths of my own ocean, and I paddled around at the shore trying desperately to be noticed by loungers on the beach.

I sometimes feel a little sad that I never found an outlet for the pain of my many heartbreaks as a child. I find myself wondering what further pain I might have avoided had I understood the powers of art back in my youth. Pain, however, as I have now learnt firsthand, is necessary training as we aim to become warriors of the light, and we find our own means to deal with it when the time is right.

It has now been six years since I picked up a camera and began creating for the first time to deal with my pain. To say that my life has changed would be an understatement.

It is as though the camera has given my deeper self a voice. That part of me that, for as long as my memory serves, has been so desperate to be seen and heard is now making himself known to the world. No longer do I feel as though I am having to act as a means of gaining acceptance and approval from the people around me. No longer do I need to hide the rawest and most beautiful parts of myself. I seek not for anything from anyone because I have everything that I will ever need here within. Instead of waving my arms, desperately trying to be seen, I have been swimming alone, choosing instead to see myself, and now, paradoxically, the world appears to be noticing.

My work stands as a beacon in the icy landscape at dawn, and those who recognise truth have been finding their way to me and warming their hands and hearts on my flame. For other people, when looking at my photographs, they might see only pretty photographs of trees in mist. What isn’t evident immediately are the depths to which I have been swimming to find these parts of myself that have made creativity possible.

For six years now, I have been healing my wounds and taking tentative footsteps from behind the stage curtain, revealing my true self as the fragile and wounded being that I am. This creative journey has forced me to strip back the layers of masks that I spent the first chapter of my life wearing as a means to survive this often cruel and volatile world.

My trust with this world is being rebuilt with every click of my cameras’ shutter, and with each photograph that I create, I get a step closer to reconstructing the bridge that was severed between my inner world and the outer world during my broken youth.

The more that I open my heart to the world, the more the world opens to me. No longer do I feel the need to hide. No longer am I ashamed of my wounds. I wear them now as a badge of honour. It is because of my wounds that I am strong. My broken heart is on display like a piece of Japanese kintsugi, and I welcome visitors from all walks of life to admire my exhibition piece.

This has been a truly beautiful process. In going out to get lost in the natural world, I have found myself, and now, six years on, I somehow find that Self in a position to help others with their own journey’s of self-discovery. Now that I am here, I can’t help but beg the question, ‘what else might be possible in this life of mine?’

A New Dawn

A familiar stillness is in the air. The world has not yet woken up and I seem to be the only one here on Earth. It feels almost post-apocalyptic. I think back to many of the films and computer games that have inspired me throughout my life so far, and, on mornings like this, I feel like I am the character inside of my own.

All of this time alone on the road gives me time to think. That is the beauty of being awake during these sacred hours, and another reason why I love to travel outside of my immediate local area for photography occasionally. The thinking time in the car is almost as important as the photography itself. I put on some music - ‘Immunity’ by Jon Hopkins is often one that I listen to during travel. The beautiful melody and vocals inspire me to go deeper into my own thoughts; deeper into myself. I often dream about my future, and piece together the puzzle of my life by reflecting upon the past.

This morning, I am in the process of deep reflection. I can’t help but go back to visit a previous version of myself; one who hadn’t held a camera yet, and actually had no idea about what ‘photography’ was.

I never harboured much interest in art when I was younger. I put in minimal effort during art class in school, and instead sat and daydreamed about the computer games that were waiting for me back home. I was an avid gamer from the age of around five or six, until the age of twenty-five. I still remember, as if it was yesterday, the morning when me and my older sister stealthily sneaked downstairs before the sun had risen to turn on our stepfathers’ games console for the first time. That morning, we probably managed to play for an hour or two before he woke. In later years, I could easily rack up ten, sometimes even twelve hours of screen time. I can’t help but think about how much my life, and I, have changed in a relatively short period of time.

