Fun-a-Day 2026 in Higher Cemetery
Hello! I live around the corner. I visit the Cemetery several times a week. I watch the trees change through the seasons. I seek the oldest gravestones; I wonder about the people who rest here. I come here with small groups to explore the nature. I listen to the birdsong. I try, and usually fail, to identify the mushrooms. I come here to escape when the cabin fever hits. I bring my children here: we play hide and seek, tell stories, make up songs, climb trees. I come here to escape the family. I go home with pockets full of fallen cones, leaves, seedpods.
I arrange cones and leaves and sticks into ‘nature doodles’.
Sometimes I draw, I write.
I dream that eventually I’ll make a book about this place that holds such magic for me and means so much to so many people, each in different ways.
And, I wonder about you – about all the other people who come here. Those who I see, and greet, others who pass through or pause here at completely different times. So, every day for the month of February, as a pledge to myself for ‘Fun-a-Day’, I am placing a question under a tree. If it catches your eye; if it has some kind of resonance for you or it captures your imagination, perhaps you’ll leave an answer. I hope you’ll leave an answer.
Perhaps you’ll leave your name, too. Perhaps it will surface in that book that I dream about. Perhaps not.
To be honest, I’m a little bit terrified! I’m afraid of all the things that might happen – I might upset people with insensitive questions in a space where they go for deep and personal moments. Perhaps I’ll get in trouble for ‘littering’ the Cemetery, though I’ll be back to collect everything I leave here. I’m worried that no-one will see my notes – or worse, that people will see them and no-one will reply, which feels quite likely. But, as I so often find myself saying, if I don’t try, then I’ll keep wondering. Perhaps, just perhaps, someone will enjoy the playful connection with a place that we love. Perhaps just perhaps, they’ll notice something they haven’t seen before. Perhaps it will make someone smile. Even, perhaps, someone will reach out to me and new adventures will begin, initiated by a mere question..
If I don’t try, I’ll never know
Whatever happens, I’ll be sharing my adventures alongside many others in a community exhibition at Positive Light Projects, Sidwell Street, Exeter, on 21 and 22 March 2026 – come see!
The Nature Doodles Project 