Who would have thought ?

My first thought when I awoke just on dawn this morning, was The Chelsea Physic Garden. Something in the eerie emptiness of pre dawn which I can see fully through the almost sheer glass wall of my bedroom, echoed with the spirit of a long ago walk I had made down a very fashionable London road to reach this wonderful garden which has collected botanical specimens since the early 1600`s. It is London`s oldest botanical garden and was established by Apothecaries to assist them develop medicines. When Joseph Banks brought back botanic specimens from his voyages with Cook, they were grown here.

No doubt my morning brain was wracking itself for a solution to the current dilemma of the Corona virus which was my second thought of the morning. I watched the swathes of pale red clouds washing the lightening sky and "Shepherd`s warning "came to mind. The Chelsea Physic garden was a wonderful distraction.

On my first visit to London I was training for the walk across Spain which is the Camino de Santiago, when I embarked on what seemed an interminable trek past the fashionable shops of Chelsea. These shops have a refined elegance that I came to learn means "so expensive they take your breath away " but in my then naivety, I was beguiled by the beautiful objects displayed. That part of me that has sometimes desired careless wealth has been prompted by my love of beautiful objects. I could be one of those collectors who employed professionals to steal me glorious treasures. It is a greed I understand.

The thing about that walk which had resonance with this morning, was the lack of people or activity, the emptiness of the vista. I was so aware of being the only person in the landscape and in all the time it took me to reach the garden, I met no other person. Since then I have traversed many other London suburbs of wealth and they all have, for me, this empty uninhabited quality punctuated occasionally by the swoosh of an expensive car. Sometimes a stretch limousine in which I imagine all the Rolling Stones are being transported.

On my arrival at the garden, past the famed Chelsea Hospital, site of the Chelsea Flower Show,I sat and had tea and lavender scones. The garden is small and walled and in the Autumn, the plants are sparse and beginning to with draw from the coming cold. I can see ancients walking down the paths gathering plants for their experiments.

I hope they travel with our current researchers and down the ancient lineage of healers, walk in the ways of curing our very present human ill.