We carry more than we realise.
In the quiet of our bones, in the rhythm of our hearts,
we hold generations upon generations of knowledge and experience.
We are walking archives, living, breathing USB sticks
of everything our people have seen, felt, learned, and survived.
We may not know the names of those who came before us,
or the exact shape of our family lines,
yet we are born of them all the same.
Their choices, their courage, their mistakes, their love
woven into our very cells.
Within us lives a thousand old hands,
skilled in ways the modern world has almost forgotten.
Skills to read the sky, to find food in the land,
to work with what is available,
to create beauty and meaning from the simplest things.
The awareness to listen for what is unsaid,
to sense change in the wind,
to know when to move and when to rest.
This inheritance is not measured in money or property.
It is measured in the quiet wisdom that still hums in us
when we slow down enough to hear it.
Connection to nature is not something we “learn”
it is something we remember.
Because we are of it.
No matter the life we were born into,
no matter the circumstances we face now,
this ancient thread is unbroken.
It runs through us,
ready to be recognised,
ready to be lived again.
Rachel Shields
Knowing In Nature 2025
