Water Spell

I went up onto the hillside  where a stream runs down just below a spring.

I dreamed i was a water nymph, that I became the stream.

I stood with a foot either side of the silver thread of water and watched it running between my legs..

There had been a shower and my hair was wet and I dreamed it like running water.

I wanted to wee and thought it would be good to wee with the stream, but not there.

I went down to the trees where the stream is wider and there is a trickle from the side running into the stream.

I weed for the stream and all the running water there.

By this I made my dream real. Myself a water nymph, running with the stream.

Solstice

I celebrated the feast day of Epona (18 December) for the first time this year and buried a rose hip in the ground for her.

Now for the Solstice I went to the woods and cut a sprig of holly with berries on it. Just after sunset I took one berry from the sprig and buried it for the sinking sun and this morning (22nd) I pushed the rest of the sprig of holly into the ground for the rising Sun.  When I came back into the house I lit a red candle and guarded it to burn while I was out for the day. I will light another when I go home this evening.

For the Sun to grow strong,

I am learning to live a life of symbolic acts to go with  living close to the natural world. Doing things like this gives me a magical focus. Before I just took it all in like a receiver. Now I’m sending out my own messages. Being a part of it and not just an observer.

Intentions

"Thus Words being spoke with grate reverans and faith has Don wondars" 

(from the Mystic Book of a nineteenth century Cunning Man)

It's the reason we do things, and the intention behind it that is important. So does it matter exactly what we do to work spells, or give offerings, so much a why we do it?  We all have our own way of doing things, the power is in the intention, and doing things that carry 'grate faith and reverans' with them makes them powerful.

Invocation to a Special Place

You are dear to me.
I give you

Hair from my head
Words from my mouth
Blood from within me

You have my essences, my life force; I am one with you.

These emanations of my body and of my soul are one with the leaf mould and the waters and the mosses of this place. The soul of this place. We mingle. I am one with you.

The Winter Lady

I joined in the Wintersnights observance by Brython over the weekend. Each doing in in their own place.

I spoke the appointed words and looked up at the stars in the clear sky. There were no clouds or anything but after I had spoken about  a shadow passing through the veil it was not long before it went a lot darker and I couldn't work out how this had happened. I sat in the dark for a while feeling spooked. The words definitely got a response.

I intended to do a meditation under the stars. But I didn't need to. The Winter Lady walked past me and I felt her presence. Or was it her absence?

