EVERYTHING’S CONNECTED:

Buddha : ‘When This is, That is.  From the arising of this comes the arising of that.  When this isn’t, that isn’t.  From the cessation of this comes the cessation of that.’

Robert Macfarlane :  ‘The first law of ecology being that everything is connected to everything else

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LA PAPERIE

The small, stone cottage was a living organism.  Its oak beams were made from the trees of the forest and its walls were built from stone quarried from the hills.  A Virginia creeper scrambled all over the front walls in which all sorts of insects lived, providing a rich diet for the swallows when they were feeding their chicks, residing in mud-cup nests under the eaves, a space they share with the bats.  During the summer months, a variety of butterflies, peacocks, painted ladies, small tortoiseshells, red admirals, alighted on the back walls of the cottage encrusted with burnt-orange and pale- grey lichen.  They spread their wings in the sun, showing eye spots, designed to deter predators.  Small green-brown lizards scuttled between cracks in the stones searching for spiders.  Moss grew between the slate roof tiles, nourishment for millipedes.   And it had been known for a smooth snake to live in the timbers of the roof space, along with mice, often their food.  It was home to roosting barn owls too, whose pellets were gobbled up by the grubs. 

 Crickets lived in the cracks between the stones of the cobbled path which ran from the sun terrace, alongside the ramshackle shed, almost to the bottom of the garden.  The shed was shelter for spiders and mice.  Inside, its beams were swathed with netting and twine.  There was a collection of tools which belonged to the family before us.  All pitted with age: a pitchfork, hoes, rakes and spades, a scythe and an old- fashioned wheelbarrow, which we used in the garden.  Seed trays jostled for space on rickety wooden shelves.  There was a broom made from twigs and sets of ladders. 

Beyond the shed, there was a lean-to filled with logs, home to wood lice and hedgehogs.  The logs were our source of warmth.  We always checked there weren’t any insects on them before lighting the fire.  A metal pipe rose from the wood stove in the salon and ran up the wall into the roof space where we slept, warming the stones of the cottage before poking into the chimney which released the smoke.  From early autumn, until late spring, when the fire was kept burning, the aromatic wood smoke scented the cottage, permeating our hair and clothes, even our skin.  In the summer however, when we didn’t light the fire, the stones remained cool, ideal when the temperature often soared to thirty degrees centigrade.

The corrugated tin roof of the lean-to provided an ideal place for the adders to bask in the sun during June, July and August, even September when we had an Indian summer.  The male had black and white zigzag patterns, whilst the females were brown and cream.  At the very end of the garden, there was a wooden shack where spiders lived; butterflies, bluebottles and moths were caught in their webs dangling from the roof.  Against one wall there was a plank with a hole in it, balanced over a bucket half-full of water below.  This was our toilet.  The door had a big, diamond shape cut out of it, so when sitting on the plank, there was a fantastic panorama of the valley, where in spring and autumn, mist collected like clotted cream in a deep green bowl. ‘A room of one’s own’ (a loo with a view!)

The hazel nut, nectarine and peach trees were food for: squirrels, finches, thrushes.  During summer, lavender bushes flowered in profusion by the door, attracting a variety of butterflies and bees.   Throughout August to mid- September, honeysuckle clambered along the hedge, from the window sill; its sweet sent mingling with the lavender.  By the hawthorn hedge, there were raspberry, gooseberry and blackcurrant bushes.  We also grew artichokes, peas and beans.  The herb patch was an intoxicating mix: coriander, mint, parsley, basil and dill.  And we had lots of fruit trees: apples and pears, cherries and plums, nectarines and peaches. 

To the left of the cottage, near the pear trees, was my favourite spot in the whole garden.   From here, there were fields stretching like a patchwork quilt of varying shades of green, a lane running between them like a thread.  Every day, rain or shine, night or day, cold-snap or heat-wave, through spring, summer, autumn, winter, I stood in that spot, gazing into the distance, allowing the silence to rinse through my veins like cool, clear rain water, washing me clean.  Standing here was akin to being in a sacred place.  It was a sacred space, one that transformed me.  I was able to reconnect with the intuitive part of myself and the rhythms of the seasons.  I was able to ‘forgo the controls of the modern age in order to reconnect with older, deeper truths and needs’, says Dan Richards writing in Outposts in 2019. (p. 189) Those walking Wild Ways are already doing it.

My ‘needs’ back then, were fulfilled by slowing down and observing the changing landscape around me. The shifting colours, smells, textures, sights and sounds which defined the time of year.  Through each season I delighted in the comings and goings of the wildlife. 

During spring, birds nested, hares boxed, clumps of primroses sparkled with dew.  In summer, smooth snakes sunbathed, butterflies rested on stone walls, a sunset blushed pink.   Hedgehogs hibernated when autumn came, trees hung heavy with jewels of fruit, owls skimmed fields at dusk.  And in winter, I heard the vixen’s screams as she mated with her dog fox. 

