Come walk with me...

So you can't be here, in Dulverton, on beautiful Exmoor...  Never mind.  Come with me on my morning walk.  We'll take it slow (I'm not feeling so great today)...
The SP is bouncing like Tigger but he always waits for me to open the first gate...

...and then the second gate...

We walk through town as it starts to wake up...past the familiar shops, and the familiar cars and familiar people.

And then we cross the bridge and turn up into the woods.  It's steep and somehow steep on tarmac is harder than steep on earth so we take it easy.

The wild foxgloves are bee buzzed bells...

Most people go straight on, following the wide track down to the river.  But we veer left, through this narrow opening, and up the steep track known locally as the Chimney.

Past ancient beech tree hedgerows, moss-crept, sinew-rooted...

The bluebells have sunk back into the earth now, and bracken reigns.  The woods open out as we dip down and up the old ramparts of the bronze age hill fort.

We pause at "my" tree, of course, wondering again how it survived when its brothers and sisters were felled. Happy chance.  Sometimes I meditate here, sometimes I just lean back and listen to the birdsong, the distant sounds of the town.  If we're very still, sometimes the deer come.

The path widens and we come across the den, a little camp constructed around a tree.  Weeks back I decorated it with a rib-cage, placing the skull to watch in a nearby tree but now they've gone.

We have a choice.  Sometimes the SP and I turn left and make a full circuit but today my energy is flagging so we veer to the right and pick our way downwards.

Past the hawthorn tree, past this little moss-sprung spring...and back to the wide path, down down down, over the bridge and...you get the picture.  It's only a small walk - an hour at most - but every day it is different, every day some new fresh detail.  It comforts me somehow.  Even if life is basically meaningless, it can still be beautiful.