Instead of roaming around dreamed up worlds, playing a character from the imagination of someone else, I find myself trudging through ‘Dead Marshes’, roaming the forests of ‘Fangorn’ and post-apocalyptic wastelands here in the real world.

I am inspired to dream again. I wonder what might be possible for this character that is myself, given another few decades of growth. I have been recovering many of the lost parts of myself; the skills and superpowers that I left behind and ran away from as a child; those of empathy, sensitivity and curiosity, all of which us humans are at our core. Now that I have them, and have discovered more of a sense of my authentic ‘Self’, I can’t help but think about many of the other characters that are roaming this world as they play out their own stories, and try to find their own place here in this gigantic jigsaw puzzle.

I look out of the window at the world that is whizzing by. Silhouettes of pine trees against the twilight blue sky. These are the moments that help to reprogram my mind. The order that follows from chaos. No future, nor past. I take a deep breath, and come into the ‘now’. Everything is still. I can hear the stars whisper. Promise of a new dawn echoes in the clear night sky. The mountains draw near. Their outline dominates the horizon. A sense of safety washes over me. I am home.

My destination this morning is a small area of heathland beneath the Moelwynion mountains, just a stones throw away from the birthplace of the red dragon and the grave of the legendary hound, ‘Gelert’. I stumbled upon this land and made friends with a beautifully expressive silver birch tree there back in the summer of 2021, and I return today with the hope of creating a photograph that has been formulating in my minds’ eye since that afternoon.

A blanket of mist has been drawn over the landscape overnight. It seems as though the trees are still tucked in and dreaming beneath the sheets. I dare not wake them up prematurely, so I park up beside the road and tread the half-mile track as lightly as a ballet dancer would on its’ stage.

This landscape, a stage all of its’ own, and the main character in this performance is my friend, the silver birch. As it begins to awaken, I join it on the stage to express myself in the ways that I have learnt to over the past few years; with my camera and words. Two characters in perfect harmony.

I often see parts of myself inside of my photographs, and express from a place deep within. In this case, I see some further parts of myself that perhaps went missing through my younger years. Expression wasn’t particularly encouraged as I grew up. My mother, unsurprisingly following years of abuse, was chronically depressed throughout much of my childhood, so our house was never filled with too much joy. Me and my siblings would play, but always quietly and carefully. My stepfathers’ volatile moods ensured that we would be walking on eggshells for most of our waking hours. He would also place expectation on me to ‘be a man’, meaning that there wasn’t much room for me to display my emotions.

It fills me with a great amount of gratitude to have finally found my methods to express the deeper parts of myself and my emotions using my camera and pen, but still, I look at my friend, the silver birch, with a hint of envy, and wonder what it might be like to sing or dance in front of a crowd, as it does every day to the mountains.

I stand here and dream again for a moment. ‘Who knows where this path might take me in the future’, I think to myself. I come back to the moment, and enjoy the silence and stillness of this magical morning. I open up the shutter on my camera to capture the photograph that I have been dreaming about for eighteen months. It is even more beautiful than I could envision. With this photograph, comes the promise of the new dawn, as whispered by the stars. I have been granted the chance to make of it something better than yesterday.

Becoming Nature

The impact that Mother Nature has had on my life over the past few years has been profound, to say the least. My life is, in so many ways, unrecognisable to the one that I was living just a few years ago, not to mention the one that I was living throughout my childhood years, during which I was often too afraid to leave my bedroom. Those people in my life who have known me for a while have even made comments about the significant changes within myself in recent times, and I believe that is a testament to the trees, mountains, and lakes that I have been frequenting over the past half decade.

The natural world that we inhabit is in a constant state of change, and it is only natural that we as human beings, children of Mother Earth herself, live fully in alignment with her, and do what we can to change, grow and evolve, too.

