This phrase is thrown around a lot in nature and mindfulness circles. With everyday life constantly trying to speed us up, it’s certainly a useful reminder, but how exactly do we do it?

I’ve always been a slow person, so to speak. When I walk with a group of people, I’m the one 200 yards behind everyone else, peering at a butterfly, bird, mushroom, shell or nicely coloured pebble. You’d have to put blinkers on me to shimmy me along; every windowsill in my home is proof that I’m a magpie for nature’s offerings.

But for those normal folk who simply walk when they’re outside, slowing down might not come as naturally. So I have a cheap solution that will grind you to an instant halt: a hand magnifier.

Remember these from school? You can still get the Sherlock Holmes-style ones with the skinny handles, but I much prefer folding loupes. They’re dinky enough to slot onto your keys, and many have built-in LED and UV lights for illuminating even more juicy details. Stick it in front of your phone camera and you’ve got an instant macro lens for about £10.

I’m not being dramatic when I say that magnifiers open up new worlds. They’re a miracle worker for kids, and just as effective for whimsical adults.

Recently I visited my local stone wall. Bear with me, this isn’t a celebration of cement. Said wall is currently sporting a festival of colour from all the wildflowers poking out of its cracks and crevices.

Once I was crawling around with my nose in the grass, I appreciated what a marvel the ground really is. My trusty magnifier and I spent an hour exploring a section of footpath that would have taken ten seconds to walk past. Every leaf, petal and scrap of lichen became a riot of texture, and I returned quite unexpectedly to my childhood.

Daisy

The humble daisy has a long history of being woven into chains and plucked by lovestruck folk wondering if he loves them or loves them not. Each individual flower head is actually a composite of tiny flowers, some packed in the yellow centre and others encircling it as white ray florets. The yellow disc florets are rarely appreciated until you study them up close.

Buttercup

Another so-called weed beloved by us all growing up, buttercups were used to determine your pal’s fondness for butter. The reality is, a buttercup’s glossy petals naturally reflect light, so will cast a warm glow under a willing chin whether that person likes butter or not. These speckles of sunshine pack a punch too, releasing a toxin in their sap that makes them poisonous to livestock.

Dandelion

Even at the cusp of 30 years old, I can’t resist blowing a dandelion clock to see those fluffy seeds take flight. What a miracle of natural engineering! Once upon a simpler time, I would try to dislodge all the seeds in a single puff; only then could my wish come true. Who remembers the Disney Pixar film A Bug’s Life, when Flik the ant hitched a ride on a dandelion seed? They just don’t make them like that anymore.

Gazing at daisies, buttercups and dandelions brought back so many memories of playing on the school field and village park, surrounded by blooms. All those quirky traditions linked to flowers made me realise how rooted nature actually is in our folklore.

It’s easy to forget that I used to lounge in the grass and literally count flower petals. By slowing down and peering through my magnifier, I reconnected with that simple slowness in a wonderfully reflective way.

That connection is still going strong, but for the last couple of years, my focus shifts as soon as spring hits. Instead of treetop branches, my gaze drops to the grass as a different kind of wing starts to flutter.

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I’d always appreciated butterflies in passing, but it wasn’t until I moved to Scotland that my fondness for them hoicked up to ecstatic excitement. The irony is, there are far more butterfly species in south east England where I grew up, but something about them only clicked properly once I was up here.

Aside from the likes of peacocks (above) and small tortoiseshells that appear regularly, my knowledge had been limited. Maybe I felt less intimidated by the shorter list of butterfly species in Scotland, but each season I learned to recognise a few more and my confidence slowly grew.

The Scottish butterfly parade really gets rolling from June onwards, but three of my favourites appear a good while before then. Allow me to fawn over them one by one.

Small Blue

As we’re talking about tiny wildlife, it makes sense to begin with the tiniest of all: the small blue. With navy upperwings and icy underwings, this butterfly makes a fingernail look like a king-size bed.

That in itself was reason enough to try and find it. What a needle and what a haystack! Luckily, I discovered a handy bit of fieldcraft that narrowed the field right down: find some kidney vetch.

Found in chalky grassland and around sand dunes and coastal cliffs, kidney vetch lies low to the ground. It has yellow, ball-shaped flowers that remind me of little microphones, and is the only foodplant for small blue caterpillars. So if you find kidney vetch in May or June, a small blue might not be far away.

Small Copper

Naturally, my next source of fascination was the UK’s second smallest butterfly, which has to stretch to fill a 50p coin. The small copper is an utter jewel, with copper and black upperwings interrupted by the occasional speckle of blue.

