Growing up in the rural West Country of England was like living in a lifestyle magazine or children’s book. Emily and Jess lived in a 600 year old stone cottage that was the former bakery for the farm estate in a thousand year old Saxon era community just outside Bath. As very young children they played under Orange Pippin apple trees, as young girls, they had a treehouse in a crabapple tree and by eight years old, the 200 hundred year old giant beech trees were their hideout. Daily walks along English hedgerows provided biology lessons and botany lessons. Dog roses, honeysuckles, ragged robin and bluebells predominated as the flowers they broke apart to examine reproduction in plants. The neighbouring farm offered Christmas parties in a 500 year old stone barn, pheasant and duck plucking, flowering cherry trees, large and aggressive geese and huge herds of sheep running the lanes each spring and fall. The Adams family regularly visited the local arboretum, learned all the varieties of trees that resided there, and enjoyed long rambles through the soft rolling hills that characterize the area.
Nature is a muse for most creatives, and that comes often from the intimate connection we form with it as children. Our first toys were cups, spoons and dirt. Mud pies, potions and recipes made from every natural element we could locate were among our earliest creations, and forty five years later, Emily can still recall the exact combinations of some of those creations. The smell of the earth, the flower petals, the warmth of the water from the standpipe; all become woven into the fabric of Emily’s earliest creative explorations.
As brooding teens both girls used painting, writing and photography of these bucolic scenes to express their deepest emotions and yearning for mystery. There are a LOT of pictures of flowers and valleys still lying around our homes! Every aspect of our life featured nature; holidays in Ireland wading in cold mountain streams, lying in scented heather, prickly gorse and springy Irish moss. and exploring the deep dark rhododendron tunnels at Lough Key park. Summer trips to Devon, Wales, and the Cotswolds to ramble along grassy trails, through ancient woods and along sandy beaches that once hosted the Vikings and Danes. The broad rocky steps of the Burren, the fossil filled coast of Ireland, rock pools and crab hunting on the South coast of England. We learned rocks, geology, went into old cave systems and discovered ancient stalagmites in Wookey Hole. The ways in which nature was present are too innumerable to itemize. This natural world continues to influence our creativity today in both rural Ontario and urban Toronto.
This month we’re exploring how we can continue interacting with Nature in our adult lives, looking at ways to be immersed in it no matter if you live in an urban or rural setting. Check back in through the month as Jess posts about creating space for nature in her urban city world and Emily tells us all about using nature to nurture creativity in a more rural setting.
Make sure you are signed up to out newsletter, as we’ll be sending out a special email each month with ideas on how to use nature to boost creativity in your daily life.