The key for my own happiness and, more importantly, fulfilment, as I have learnt recently, is change and growth, and I believe that it is the same for all of us, whether we are conscious of it or not. Be it business growth, physical growth, personal or spiritual growth, the key for most of us is more, bigger, better, and stronger, and I feel like much of our general discontentment as a species comes as a result of stagnation, and lack of awareness that what we crave and so desperately need is growth and change.

With that being said, I also firmly believe that the root of our unhappiness and discontentment can be found when we observe the increasing distance in our collective relationship with the source of all life itself, Mother Nature.

As human civilisation continues its’ rapid charge into the Information Age and beyond, and we spend more time plugged in, wired up, and completely disconnected from our nature, it is difficult not to observe the dramatically rising numbers in mental health conditions and neurological disorders throughout the world.

It seems to me as though we can’t cope with our own rate of ‘evolution’, and are quickly becoming too caught up in, and identified with our thinking minds. Lack of education around how to manage these fragile devices of ours too often sees people falling into a trap and becoming consumed by their own thoughts. Increased time on screens forces comparison, and often leaves people feeling empty, worthless, and unfulfilled. We also seem to be more divided than ever, with everything now apparently becoming a war of two sides, and our screens certainly don’t help matters, only serving to encourage and accelerate division. We are in desperate need of unity.

Nature, from my personal and anecdotal perspective, has provided me with an escape from my own mind and allowed me to disconnect from my own thoughts and enter into the all-important and often too ephemeral state of ‘being’. This is a topic that me and Marc Robbins discussed in great depth on my latest episode of ‘Finding Light’, and I found it most interesting that many of our own reasons for practicing photography align, having walked similar paths through life. When I feel any negativity creeping into my own thinking, and a disturbance of my own emotions, the first place that I go is outdoors into the warm embrace of Mother Natures’ arms. She presses the reset button and usually brings me swiftly into a state of ataraxia. In nature, too, as I have observed, there is no judgment based on who I am, what I believe or what colour I am. Out there, we are all the same. We are united as one.

Having become increasingly conscious of the effects of early trauma in my own life and development, through observation of myself as well as that of the lives of my parental figures and siblings, I have some understanding of how our bodies hold onto our experiences, and how our own energy has been affected and disrupted, causing behaviours, reactions, and emotions that are seemingly beyond our control in certain situations. It is my belief that the time that I have spent outdoors in nature over the past few years has created a huge shift in my own energetic body, and, as Eckhart Tolle might call the ‘pain body’, bringing healing to my wounded spirit, and helping me to build the bridge between who I was and who I am now, lengthening the distance between my unconscious actions, driven by early observations, and my conscious actions, driven by this state of ‘being’ and ‘presence’.

As mentioned in an earlier essay, I believe that, for myself, the trees have played a role of therapist, as well as best friend, and father, and the branches have untangled the knots within my own mind, helping me to make sense of who I am, or, perhaps, ‘what’ I am, because, with every walk outdoors, I become a little more like the trees that I choose to connect with. The trees and landscape, as a whole, has provided me with a non-judgmental safe space to simply ‘be’. Mother Nature has accepted me wholly, as I am; and that all-accepting, unconditional love is something that I feel I have been able to take out into the world and offer to other people. It makes me wonder what the world might look like if we all worked to develop a deeper level of self-love and self-acceptance.

The identity that I spent some time building throughout my twenties, I now strive to disidentify from, as I recognise the oneness that I, and all of us, collectively share with Mother Nature herself.

It has come to my awareness, all the more recently, that man is not separate from or superior to nature, but we are nature itself. My body remembered when I took my first steps outdoors after my awakening back in 2018. Feeling lost and somewhat depressed as I lay in my room in tears one night, unsure of what my life had come to, and which way to turn next, I found the camera and the camera took me home; outdoors into the wilderness. The voices of my ancestors whispered softly as I took my first steps along the icy path to Llyn Idwal one bitterly cold, winters’ afternoon, and my soul remembered how it felt to be at one with nature once again, laying to rest the deep yearning for belonging that has been ever present in my life for as long as my memory serves.

