I wake up today thinking of autumn.

It’s not because there are any reminders where I am. It’s still dark, but the birds have started to sing, their whistles and calls rippling through the stillness of early morning. The air smells damp, warm, full. Cockerels trill, and shushing away the hoarse insistence of their cry comes the soft swish of a breeze rustling through the palm leaves.

The light grows. The sun breaks over the wall, and the delicate ruffles of soft, bright flowers turn towards it. The sky is a deep blue, the earth a rusty red, and there is luscious green vegetation on every side. Sunshine pours through the trees, illuminating the leaves in a dappled, verdant glow. Heat builds. A neighbour puts on music and cranks it up to full blast. The day awakes! Dogs wander by sniffing the ground, and the bin lorry rings its bell. Birds swoop under our porch and out the other side at an exhilarating speed. All is bright, loud, living. Just outside the door, I can feel the energy of a million plants bursting with life. They’re hard at work, sprouting shoots, unfurling fast, urgently climbing, climbing, climbing. Growth, unstoppable growth.

So all in all, it’s not very autumnal here, but still something within me instinctively knows what’s due. Here in the steam and the heat, cold misty mornings are on my mind, and that distinctive smell in the chilly air; the earthy musk of softening plant matter. The burnished golds, deepening reds, manifold browns, as trees sing out their final song of the season. Driving rain, frost on short muddy grass, and that grey dimming of the light that lingers on through the winter months. Bonfires. Autumn, I realise, is in me, even when I’m not in it.

It gets me musing on our connection as humans to the places where we live. How the earth walks through its cycles all around us all the time, carrying us, and we play out our lives within it, perhaps at times without even noticing the stage we’re acting on. But even the nondescript days affect us. They write themselves on our skin, infuse our breath, frame our thoughts. The rhythms and patterns of climate, weather and season that repeat and repeat year on year – they find their way into the essence of who we are. They’ve shaped us, as we too have left our mark on them. We belong to the land, even if we don’t know it.

It’s odd at times living in a location that you have only a short history with. This bright, raw place bursting with exuberant life delights me and mystifies me in equal measure. It’s so beautiful, tropical, breathtaking at times, but often too its patterns, its habits are baffling. The smells are all new. It’s not intuitive to my cold-climate, Europe-attuned being at all. What’s going on now?! At times I feel I’m flotsam, a mute spectator simply swept along on a frothing current to who knows what. At others, I’m an imposter. My voice, my skin – my ignorance – mark me out at once. I don’t know this place. I don’t get it. I’m not from here. And I feel like the land knows.

What is it about familiarity that makes us feel we belong? In Britain, when out in nature, even if uninvited, I am home. On some unspoken level, I feel that hills and woods and fields are mine. My right to explore and enjoy, mine to roam. There are trees I know the names of, birds I’ve seen before, flowers I look forward to smelling. We have a shared past. On the whole I know my place, my rights and where I’m allowed to go. I’m unafraid. It’s mine!

In Mexico though, it’s all different. Vast swathes of endless jungle are staring at me. From the air, they excite and entice me. I imagine the wonders of fauna and flora I’ll soon get to see. Once on the ground though, just metres away, I’m less sure. I don’t recognise these plants, never mind the insects. Are they hospitable or hostile? Suddenly it seems much more likely that there’s risk and danger as I peer into those foreign trees and winding vines, deep, dark, dense. It occurs to me that I might not be welcome here after all.

Why are we inclined to fear what we don’t know?

I reflect on the places that feel familiar. Mostly towns, I realise, and no wonder. But for a few years here and there, most of my life has been lived in towns and cities. I ponder the impact that’s had on me. How my sense of my place in the universe will have been formed by buildings and traffic and pavements and shops, backlit by street lamps, populated with the bustle of other people mowing their lawns and getting the bus and going about their day. I’m used to spaces marked out for recreation, for parking, for shopping, for schools and offices. I’m used to signs and rules and knowing what I’ll most likely find in a wood, or a hedgerow, or a pond. I’m used to having people nearby, seeing them, hearing them, joining queues, sharing experiences – not being the only one doing anything at any given time. Waiting politely. Doing what’s expected. Knowing how it’s done.

Britain is in me. Green rolling hills and shaded lanes, pebbly beaches and sandy dunes, bracken-clad valleys and soaring peaks. Parks with swings and playing fields, woodland walks, pavements and concrete town centres. Icy rivers where I paddled, muddy puddles where I jumped, all the stones I’ve thrown into lakes and sticks I’ve slung under a bridge, and blackberries I ate and conkers I swung. They’re far away now, but they’re in me, they’re with me. I carry them in my core, in my skin, and even if I forget every memory, they’ll still be there shaping my outlook, affecting who I am.

But it didn’t all end when I left my homeland. My repertoire grows. I move, and adjust, and eventually, slowly, another corner of this vast earth accommodates me. We make friends. Flowers that were once foreign become firm favourites. I learn their names and when to expect them. Eventually, I’m less surprised by what comes. The jungle doesn’t daunt me as much. The silhouette of that tree round the side of the house before long becomes familiar and beloved. I see toucans at my back door, and feel somehow that they’re mine, mine to delight in for as long as they deign to stay. That pile of coconuts that looked like rotting husks turn out to still have fresh delicious coconut inside. Bonus! Nature gave to me, and it was good. My expectation evolves. I know now that my day may well be enriched by a tiny splash of colour, a hummingbird that hovers nearby before streaking away, as I sit with my coffee and smile. Or a butterfly that settles beside me, beautifully painted. The memories stay and change me.

I’m grateful for the land. I’m grateful to be embodied and physically grounded on this beautiful blue planet that hosts our humanity. Grateful for how it soothes and helps, feeds and fosters, for the space and place it provides. It’s so immense and so diverse.

I’m grateful for all the places I’ve lived in and all they’ve given to me, whether I noticed them or not at the time. I anticipate memories and discoveries yet to be made, adventures anew only barely begun. There’s so much more of this earth to see, hear, smell, taste, do.

I might be thinking of a British autumn today, but I know that before long, that Mexican sunrise will become an indelible memory too. Toucans and hummingbirds and coconuts and jungle trees are making their mark on me, are becoming part of me more every day.

Thank you, internal seasonal instincts, for the reminder to look up and see what the land is doing around me, for me, with me. Thank you planet earth. I don’t want to miss it.