'Daddy, you've got a leaf in your hair'

On the way back from the nature place tonight i picked up my daughter from brownies, i was standing in the waiting area with all the other parents and was thinking how 'tired' they all looked, i felt totally exhilarated from my 'nature fix' and i sort of felt sorry for my fellow parents...STAND UP TO THE MEMES!! anyway, i digress...the moment came when the pack of laughing brownies came out into the waiting area...my daughter was first out and she said out really loud...'daddy. u have got a leaf in your hair! ha ha! well girl...your dad likes his little wanders into the wilds! not too keen on the soap operas and the like..ha ha ha:)

Discerning Trespass

I reackon that almost all of us have fallen foul of the trespass laws at some point in our lives, as the majority of the land in this country is supposedly 'owned' by someone or other...now personally, i have a lot of issues with the concept of land ownership and trespass laws but that is by the by, it is what we are dealing with in the everyday reality of life as it is in this timeframe.I guess I trespass every time i go to my secret nature place, as i have to cross parts of a golf course to get there, but i am causing no harm, and for a good 99.9% of the time i have never been spotted as I go to and fro, but i am a human, walking where i shouldn't walk..which is a laughable concept really...as i was lithely making my way across the greens before, i noticed a few squirrels darting across over to my left, now they, like me, are doing no harm...are they trespassing? there we have it...I am marked by my 'human' status as a tresspasser, and by the fact that i am 'out of place' in my roamings, i am not doing the activity 'proscribed' to the place..(in this case golf) and also i am not doing something that us 'modern' humans are 'supposed' to do , like watch tv, or go to the pub, or the gym:)Its all nonsense of course, and i don't sit around dwelling about it...so switch on my 'animal' side and flow and weave my way across, interacting with the natural environment and not caring much of the opinions of others. The other way to get to the nature place is over a railway line...this is a different animal altogether, and i am not going to go into it right now, save to say that i have always wondered why walking alongside a railway track is so 'wrong', people walk beside much busier roads everyday... i think its the whole 'nanny state' thing, where we are essentially 'not trusted' by those 'in charge'....well, discerning trespass, not much wrong with that in my eyes! before i head off i will just say, i can see why people would have a problem with finding a stranger in their backyard or something...somethings are obvious, and rules or no rules, thats just plain weird:) over and out:)

Robin Hood...next generation

I called round on my sister earlier..(her house is nearer to my shrine than my own) and her 13 yr old son was there..(my nephew) I asked if either of them fancied a stroll to the shrine and my sister said she was too tired! but my nephew was up to it...so we set off...as we walked fast down to the golf course, i started jogging...'ready for A ROUTE MARCH? I SAID...he said yes and we ran along the path, through the fence, across the course, up through the meadow, over the undergrowth and in next to no time at all we had arrived in the shrine. He was doubled over panting and wheezing...i had broken into a sweat but was ok...i am 41..he is 13!! TOO MUCH PLAYSTATION!! anyway, he quiclkly recovered and was amazed at the changes in the place..( i brought him here with my own kids about a year ago) i explained the work i had done and gave him a tour of the place, he was genuinely interested and was asking loads of questions about it...a lot of people would think my hobby odd but he has known me all his life and is used to the ways of his 'mad uncle'!! we took some photos of the place to show my sister, then headed back, jogging, as we came...he was buzzing when we got back to the house and we all looked at the pics together...when i had arrived they were just settling down to an episode of robin hood, so i said..'he has had a go at being the real robin hood this evening' we all laughed, but the robin hood myth and archetype runs right through this country, and long may it do so, we all see enough of the 'sherrif of nottingham' archetypes in government etc, so i think its important to keep the myth alive...out in the fields, the woods and the mindset, of old meerry england! blessed be!!

its amazing what u see when u are motionless!

I took a long sweeping circular route in tonight...golfers were approaching the near green when i arrived and i really didn't fancy waiting in the undergrowth for ages whilst they took their time putting and the like so I walked fast along the track and entered the golf course by the pond...i then walked in a large sweeping arch keeping trees between me and them...eventually i made my way around to the wood and feeling invigorated, ran up the slope, thru the brambles to my 'bower'...i got out the large plant pot and switched into 'nature mode'...i was soon relaxed and meditative....in my peace i watched a mouse trot out of the outer ring, across right in front of me and into an opening in the side of my shelter! it didn't even see me...but i was just 'there'...no noise...no fuss...it was the first mouse i had seen in my area...and it was good to think i blended in to the extent of allowing alert and 'human wary' animals to come in and walk right past me....maybe a fox will do it some day:) i don't mind mice living in my shelter...its not like i live in it or anything, its not even finished....(about half way there i would think)so the mice are welcome...