The deep feelings of inner peace that I experience whilst outdoors, continue to point the way towards healing, towards home, towards that very oneness that we all so desperately need with Mother Nature, and I hope that these words and photographs can echo her cries for unity. With this being said, I have been feeling, with increasing strength recently, that this isn’t ‘me’ creating these works, but that they are simply being channelled through me from the planets’ life force; Mother Gaia herself. My next chapter, I feel, is about continuing to explore the disidentification from myself as my soul remembers its’ place here in the eternal, and how, in some ways, I am this earth, and Gaia herself, as are we all.

There is a wealth of knowledge and wisdom to be gained from Mother Nature and the places that we visit here on earth. The trees and woodlands themselves hold plenty of secrets; many of which we are only just beginning to discover, and, if we learn to silence our minds for long enough, maybe then we will hear more of what the trees whisper to the winds. With enough time outdoors, walking beside the rivers and along mountaintops, perhaps we might all be able to remember who, or what, we are. Maybe then, we will form the community that many of us deeply desire.

It is my belief, as mentioned earlier, that we are all one here on this planet; one collective consciousness, and I can’t help but feel as though the earth is trying to make us all remember, waking us up one person at a time. That is why being outdoors in nature feels so healing to us all, in my opinion. Mother Nature gives us her love, so that we might pass it on to each other, and live how we are supposed to live; here in the moment, and in harmony with her, and each other.

We are nature, and we desperately need to go back. Back to a time when nature was diagnosed whenever we had a problem, instead of prescription pills in the name of profit. Back to a time when we all understood the secret language of the trees, and shared their stories with each other so that we all might live deeper and more meaningful lives. Back to a time when we kept a community tightly around us, all looking out for one another, picking one person up if they fell.

A world of isolation is not healthy for anyone, and I can’t help but feel as though we have all spent far too long by ourselves in recent years. Maybe you have doubts about who to trust and keep around you. I think that you’d be justified in being a sceptic after recent world events. I can’t help you there, or tell you which way to look, but I can tell you that Mother Nature has yet to fail me since I placed my trust in her. She has been letting me into many of her secrets as I sit in silence beside the lakes in Eryri, and the ancient trees nearby have been sharing much of their wisdom; talking to me with love and kindness as they allow me into their safe spaces. They have brought plenty in the way of healing to my wounded spirit over the past five years, and helped me to accept and love myself fully. I wonder what she has been bringing to you in that time, and what the trees have been whispering to you in your moments of silence?

Why I Create Photographs

The art of photography has been something of a spiritual practice for me. I don’t wish to discredit the pursuit of creating photographs for creating photographs sake, but I have always been looking for something more from photography than the mere documentation of a place or time. I seek to express who I am at my essence. I strive to communicate emotions. I want to share my own human experience and allow the viewer to feel what I feel when I am standing out there, all alone in these wild places, and maybe even go some way to helping them answer some of the questions that they have about their own lives.

Around six and a half years ago, I reached a place of complete discontentment with my life. A relationship had recently ended and I had begun to feel trapped. I was working a dead-end job in a local supermarket, with no vision or direction for my life, and, to be honest, I had completely lost sight of who I was. I wasn’t content to let this precious life pass me by so I decided to wake up one day and make it one worth living. I had a story inside that was beating at my chest and needed to be released, so I picked up my phone camera and began telling it.

It was never going to be a straightforward story, and it’s one that will probably take me until the end of my days to tell effectively. I’m trying now though, and that’s a big step along this journey of mine. There was a time when all of this was locked away inside, and that was incredibly painful. I knew that I had experience and knowledge that could help people, yet I was too fearful of what the world might think about me to open myself up and air it. My fragile ego kept me imprisoned, and held me back for many years.

