Where do you watch your sunsets?

Do you ever note the colours?

Me and my husband have watched a fair few episodes of Ben Fogle’s ‘New Life in the Wild’ recently.  

A friend excitedly told us about the show during an impromptu tea time beach trip in May.  

I remembered it because we went to the beach every day in May half term to find something - something similar to hope we’d lost but different.  

There were a million grains of beautiful sand to see and feel.  As I slowly poured some of them from one hand into another I was reminded in a simple message - it was ok to be small.  

To be tiny and insignificant didn’t mean all was lost. (*)

My faith was restored on the beach somehow and the connection to being here right now came back.  It was uncomplicated really. 

Not only was that week a brilliant reset week for us all but there was a thread to pick up and follow.  Do you ever get that? It’s a tiny seed of something in the mass of things we are recommended on the daily….?

And follow that thread we did.

If you’ve not seen any of the show it’s on Channel 5 here in the UK.  An episode is around an hour or so long.  

Ben goes to live with folks who have made new lives for themselves in sometimes “unusual” surroundings.   It’s very relatable, it’s inspiring and all kinds of awkward at times too.  Perfect down time telly!  

Photo by Rahul Pande on Unsplash

There are SO many lightbulb moments in the shows. Ben tells one story but the subtext tells another entirely.  

There are so many places I feel like I want to visit and immerse us. Our little family of four. A tiny footprint of us stamping our passport pages in time-lapse, in real time before we run out of time.  

In a recent episode we watched a nomadic lady (Dee) now in her 60s talk about her life as a free spirit.  She lived “on the road” and had stretches sleeping in her car.   She reminisced back to her childhood on the road with her family and shared less positive experiences living in “typical” homes too. 

I tend to prefer the episodes of the show that focus on life in the woods, mountains or more wild or unusual places but this one had some unusual magic.   

Magic in that there had been no “striving”, no linear goal, no start and end point. She wasn’t born into privilege.  

She just lived.  Every day the same but different.   She was happy, content and un fearful for the most part.

Photo by Simon Berger on Unsplash

In one of the final scenes, Dee and Ben were watching a sunset and she said something like;

“You know the strange thing is I never saw the sun set when I lived in a house.  Now I watch every single one!” 

As I watched them watching the incredibly majestic sunset, it was a reminder to us that no matter what your living set up, the absolute most beautiful thing all of us will ever have is a view of the sunset. 

I mean there just isn’t anything else at the heart of longing or peace is there? 

Genuine question!   Let me know your memorable sunsets in the comments.

Claire x 

PS - my second book - a journal hybrid comes out this Autumn. It’s called My Beautiful Reality. I’ve just added a draft page inviting the reading to use watercolour paint a sunrise and a sunset!

****

- Dee has a you tube channel with over 25k followers.  https://m.youtube.com/c/BoxVanDee - I guess that’s how the production company found her? 

(*) We are navigating life as a family post Covid 19 as everyone is. My husband has post covid fatigue and he has “lost” and found parts of who he was/ is because of that. I have faith there are lessons in it all and moments that we’ll look back on and understand as we work to create our web of beauty here in Shilbottle, Northumberland.