Each month brought something memorable.  Each month brought something new.  This place showed me how to experience stillness and silence.  There was no sensory or information overload, no constant activity or continual interaction with others.  Here I could just be.  Sharon Blackie comments in Woman Rose Rooted that the modern world ‘keeps us forever moving, forever doing.’ (p. 43) I was lucky enough to escape that way of life standing in the garden at La Paperie.  I felt free.  I was me.

We hadn’t any water plumbed into the cottage, a conscious decision, part of our plan.  We bought bottled water for drinking. The water supply to La Paperie was pumped up from a well, which we used for washing ourselves, clothes, crockery, cutlery.  Each day, during the colder months, I pulled on a pair of old joggers and sweatshirt, shorts and T shirt when it was warmer, to go and pump water. 

In the Book Of Silence, Sara Maitland wrote about the letting go of the rituals of daily grooming, the stripping of the persona, the public self, leaving one’s true self naked in the world.  This was something that happened to me when I lived at La Paperie.  There was no pressure to present an image to the world, to play a role or define myself in relation to others; it was incredibly liberating. And I never wore a watch. (To be fair I never have done) I judged time by light and dark, whether I was alert or tired, hungry or not.    Each morning after throwing on my old clothes, I took our galvanised buckets from out of the kitchen and filled them to the brim at the pump, enough for us to have a strip-wash in front of the fire in the colder months.  Whereas in the summer months we ladled saucepans of water over ourselves in the garden. 

Nan Shepherd wrote Living Mountain during the last years of the Second World War, but I related to the satisfaction she felt when drawing water or gathering firewood.  I too slowed down, paid full attention to what I was doing, savouring every moment.  I thought of myself as ‘a thief of time’ to steal an expression from Neil Ansell, author of: Deep Country, a book he wrote following his five years living alone in a remote cottage in the Welsh hills. Like Ansell and Shepherd, performing simple tasks enabled me to appreciate the passing of time.  As I did them, I felt myself settle, even my internal organs and mind.  I took it as an opportunity to realign myself and develop an awareness of my body and its actions.  Looking back, it was a meditation; I realise that now.

At the turn of the century, yoga became a big part of my life; it still is.  In 2007, I studied Yoga Philosophy and Everyday Living with Angie Blowers.  It was fascinating.  Angi was a wonderful teacher.  Then I studied with Jan Wilding for a few years and lots of other inspiring teachers too. More recently, I’ve taken some fab courses with Shelley at MOY😊 and on these courses I met Lou, Liz, Carole, Emma, Sarah, Jo, Jenni, Marianne, Jules, Kelly, Julie, Karen, Elizabeth, Kerry-Ann, Frances, Maria, Lesley, Donna, Mel, Emma (who I also see at Jill’s workshops 😊) Hector, Martin, Lynn, Debbie, Claire, the gentle woman, Ann with the healing touch, and lots of other lovely people too. 

I was into dancing bare foot before yoga featured so strongly in my life.  In my twenties, I studied Contemporary Dance at uni.  It was then that I came across Isadora Duncan.  (And by Kate Bush who I saw on her first tour.  That’s another story. I’ll write of her fabulous work another time.  She is a wonderful Wild Woman) Isadora was a Wild Woman too, one who looked as if she’d just hopped off a Grecian Urn, with her bare legs and feet, wearing a white gown: no corset for her!  When many women were at home looking after families, she was dancing her way round the globe, natural as the waves and the wind, creating a sensation wherever she went, crying: ‘Don’t let them tame you.’   Good for her!  What a character she must have been. 

What is dance?

 ‘…for all Nature is dance: the dance of wind and waves, the rounds of seasons and tides, the swirl of planets and galaxies, the coming and going of thoughts and feelings, going on endlessly.  What is dance, but the continual loss and instantaneous regaining of balance?  Shiva’s dance is the fine edge of the universe tumbling into chaos and destruction and the simultaneous recreation of poise, in a continuous, ecstatic, spontaneous whirl of creation-destruction, creation-destruction.’

Shiva, Wold-Dieter Storl (p138-9)

 RECYCLED THINGS

At La Paperie the salon was furnished from recycled things.  The bookshelves were made from the ladders in the shed.  Dave sanded and varnished two sets then balanced planks of wood between them.  Cider barrels were transformed into coffee tables.  A quirky chandelier, made from the front wheel of a barrow, hung from the hand-hewn beamed ceiling.  There was an open fireplace, hearth, wood burner and a wicker basket of logs.  Bellows were hung from a hook on the chimney breast.  Two cane chairs with faded burgundy cushions were either side the fireplace, where we sat in the evenings to chat and share a bottle of wine.  And the occasional Calvados.  (Or some of the local farmer’s moonshine: Monsieur Chanel: skinny as a rabbit, no teeth.) A large rug, the same colour as the cushions, covered the floor which was originally concrete, but tiles were laid by Dave and my uncle, Doug. 