I guess it goes to show how much I have grown. I’m now in a place where I can talk about the things that once brought unexplainable pain and suffering, whereas I was once a closed book, hiding myself away from the world; often too afraid to be seen, never mind allowing my voice to be heard.

Being a quiet type; people always assume that there is something wrong with you. My main concern when I am busy talking is that if I am talking, then I’m not observing. If I am not observing, then I am not learning, and if I am not learning, then I am not growing. So that, I guess, is the first reason why I create photographs. Photography requires observation. It requires introspection. It requires that I pay attention, and, most importantly, it allows me to learn; about my artistic medium, the world, and about who I am. It allows me to be myself, and to make use of many of the traits and quirks that I have been hiding for much of my life.

If I expressed myself as a child, I would usually be met with shame from the father figures that I had. I was too sensitive, emotional, and open for them. They disapproved of the pure, childlike love that I had for this world, myself, and my mother.

You see, my openness, purity, and innocence reflected back to them everything that they weren’t. I can understand that now as an adult. It’s the case anytime someone makes a criticism about another persons’ character. As a child, of course, it’s difficult to comprehend this, however, and the words of others, especially caregivers, sink in right to our core. I allowed the words of these men to affect me deeply throughout much of my life, and only recently have I started to understand the impact that they had on my development throughout my earliest years.

The world that I lived in through these early years was completely unsafe. The three men that I had around at different stages throughout the first eleven years of my life were all volatile, violent, and wildly aggressive. They were often fuelled by alcohol and drugs and it was difficult to know which version of them I was going to meet. Each one of these would bring out a different version of my mother, too, so, as a child, I was often on guard and in a state of hypervigilance as a way of keeping myself safe. I developed a deep understanding of my own complex emotional landscape as a result of my early experiences. This, I believe, allows me to translate how I’m feeling whilst out in the woodland, or beneath mountains and, therefore, helps me to communicate things through my photographs that words have never allowed me to. These photographs, I believe, are representations of the inner world that I began creating in my moments of dissociation from the real world that I belonged to in my youth.

These early experiences formed the foundations for my deep affinity with Mother Nature and the stillness and silence that she provides. The consistency that she offers was something that was foreign to me, having grown up around complete chaos. As my trust has been growing with this world over the past few years, I have been more and more willing to express my truth and reveal more of what is in my heart, and I am able to make more sense of this during moments of reflection whilst immersed in nature.

The past half decade or so has been a process of unpackaging, understanding, and unlearning much of what I believed about myself and the world around me. It hasn’t been at all easy, and I often wonder why I bothered to embark on this journey to begin with. It would have been much easier for me to stay sat in the comfort of the office that I had fallen into after working in the supermarket. The pull that was, and still is, inside of me to do something meaningful with this life however, proved to be too strong for me to ignore, and it’s what keeps me going when darkness falls along my path.

The practice of photography has brought a much needed sense of catharsis, and, through my creativity, I have been able to express many of the emotions that were repressed inside of me for decades. I feel as though each click of the shutter lightened my heavy burden somewhat, and I feel like a huge space has been created inside of myself which I can now take out into the world and offer to other people, so that they might unload some of their own baggage, too.

It is my belief that the process of photography, and the time that I have spent outdoors in nature, have proven to be two vital components in my journey to heal my relationship with Mother Earth, and the relationship that I had with myself, in turn, has healed and deepened extensively. I have learnt to love the sides of myself that I was once running from and doing my utmost to hide from the world. These parts of myself have been integrated into the version of me that stands here today, and I feel as though this is a much more complete, well-rounded, understanding, empathic, and loving version of myself. In allowing myself to exist fully, I believe that others are encouraged to do so when they are around me, and I have noticed it in many of the conversations that I have been having over the past year or two, in particular.

