The SNJ columnist Karen Eberhardt-Shelton was born in California but grew up in England.

She now lives in Stroud and is currently working on an education project called Learn, Think, Act and is hoping to develop an eco-community land trust.

Her thought-provoking columns will focus on how we all have to take responsibility for our actions and for our planet.

NOW that I’m in Nympsfield, I often drive over Selsley Common and sometimes stop to see the young cows, who seem indifferent to the movement of cars.

But some humans seem indifferent to cows. Nearly everyone is so used to zooming along, the impulse to slow down has become virtually extinct. Is there really no time to spare?

What if a deer darted out of the underbrush? A strolling pheasant, misguided squirrel, befuddled rabbit? You don’t even notice them. Who notices when the foot is clamped to the pedal and eyes glued to the next turn?

A man named David Reynolds has written a book titled Slow Road to Brownsville in which he describes discovering slow driving on his way south from Canada to the Texan south, almost to the border of Mexico.

“Slow driving serves a purpose: it enables, even promotes, contemplation – of landscape, life, and history. This gentle cerebral activity grows and flourishes as I keep moving, slowly,” he writes.

He drives at a quiet measure that allows him to contemplate what he’s passing through, observe changes in his surroundings, note other characters on the move in various modes, engage with what lies ahead. Can you absorb all that when speeding along solely with the intent of getting from A to B?

Was living meant to happen at such a pace? We often rush through territory inhabited by other species, but being encased in a vehicle body seems to assure us their movements don’t matter.

It is thoughtless to behave as though our artificial means of transport give us the right to alienate ourselves from the needs and behaviour of creatures interacting with their surroundings, to urge the cows on the commons to hurry out of the way so we can spurt on.

Isn’t life about being present, relative to where we are and doing out best to interact harmoniously?

It’s all there to be shared and respected in the unhurried plod of nature the natural world.