The stone walls of the cottage were so thick I sat in the windowsill and looked out over the front garden, where there was a second pump.  We didn’t use this one much, just sometimes during dry spells for watering the plants and shrubs and trees.  From the windowsill, I watched birds, animals and an occasional tractor trundle by.   

Nature writer and university lecturer, Richard Kerridge, explains in his book, Cold Blood, that creatures tend to exist in the present moment which is something humans, ‘envy’ because we find this difficult to do. Therefore, we don’t live fully.  At La Paperie, I was learning from the creatures around me and the tasks I did daily, to try and live in the moment.  Even now I don’t find it easy, but it absolutely makes sense to me.

I’d often see a creamy-caramel stoat with a black tip to its tail, threading its way through the hedge, a bundle of brown, speckled feathers in its mouth, usually a fledgling robin or blackbird, small prey.  Stoats have been known to kill and carry creatures ten times their own size, I’d many times seen them with crow chicks in the back field. Fierce predators, creeping low, covering ground, getting nearer, until leaping on to their prey.  And when a stoat can’t chase a rabbit down it ‘dances’ leaping and thrashing, spinning and jumping, even back flips, hypnotizing the rabbit, all the while stealthily moving closer and closer, until it can deliver the killing.  No wonder stoats are shown to be cunning and manipulative in Wind In The Willows. 

As Miriam Darlington wrote in (Owl Sense, p.104)  ‘We are diminished without these wild things, and to know them, to understand them, we need to come face to face with their impermanence.’

 And I’d like to add our impermanence, the impermanence of everything, for me, easier to get intellectually than emotionally.   

And it was here sitting in the windowsill, before I wrote my novellas, I tentatively started sketching again.

WITHIN YOU WITHOUT YOU: A SPARK OF THE DIVINE

The naturalist, poet and broadcaster, Paul Evans, who was, for a time, a colleague of mine, wrote in Field Notes From The Edge: ‘...places are dynamic, changeable, moody beings which shape their inhabitants and are shaped by them.’ 

Absolutely, I was reshaped, remoulded, rewilded by this place in northern France.  I became part of its landscape.

I recall one afternoon, when I was cutting back some briars the air suddenly changed, charged with a ferocious energy.  There was a sulphur-yellow cast to the sky flaring to electric-green with patches of dull ivory.  I tasted it, I smelt it, faintly metallic on the wind.  Flashes of lightning and dark rumbles of thunder. Clouds raced in shifting colours: lavender, violet, indigo, navy-blue, black. 

My senses were fully alert.  Sparrows were balls of feathers huddled in hedges.  The wind was picking up, a plectrum plucking branches, rolling and whining across the field, rushing into the garden, flattening the grass, bending the willow and sycamore trees, tearing blossom from branches. It whipped my hair and yanked at my fleece.  Fire- crackers of rain pitted the grass.  Fistfuls of hailstones stung my cheeks and scorched my ears and face.  I took shelter, watching from the kitchen door. 

As if by magic the hail suddenly stopped. 

The garden was a landscape of water and blossom.  There was a plop here and there.  A watery sun appeared in the milky-blue sky dribbling like a runny egg yolk over the garden.  There was the scent of rich earth and rain and ice.  My mind was silence.   I was stillness.  And at that moment.  I was nothing but the moment.   I was a stone in the wall, a leaf, a branch, a tree.

Then time moved on.  The moment had passed. 

Yet, I felt transformed by the experience.  There was this sudden awareness that my life was a jigsaw puzzle.  By slowing down, I was discovering pieces of myself that had always been there, but now I was slotting them together. 

I understood why I’d played Within You Without You again and again, driving my parents bonkers when I was a wild girl.  The lyrics truly resonated with me.  I got it on some deep intuitive level because it was how I felt too.  ‘And the time will come when you see we’re all one.’

Darshan is the Sanskrit word for glimpse or apparition, it means the essence of something. In Hinduism, a darshan refers to having a momentary connection to the divine in worship.  Without wishing to sound too heavy or flaky, I truly felt I’d experienced a connection to the divine that afternoon.

Avatamsaka Sutra, The Flower Garland Scripture, The Jewel Net Of Indra.

Far away in the heavenly abode of the great Sky God, Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out indefinitely in all directions over his palace on Mount Meru. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single, perfect jewel at the net’s every node, and since the net is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number.  There hang the jewels glittering like stars of the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number.  Not only that.  Each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that the process of reflection is infinite.