Recently, I have begun dreaming about a world in which we can all heal, and work towards becoming our best and truest selves. If we all worked towards this healing, and achieving a deeper understanding of self, doesn’t that allow us to further empathise with and understand the people surrounding us? What might that mean for this world? Instead of meeting people with judgment and criticism, maybe we could meet them with the same unconditional love that, through our own creative and healing processes, we have developed within ourselves. Perhaps then we will realise that any shortcomings might not be ‘them’ but the unconscious, unhealed, and unintegrated parts of ‘them’ coming to the surface. The parts of ‘them’ that is, perhaps, a result of their own unhealed trauma, inflicted upon them from their unhealed parents who simply lacked access to the knowledge that we have at our fingertips today.

I offer my own story as an anecdote for what Mother Nature can do for the human spirit and souls on this earth. I act as a mere conduit for what exists out there beyond this vessel that I find myself in. There is, I think, such a thing as a universal consciousness here on earth and through silence, stillness, grounding and creativity, I feel as though I am finding my own way to interpret and articulate the message that Gaia wishes to share with us human beings.

What I believe we need, is more awareness for the healing powers of Mother Nature, and understanding of the deep wisdom that she holds. That can only happen through conversation. It can only happen when people like me and you swallow our pride, face our fears, open up about some of the things that we have lived through that brought us pain and affected our consciousness, and share some of the lessons that we have learnt along our collective way. The lessons that I learn, I’m sure, can help you. The lessons that you learn, I’m sure, can help me. Together we learn. Together, we heal. Together, we create lasting change in this world, and, perhaps, make it a better place to exist in together.

Relinquish Control

‘We must concern ourselves absolutely with the things that are under our control and entrust the things not in our control to the Universe.’

~ Musonius Rufus

When we are young, we struggle to even control our bodily functions, and we rely on our caregivers to keep watch over us. As we develop, we gain control over these functions, if we are lucky, but then we realise that we need help to control other areas of our lives such as our finances, our diets, and our weekly schedules, so we might take a course or hire personal trainers, coaches and personal assistants to help us. Most of our lives are spent pursuing control, in some way. The greatest of which, I believe, is the quest for control over our minds. In many cases, it is this lack of control that leaves people feeling the need to control others, and how often do we see this desire in the teacher that has lost their temper when they lose control of a classroom, in the coach who loses his mind when the team won’t perform as they have been coached, or even in the incessant alpha-type friend who doesn’t appreciate how you have tried to undermine his leadership by attempting to change the plans for your pack?

What I love most about nature photography is that so much of it involves relinquishing control to the outside events. We are taught humility on the grandest scale as we stand before Mother Nature with our preconceptions, hoping for ‘a little more light over here’ or ‘a touch of mist to blow in and cover that tree over there.’ I have lost count of how many times I have been out to one of my favourite locations with an idea in mind of what I want to happen, only to stand disappointed when nature throws me something unexpected to deal with and accept. On the other side of the coin, I can also count times when I have been out for a walk with zero expectations and faced some of the most extreme and unpredictable conditions that have resulted in some of the most interesting and exciting photographs in my portfolio, and generally exhilarating experiences of my life.

So many of my photographs are produced after months of scouting out locations, waiting patiently for colours to change, or for the conditions to fall favourably, or for me to connect emotionally to a place so much so that I might feel drawn to create a photograph to tell its’ story. I often find myself falling into the dangerous trap of forming my own preconceptions when it comes to my art. The desire to control how my images look, in the hope that they might be recognisable to others, might, perhaps, be limiting me in what I am able to see when out in the landscape.

There is a small portfolio of my work forming, however, from those days on which I have ventured outside and reacted impulsively to the conditions and the environment that I find myself in, with no idea of what to expect, and no previous experiences to teach me where might be best to stand. These are the days on which I feel as though I have relinquished most control. I have no choice but to succumb to Mother Nature who shows me just how powerful and frightening she can be. All of my senses are heightened and as the thunder claps overhead, and lightning strikes all around me, I spare a thought for the trees that have fallen victim to her over time; remnants of which stand like memorials on the nearby hills that I have walked, and I wonder what she might be able to make of me with just one strike of her electrically charged whips.

