view THE
By Carrie Greer of Little Wild
What do you see when you look out of your window? Stop, put the magazine down (only for a minute) then go and really look out of the window. How often do we really, truly look at what’s around us? We’re so busy, caught up in our day to day. Hectic mornings, getting the kids, the family ready to leave the house, commute, get to work, rush, rush, rush, it’s hard to notice the world we’re living in. When we first moved here eight years ago, I made a pact with myself that I wouldn’t take the grandeur, the splendor of these awe-inspiring mountains, for granted. It’s easy when you’re first here, when you’ve moved from suburban Manchester and the view from your window was your neighbours garden and suddenly you have this - view - it’s so hard to believe that it’s really there. Over time I started to spend more time looking down than up. Starting a couple of small businesses meant a lot of time on my phone. Ridiculous screen time, learning how to navigate social media, playing with the algorithms more than I was playing with the falling snow. Rushing, once
136
the view
more, from school drop to work and in my main job as an holistic therapist, spending most of my days in my selfstyled ‘woodland cave’ - with no windows. I did get to a point of total tech overload. I love social media, I love the connections that my words written online bring to me, but I definitely felt lost, distant, disconnected from nature. We’re lucky enough to live on the side of the hill directly opposite Pleney. We’ve got a great big sliding window that looks out across the valley. I looked at that view every day for four years. I posted pics of it on my socials, but did I really look at it? When lockdown hit in March 2020, spring properly started; long, hot sunny days. So we sat outside a lot. The snow started to melt quickly as there was no point in grooming the pistes anymore. We had a little bet between ourselves to see when it would finally melt. Turns out there’s a little sheltered spot just under the first clump of trees to the right of the bubble path, where the snow really lingers. We were all looking at the mountain everyday and scrutinising it to see who would guess the closest. It was the 28th May when it finally disappeared. In our front garden we’ve got a beautiful beech tree. Every spring I’ve waited to see it bud and I always miss it. All of a sudden it’s got loads of leaves and I wonder how I missed
// illustrations by icons8.com