It has a temperament to match its fiery colours and rarely sits still for more than a few moments, welcoming the opportunity to tussle with any insect that dares to pass by.

If you can manage to sneak up to a small copper - typically in open, dry grassland - you can admire a softer peach colour on its underwings.

Green Hairstreak

I finish with this majestic sight: the only true green butterfly in Britain. The green hairstreak’s metallic emerald sheen is only on the underwings, but luckily they nearly always perch with their wings closed.

Because I embrace nigh-on impossible challenges, finding a green butterfly on green leaves had been high on my wishlist for years. This, coupled with their short and early flight period from April to June, makes them particularly elusive. In Scotland, green hairstreak caterpillars limit themselves to blaeberry (known as bilberry elsewhere) as their foodplant.

After many failed attempts, this month I finally managed to find my first green hairstreaks. True to form, they were in fact loitering around blaeberry, and you should have heard the noise that erupted from me when I clapped eyes on that iridescent glimmer.

It might be because it’s often a surprise to see one, or because they have exquisite colours on teeny bodies that will only fly for a matter of weeks, but butterflies never fail to fill me with joy. They are minuscule marvels and a sign of many more warm and bright days to come.

I conclude with a shot my mum took of me gazing in giddy awe at a small blue on my fingertip.

I’d come to the Trossachs to visit some of Scotland’s rainforests. These aren’t the tropical ones you’re familiar with, but temperate rainforests.

More threatened than the Amazon, temperate rainforests require very specific conditions that are found across just 1% of the entire planet: high levels of humidity and rainfall, clean air and mild temperatures. When these factors combine, you get ancient trees, rare lichens and delicate wildflowers interweaving into a glorious greenscape.

I met up with Phil Crowder, a landscape and nature photographer who leads small guided tours and workshops in the Trossachs temperate rainforests. I thought I was a leisurely stroller, but in three hours we walked a grand total of one mile. And it was fantastic.

We treaded so slowly along the dappled woodland paths that we savoured every inch of them, from sprays of pink blaeberries to the slender white petals of wood anemone to the violet domes of bluebells that spread across open clearings.

As we wandered and took photos, Phil told stories of his time living and working in the Trossachs, and I completed our mighty one-mile voyage with loads of great quotes for my feature. If you’d like to read the full story, you’ll have to check out The Scots Magazine in July!

After parting ways with Phil, it was time for my partner Max and I to leave the Trossachs and return north. We weren’t ready to go home quite yet though, so we stopped off at the House of Bruar near Pitlochry for a leg stretch.

Lots of folk have visited the swanky department store here, but in my experience, far fewer have found the forest walk behind the shop that leads to a gorgeous stone bridge and waterfall.

By the time we arrived, the sun was just about to sink behind the trees, but there was still time to dip our feet in some icy water and savour the last of the light. As we rested by the river, a grey wagtail bobbed its way past us across the damp rocks and a raven glided high overhead. Even from a distance, it’s possible to tell ravens from crows by their diamond-shaped tails.

A peek at the forecast told us it would be another scorcher tomorrow, so we decided to keep the adventures rolling and car camp just outside Kingussie in the Cairngorms National Park. Just a short walk from the high street is a great crag for rock climbing, tucked away in the trees. There are plenty of routes suitable for beginners, including one so gentle that a dog has been recorded doing it!

The next morning, we tucked into a bakery breakfast on the grass as a black-headed gull tirelessly bullied a blackbird, song thrush and woodpigeon off its turf. Then it was time to get the climbing shoes on and soak up more gleaming sunshine.

Max got me into rock climbing about a year and a half ago. I was surprised how quickly I took to it, but after taking a tumble off a bouldering wall and spraining my ankle last year, my budding confidence took a big knock. Once I was back on my feet, the fear factor on the next few climbs skyrocketed, and on more than one occasion I ended up in tears at the foot of the crag.

But I’ve been persevering. Climbing for me is like wild swimming in that it offers you a totally new perspective on the outdoors. Similar to the unusual view of waves lapping at eye level, a raven’s eye view of a forest or craggy coastline while you’re hanging vertically off a cliff is equally surreal. It’s taken a while to chip away at the panic that sank in after my injury, but each time I finish a route a bit more confidence trickles back.

This time at Kingussie, there was none of that panic. With each shuffle of the toes and hook of the fingers, I clambered my way up the crag, passing sprigs of lichen, tiny spiders and miraculous violets growing straight out of the rock.

I’m still only doing easy routes, but for me the reward isn’t just the physical challenge. It’s about spending quality time in one wild spot and getting that unique perspective high above the ground that only ravens get to see.

