Lichen Hunting

On slow medicine & looking for the Gilloe Duh

Recently a good friend (who also happens to be a highly successful business entrepreneur,) told me the secret of her success. She devotes a significant portion of her working day to “thinking time.”

All her important business decisions, new innovations and marketing campaigns happen during this period of stillness. As she succinctly put it “there’s no output without input darling.”

Despite openly envying the fact that her version of thinking time mainly involves lounging around in luxury spas; I never-the-less, wholeheartedly agree, that whatever form it takes, thinking time is always time well spent. Quiet reflection should never be viewed as an indulgence, but an absolute necessity, in order to create space for new ideas to flow, and remain grounded in an increasingly chaotic world.

I’ve always had difficulty understanding why people feel the need to be constantly busying themselves DOING things. My preferred method of escaping the ceaseless whirl of the Merry-Go-Round has always been to go out walking. In recent years I’ve increasingly sought out ever more remote, off grid routes, away from the demands of emails, notifications and never ending “to do” lists, in an attempt to defend my right to be a free-range human BEING - living life at a pace that I, myself dictate.

“Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow, as if I had given vent to the stream at the lower end and consequently new fountains flowed into it at the upper. A thousand rills which have their rise in the sources of thought burst forth and fertilize my brain.”

Quote taken from Thoreau’s Journal (Part IV) Aug 19th 1851

It’s during my “thinking time” that I come up with ideas for these posts. My imagination has the freedom to run wild, wondering if the ancient trees creaking in the wind have feelings, or if the nodding of snowdrops freshly awakened from their winter slumber is actually their way of saying hello.

These stories can only be heard when one is ambling along at a certain pace. Slowly.

This morning, it was a fragile lichen that caught my attention. I found it clinging for dear life to a wind-blown twig. Judging by it’s size, it had presumably been happily growing for quite some time before being unceremoniously dislodged from its home, high up in the tree canopy.

I hope you’ll find a moment in your day to lean in and enjoy my latest encounter with a “plant” that embodies the very essence of slow living.

Sit back and enjoy today’s musings on my new hobby: Lichen hunting.