Aside from the technical workings of the camera, and my choice in which lens I attach, the only thing that I really have control over when outdoors in the landscape is myself; where I decide to stand, where I point the camera, what story I decide to tell, and whether I bother to put myself out there in the hope of capturing something at all.

In this instance, whilst walking in Eryri/ Snowdonia a few weeks ago, I noticed that I had been met with an inner conflict, and I had a choice to make. A little voice in my head was telling me to escape the storm and seek the comfort and security of the warm van that was waiting for me. My intuition, however, was telling me that something special was going to happen once the storm had passed over my head. I took a moment to silence the mental noise. I listened to the inner voice that was calling, and hurried over to this lonely oak tree that I had spotted on the walk up the mountainside earlier that day. You might find it strange when I say this, but trees often speak to me when I’m outside walking, and this one was calling my name as the rain began to fall.

Luckily, Mother Nature was on my side that day. She granted me a few precious moments with this tree that will live on in my memory for a lifetime. Moments for which I will be eternally grateful. I received yet another lesson from this journey that I’ll be able to take with me forever, and it was one in which I became the victor over myself, in my pursuit of my highest self.

In life, we can get caught up all too easily inside of our own thinking minds, perhaps becoming too identified with our egos which demand certain outcomes based on past experiences, opinions, future predictions, worries and fears. What being out here in these elements gives me is, of course, the ultimate sense of presence and complete oneness with the Universe. Relinquishing control of all outcomes and desires, I am merely an extension of this consciousness that surrounds my body. It takes me over. I become the observer of this very moment. No longer identified with my egoic mind, I tune into my intuition and senses; attuned to the magical light, connecting with the trees via breath, feet grounded firmly on the floor, raindrops falling from the sky and onto my delicate skin. All of this occurs and I notice a subtle shift in my energy. Over time, these subtle shifts, of course, compound to something magnificent. In these moments, I am something much bigger than ‘me’. I become Mother Nature herself.

What I crave most from this life is growth, and that goes above absolutely anything. If I am learning and acquiring wisdom, then I am at my best and most fulfilled. These lessons that I receive from Mother Nature are invaluable, as I look towards something to make up for the lack of a father figure in my life. She is, after all, our greatest teacher and many of the problems that exist within our world and society can be traced back to the fact that we are so out of alignment with her ways, blind and ignorant to the lessons that she has to teach.

The ancient wisdom that many of our ancestors left behind through philosophies such as Stoicism and Taoism, both of which draw inspiration from nature, seems to have been widely forgotten, as we generally choose to lead lives in which we remain relatively comfortable, pursuing nothing but profit in our pursuits of happiness. Discipline and self-control seems to be a thing of the past, most noticeably within our diets, as highly processed fast food is so easily accessible for most and anyone that prioritises eating well with home-cooked natural ingredients might, as from my own experience, be known as a ‘health freak’. The Stoics taught the game of self-mastery, of winning the mental battles that occur inside of all of our heads; doing the things that we don’t want to do because we know that the version of us that exists tomorrow will thank us for it.

As I stood on that mountainside, dancing bare—footed under stormy skies, dodging hailstones the size of blueberries, watching on with more than a little fear as thunder cracked above this wild and exposed landscape, flashes of lightning illuminated the sky and reminded me of just how little control I had over any of this environment. My body wanted nothing more than to return to comfort. My soul, however, was singing and dancing inside because it knows and understands that it has a purpose here on Earth to observe and create that makes any pain and discomfort somewhat bearable and, perhaps, even embraced. We humans build great civilisations that consume so much of this earths’ power and resources, yet Mother Nature could wipe them all out with one fateful strike of lightning in the right place. It is with the thought of this unfathomable power that I am reminded to remain humble, to succumb to Mother Nature, and to remember that my ability to control lies only within myself.