Read my journal entry from the first half of the trip here:

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We based ourselves in the village of Arrochar, which perches at the head of Loch Long in Argyll and Bute. Across the water is a mountain called The Cobbler, with a jagged peak that Max informed me was a “juicy route” for rock climbers. Our plan had been to hike to the peak then climb the last few metres to the summit, but when we woke up the next morning, said summit had disappeared in thick fog.

Determined to still make the most of the day, we visited Benmore Botanic Garden in nearby Dunoon instead. Max and I make special efforts to sample every botanic garden (and crazy golf course) we encounter, so when we read that this garden sprawled across 120 acres and had 160-year-old giant redwood trees, our disappointment dissipated far quicker than the fog.

We spent several hours at Benmore, passing colossal redwoods and Douglas firs, rhododendrons (safely in captivity here) and monkey puzzle trees. There were sections dedicated to Japanese, Bhutanese and Chilean plants, with paths trailing up to high viewpoints over the valley. A personal favourite of mine was the Fernery, a Victorian building containing a riot of soggy ferns that looked like the set of Jungle Run. I was very excited to find some minuscule fungi in here too.

Up near the Chilean Viewpoint Refuge, there were several stone plinths that visitors had adorned with dozens of smaller stones. Naturally we added our own. Max and I are both very fond of rocks, and thought it would be a great idea to build a similar structure for our own extensive collection some day.

While we’d been wandering through the world’s plants at Benmore, the fog had cleared and the sun had begun to beam. We’d already covered a few miles just walking around the garden, but in classic chaotic fashion we decided to return to Arrochar and take on The Cobbler halfway through the day.

I’ve always been more of an ambler than a hiker, but this year I want to take on some meatier walks. As well as facing the evil Stairmaster in the gym more often, I recently invested in some walking poles for a much-needed boost on steep inclines. I’d been sceptical about how effective they would be, but an hour into our Cobbler hike my legs were pumping and, more importantly, my lungs weren’t threatening to collapse as they often do when I walk uphill for any length of time. I was delighted! It felt great to push myself and really dust off those cobwebs.

But of course, I have an ever-present eye for wildlife, so despite my magic walking poles I still managed to spot a pool beside the path that was full of newts! Amphibians aren’t my speciality and after a looksy online I decided they were common newts, but if I’m wrong please correct me. They were certainly a surprise to see, especially on such a hot day, but luckily they had their pool to stay cool in.

The Cobbler walk is a bit like a lasso, with a long straight section, a small loop at the summit and a return along the outward route. I reached the fork at the base of the loop sweating rather heavily, and although the rocky outcrop was far closer than it had been, it still looked like Mount Doom to my eyes. Having already trotted around the botanic garden all morning, we decided to perch by the shadow of the peak for a while before returning to Arrochar.

The competitive part of me was seething that we hadn’t walked the last section and climbed to the tippity top, but my proper hiking days are few and far between. I knew when to bow out gracefully and savour the views that I’d earned up until that point. After all the walking, it felt good to stop and notice the sun on my face and a faint cuckoo calling across the hills. The journey to this point was an adventure in itself, and we still found plenty of juicy rocks.

Return to the Trossachs in my next post for part two of the trip, featuring bluebells, ancient forests and finally some rock climbing!

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My name is Rebecca Gibson. I’m an outdoor author and photographer who blends wildlife watching and mindful travel. If you enjoy improving your bird ID, snoozing with your back against a gnobbly tree or finding a stream to dip your toes in, this is a good place for you to be.

With photos, observations and plenty of self-deprecating humour, I hope to inspire people to connect with their local wildlife and discover wild places slowly. I like to share my knowledge as if we’re just out chatting, in a ‘teaching-without-preaching’ style.

I’ve written two books about mindful travel in the UK and post my wildlife photography on Instagram as Rebecca On The Wing, but this space is more like a journal. There will be longer ponderings, reflections and phone snapshots that don’t quite fit with my portfolio-style socials.

The key theme will be slow. So much of my routine involves dashing from place to place; even time spent outdoors often doubles up as exercise, where nature can whizz by unnoticed. I want to use this platform as a way of documenting my encounters with wildlife in a more immersive and unhurried way.

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• Slow moments in nature, or “Slowments” perhaps? (You’ll get used to my word quirks)

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What I hope to achieve here:

• Write more often and more freely

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My journal notes will be free for everyone. In time, I might introduce other content for those willing to join me on a paid subscription, but that’s a later mission. For now, I just want to see how this little seed grows!

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