The Watching Hare: Stillness That Sees Everything
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Weekly Field Notes from the Natural World
There is a certain kind of quiet that only appears when the world has not yet made up its mind about the day. It hangs lightly over the fields, soft as breath on cold air. In that quiet, if you are lucky, you will see a shape waiting in the half light.
A hare. Not running. Not hiding. Standing with a kind of stillness that feels almost like listening.
This is one of my favourite moments.
Hares meet the world differently from most animals. They do not always flee at the first sign of movement. Sometimes they simply hold themselves in a place and allow the landscape to speak through them. Their ears tilt. Their shoulders relax. Their entire body becomes an instrument of awareness.
In the wild
Unlike rabbits, hares rarely go underground. They live in simple grass depressions that offer no real protection, so they rely on something else altogether.
Awareness. Patience.Presence.
Their stillness is not fear. It is attention sharpened to a fine point. A hare can sense the faintest shift in the wind or the quiet footfall of an approaching fox. It knows when to move and when to trust the moment. It survives by noticing what others overlook.
There is something divine in that. Or mystical even.
In story and symbol
Across British and Celtic folklore the hare is a creature of mystery. It is linked to the moon, to intuition, and to the hidden paths between one world and another.
Some stories say hares are messengers at twilight. Others say they are shape shifters, moving between forms to travel through places where ordinary senses fail. They have long been symbols of perception, insight and the ability to see without being seen.
When I paint hares, I am trying to express that strange, luminous inner world they seem to carry. The part that feels ancient. The part that feels as if it knows something we have forgotten.
On the canvas
My hare artwork grew from this sense of quiet watching. I wanted to capture the moment before movement, when awareness gathers itself. The posture, the lifted gaze, the calm through the grass. A reminder that stillness can be a kind of power.
Stillness is not the absence of action. It is the choice to remain open, present and awake to what the world is trying to show us.
If you would like to see the hare artwork, you can find it here:
Peace Hare: CLICK HERE
An invitation
If this story and the presence of the hare speak to you, you may also enjoy exploring the wider Folklore Collection, where each animal carries its own symbolic thread.
If you would like these weekly natural world stories delivered to your inbox every Tuesday, you can join the mailing list on my website.
Next week
Next Tuesday I will share another piece from the natural world. Something quiet and real. Something that might shift the way we see the living world around us.