Coffee Outside, Somewhere New

In her book Wintering, Katherine May describes the struggles of the fallow season we are now coming to the end of. “Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through.” Now, at last, March’s new moon brings us to the beginning of Spring and a collective surfacing gasp for air after the longest of winters.

Last month we nudged you to drink your coffee outside and be observant. This time we build on that with a call to take your coffee somewhere you have never been before. To become an explorer. An explorer of the world on your doorstep.

There are so many places that we would love to visit: Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia, Indonesia, Ethiopia and all the other colourful coffee countries. Yet none of us are roaming the globe right now, of course. This has been a unique season of curtailed plans, clipped wings, and feelings of being cooped up and confused.

But experience has shown us –and this is important– that exploring locally is not just a mediocre solution to the problem. Nothing we describe here feels like a compromised existence. For example, in recent months, we have run every street reaching out from our homes, like a spider web, finding paths and lanes that had previously escaped our notice. We have appreciated the daily colours of the saltwater swimming palette, a chosen cold, one that we step into, one that we can leave. We climb the same tree every month in order to better notice the shifting of our lives and seasons. And we have committed to exploring a single map, the one we live on, to help put nearby nature into our everyday lives.

Nature is cyclical: tides ebb and flow, the moon waxes and wanes. We too “have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again.” (From Wintering, again.) We have a tendency to think of ‘new’ in a static way. (“Ah, coffee in a new place you say? I must find somewhere different!”) But ‘new’ can also be a state of mind. We would do well to remember that even in a place we know well, this very moment is both new and unique, never to pass in quite this way again. To quote Pico Iyer sort of quoting Marcel Proust, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new sights, but in looking with new eyes.”

Pay attention to the newness of revisiting the same spot in different seasons, different weathers, and different times of day. Sip your coffee and take a moment to notice the sunrise on your face, the afternoon shade, or the tranquility of dusk.

Even after many years of local microadventures, we still find new gems every time we choose to search for them. Go find one for yourself. Delight in the new, expand your local horizons, and your curiosities will expand too.

Remember also, as you turn left instead of right towards today’s coffee spot that your local patch of woodland (or park or bench on a quiet street) would seem deliciously beguiling to someone who lives far away from you. [Looking at all your photos of enjoying coffee outside last month gave us very itchy feet. We would be fascinated to join you in your new place.] So many fresh sounds and sights and smells to inhale. All those ideas percolating…

Spring is coming once more, both literally and metaphorically. We have all trodden through dark times recently, together but often alone. These times have changed us all. How will we choose to re-enter the world? How are we growing into our own spring?

Make no mistake, winter can be “a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider.” With today’s new moon and the arrival of spring, make an effort to open your eyes to all that you do not know, to all that is new if you look afresh. Embrace and celebrate the opportunities that lurk waiting for us to find them rather than getting bogged down by the bulky and bothersome constraints dropped upon us. Rethinking the definition of “new” is a call to action for our curiosity.

Just because a coffee sit-spot is within a mile or two of your front door and the lengthy To Do list of chores waiting for you at home should not demean its beauty, its appeal, or its power. Indeed it ought to do the very opposite. We can discover freshness e ven in the most well-worn of our routines. How lucky you are to have found this spot, here, now, right when we are all yearning to become explorers once again!

(And a final thought to consider. We are only a week away from the spring equinox with its longer days and feeling of hope and renaissance. Why not make a note in your diary to return to the same coffee spot at the autumn equinox too, as well as the solstices of summer and winter?)