The great golden sun!

i haven't been there all weekend until earlier this evening....(to those of you new to this blog what i mean by 'there' is a secret nature shrine i have created in the 'edgelands' near to where i live, where i can replenish)...no one around whatsoever on the approach...maybe the x factor is on telly or something:)...anyway, the sun was big and coppery orange in the sky, heading down towards the welsh hills...the shafts of golden light illuminated dancing groups of spiralling midges and gnats...i walked across the golf course at leisure, all the golfers either gone home or getting a few drinks down them in the distant clubhouse..so i walked across their manicured lawns brazenly..HA!! i entered the darkish wood, then up to my 'escape pod', my clearing in the midst of bramble and thicket, and like a human rabbit or fox, switched on to the nature vibe...i soon realised i was being bathed in the most amazing bursts of solar light and stood transfixed, allowing the rays to wash into my psyche...nothing like a good evening sunwash to enliven the cells and colour the eyes! i examined my trees, the ones i had planted and the ones that were 'naturals' from either before i came or after..(its been some years now!) i thought of mankind and its dreams, its decisions that each led to environmental changes, i mean really i need to thank whoever decided to site the railway here so near to the golf course, thus creating a natural space that no one passes through or this land could have been lost to other visions and i may be standing in a factory or something...a lucky space this then to have escaped from the brick and the concrete...so i re-affirm my intention to honour the place, to listen to the nature around me, thus enabling my vision here to meld with that of enlightened nature, and keep the place lucky, or maybe even magick it further:) bye for now:)

Always Feeling Fantastic

I didn't get long there this evening...the time was ticking away...but after a day at the screen i HAD to get a nature fix...and boy..was it worth it!! raced over to the asda car park, then at the river in moments...the sky was all magicky and the river like some mysterious little lagoon...(its different everyday due to light, wind,tide etc)the clouds greyish white and darkening, as it does earlier at this time of year, and the air was fresh on the face...just right really. I entered the golf course through a hole in the barbed wire and scanned as i ran..(getting better at this)..more on the move, like an animal would do, relying on instinct and vision combined. speed walked over to the wood and up to the zone...bit of a potter, couple of spadefulls of moss/soil/twigs onto the roof of the teepee structure, then a sit on the flowerpot...watching the sky move by, listening to the odd rustle of trees etc...felt really alive..i always have a tendency to feel fantastic out here:0 natures medicine is WORKING! fortified, i left the place as it was darkening, moved quickly across the course, back to the river...the moon was peeping out...the last of the yellow sky was around the distant welsh hills before night took over...then back to the lights and the car park...in the car, and homeward bound

A Luminous Evening

I went via the river earlier...the sky was luminous and the river sparkling silver as was the distant sky over the mountains, the air was super fresh and breezy, which i love, as living on a plain the air can get a bit slow for my liking! So it was a case of fresh, fresh air, luminous skies and lovely natural scenery...i made my way along the riverbank swinging my arms and feeling free, then when i reached a hole in a fence darted down to the golfcourse and made my way across. The greens looked amazingly luminous and numerous seagulls were 'worming' and rooting about for grubs etc...i entered the woods in a place i found the other day which led up to the lower meadow, i am trying to alternate approaches so as not to leave too obvious a trail, then up to the upper meadow and in...back to my bower. It seemed fresh here tonight, the air was charged and colourful...i did a bit of work shifting the moss and bramble 'bits' i had scythed down the other day and added them to the 'roof' of my teepee style hut..it is looking so authentically rustic and tribal right now i love it!!! then i took a good look at the structure of it..it is basically a load of willow branches resting against a goat willow tree, however it is not fully round 'yet' but will be when completed. What i noticed tonight is that i am sure it has slightly tilted the goat willow..this is not good, as i don't want the thing to tip the willow over and collapse, not only for the sake of the shelter, but also for the sake of the tree! when i first started clearing this area many years ago the goat willow was not there...it capitalised on the cleared ground and is growing in a place of its own power (as in where the seed landed rather than being transplanted there by me)so i did it a favour in the first place in creating an area where a seed landed and had a chance to grow, but i feel i owe it one now again...i love trees and i intend to shore up and complete the teepee so as to distribute evenly the weight around it...me happy! tree happy! another thing i noticed, is that the willow branches i cut and used as supports for the straw and mud have in some cases taken root themselves..(strong trees!) so it is a sort of 'living' shelter! i looove the 'organicness' of that!...i treated myself to ten minutes on the plantpot chilling and feeling greatly at peace, then, i headed back out, a different way, back down the slopes, over the course, to the river....and home...

Its a jungle out there

we have had a few heavy 'bouts' of rain lately which has resulted in soaking undergrowth around my nature retreat...add to this the need to approach from different places to avoid creating too worn and visible paths and i have found myself up to my neck in thick, only just penetrable 'jungle' like undergrowth...weeds, brambles,rosebay willowherbs,saplings etc etc...it hads been slow going at times and when i finally get to my retreat i am in a soaked state with scratches and cuts and collapse onto my plantpot for a good few minutes...i was like this earlier today and whilst i was recovering i was smelling the damp undergrowth and looking about me at all the fading, yet still 'en masse' vegetation and thinking...this really is like a mini jungle environment at times...is this the real U.K.? is this what would happen without the cultivation and the buildings?...maybe it would be like this, until the trees grew back and once again forested the entire country! i got a sense of natures never ending growth..its cycles...its expansion and contraction...its 'breath' :)...in a couple of months the green will have totally turned brown and withered away...letting the winter sun through the spaces and the frosts in to do their work...if this was not so, then the foliage and weed layers would choke the ground...so i am glad of the turning seasons...in fact, i think i am looking forward now to the foliage to give up the ghost and return to autumn/winter and thus be refreshed in the new spring of next year. At the mo it is soggy and choking, starting to fade...i think iwill have a fire soon again..bring some cheer to the place:)did a bit of work while i was there, the expansion i did the other day, i cleared a bit more of that, and the place now seems way more spacious, and i have freed up a beautiful hawthorn tree, which for the whole time i have known it, has been half covered in brambles....it seems pleased....my expansion has brought different views too...standing at the far end i can see now, thru some trees the welsh mountains rising up in the distance...a good meditation spot! i may at some point make another structure, possibly to be used as a sweat lodge...this was the idea for my current structure, but this eventually will be for sleeping the odd night in...anyway, enough for now...love the nature, respect the nature, try to understand the nature....'cause we are PART of the nature:)

expanding out

i was sitting there yesterday, on my large plantpot, when i suddenly got impulsive! i kept glancing up to my right, where i have a large hawthorn tree, surrounded by the edge of the circle, namely brambles and rosebays etc, etc...suddenly i leapt up! grabbed my scythe and hacked out a new circle which leads on from the original and is now a sort of unfinished figure of 8...the hawthorn makes a nice buffer between the two circles..and looks a lot happier now all the tangle has gone from around it! Is it something within the nature of man/woman to expand/grow/redevelop even? i think my circle just wanted to grow a bit more, maybe the energy demanded it? anyway, i now have a larger area to tend to...new dreams? more to discover....it will take a few visits to get the ground right as it is just a mass of downed brambles and the like...but it feels like new life has been breathed into the area...it will enable a whole host of plants/insects to colonise the area rather than the victorious bramble/willowherbs that dominate this area...from the furthest reaches now, the mud hut looks brilliant...this magic garden is growing:)

A Strange Approach

Earlier this evening while the sun shone really bright after a day of intense rain showers I headed to the river. It was betwixt the high and low tides and the silky surface reflected the changing sky above...oranges/yellows/pinks/blues....vivid colours and large grey/white billowing cloud formations. The air was fresh and felt totally alive. I soon shed my manic day of work from my head and shoulders and moved swiftly yet calmly towards the golf course. Damn! 3 golfers were heading down the greens which would have meant a long wait in the shadowy paths until they had moved on, yet i wanted to keep going! so i walked further along, found a hole in the fence and entered the course a lot further along than usual....this meant a long detour through the green and bright links and trees to get to my wood, it was worth it...nature was on my side, providing invisibility from the focused golfers...i paced freely through the course, moving behind the lines of trees, past another couple of gaggles of golfers and to the line of the woods.This was not my end of the woods..it was really tangled so i fought my way through saplings,ivy,brambles, hawthorns, up down, around, thru..it was tough going..at one stage the rains came again and thru the gaps in the trees i could see torrential ran falling on the course. however, amongst the tangles, i was dry...well my clothes were in fact getting wetter by the minute, but this was from wet leaves and trees rather than the falling rain itself. I felt a bit of an intruder here...no one ever comes to these wooded slopes and i reackon if i was full of mushrooms or something similar i would probably be seeing all sorts of goblins/elves etc:)...eventually i made it to my part of the wood, and soon found myself in my clearing. i got out a plantpot and recovered from the mad little expedition. Soon i was deeply relaxed..everywhere was lurid colours, from the bright sky..magic!! i took in my 'extension'...which i will talk about in a later blog, and which i started yesterday...it is no longer just a circle though, more of a growing figure of 8. anyway, after a while i felt i had better return so left my bower, down thu the lower meadows, back to the river, then the carpark...felt totally alive ....stress at work? all gone....all GONE!!!