Meditation Message

~~~~~Dream-Writing~~~~~

This came to me in a meditation, written down by me but only half in control of what I was writing:

What is nameless, let me not impose a name on thee. What is not human, let me not shape a human soul for thee. What belongs in one place, let me not take thee from where thy being is. What remains between us, this we share in common with every wight.
As the gods are our witness, and we theirs.

When I looked at it the next day I was awestruck that I wrote it. It sounds like someone else’s words. Where did ‘thee’ come from? I remember wavering a bit when I wrote ‘thy’ and had to think what to put. So their must have been a bit of editing going on. But I take this as something ‘given’ to me, mine by gift. I’m putting it here because I think I’m meant to share it.

Physicians of Myddfai

I went on an outing to the National Botanic Garden of Wales yesterday. I’ve often thought about visiting just to walk around the gardens, herb beds and the exhibitions. So as I had another reason to go there I arrived early and spent some time exploring the place. I had heard that they had an exhibition about the Physicians of Myddfai and was keen to see that too. The exhibition is really a mock-up of an old apothecaries shop with examples of old containers, scales and instruments for making ointments and powders from herbs. This is in a building next to the herb beds, not at their best at this time of year, though the autumn colours in the woodland and across the gardens more than made up for this.

The Physicians of Myddfai, according to legend, were descendants of a fairy from a nearby lake, who married a mortal and taught her children the secrets of herbs and their uses. The remedies used by the Physicians were written down in a medieval manuscript in Welsh. This was published with a translation in the 19th century and I was able to buy a paperback reproduction of it. I’m told some things in the book are later than the medieval remedies in the manuscript, but a lot of it is genuine and would have come from an older oral tradition, which could go back to the druids.

It’s wonderful that the Garden commemorates this tradition alongside its serious scientific work on botany. It’s part of the Garden that is set up as a tourist attraction but it’s also part of the Welsh heritage that this herbal tradition exists, carried on by the cunning men and wise women for centuries and now officially recognized by the National Botanic Garden. I’m studying these remedies to see what use I can make of them and what use my ancestors made of the herbs that grow in the woods and hedges of our land.

Samhain

So the festival of Samhain approaches and the shops are full of Hallowe’en masks, ghoulish get-up and all the accessories for kids to go around doing ‘trick or treat’ calls. I must admit I have mixed feelings about it all. Of course it’s good that this festival is celebrated. I live in a cottage down a dark lane where kids are unlikely to come calling. But if they did I would be pleased to see them. But I can’t help thinking that the whole occasion has become trivialized and that by going along with it we are in danger of missing the point.

It is the coming of winter, a dark time. Trees are losing their leaves and the spirits of the living world seem to become thinner and closer to the spirits of the dead.

So I don’t see it as a time for fun and games. My own marking of the festival will be more serious and solemn and will take place at midnight to acknowledge the coming darkness. But earlier in the evening I will have some pumpkin soup and put a candle in the window to mark the season and show any passing children, ghouls or other spirits of the night that they are in my thoughts.

A Charm for the Night

I love the night. The Darkness. Getting away from all light except the Moon and the Stars. If you are lucky enough to live somewhere where this is possible. But in cities the light is everywhere and even many villages are now brightly lit.

So here’s a charm for Darkness:

Mother of Darkness
Fecund womb of the Night
Embrace us under the glare
Of blinding light,
Keep us in the shadows of your care,
Cast a veil over us
Like Leafshade
When the Sun shines on a forest
But the summer glades are cool
And shadowed with your mantle
Where we can live as if invisible
And dwell in your dreams.

Recite this for your night-time reflections in quiet glades. Or behind drawn curtains when you retreat from the light with just a candle to flicker in the dark making shadows as gateways you can journey through.

Change of Life

It’s a long time since I last posted. Since then my life has taken a new direction. Looking back at my last posts I can see the clues that I didn’t see then. Now I can see that the things that were happening to me then were the beginning of a change in my life. I’m also now adrift from close relationships that have comforted me for the last few years, adding to a feeling of upheaval.

That’s just background to some of the deep experiences that have made me think about who and what I am. I’ve always vaguely identified myself as a pagan but I’ve never felt the need to involve myself in pagan activities and I’ve kept away from formal rituals or magical practices. But things have happened to me that mean I have to change. Listening to the spirits and the elementals in the wild wood has always been my life. Doing something with what they say to me is the challenge now. Somebody told me the things I do alone qualify me as a ‘hedge witch’ and I thought about calling myself one, though I think ‘wood witch’ says it better.

I’m now ready to identify myself more publicly. I hope this blog will help me share some of my private practices and make contact with others on the same path. I know I’ve got to me more outward looking and less introspective. I have some skills as a botanist and want to extend them I into herbalism and share my skills.

So this blog will change as I become stronger in my identity as a witch, or, perhaps when I’m a bit older, a wise woman. I wonder if I will be able to make contact with others on the same path? Link up with other lone practitioners for co-operative work .

For a while last summer some might have thought that I was going mad. My ordinary life went on and wasn’t affected. But my inner life was so intense that it frightened me. Now I’m through that and I have to build on it. 

Shadows

Since my last post I have been through a period of withdrawal and introspection.This blog has been a way of putting my persona on public display. But is it me, or just how I like to portray myself?

Then I went away on holiday and on a walk along a cliff top path I stopped and looked down the drop to the rocks below and the sea crashing onto them. What if I fell down there? There was nothing suicidal in this, but I tried to think about my non-existence. But I couldn't.If I fell down there, smashed against the rocks, I would still be in the world. I think I would still exist. But I don't know if I would be 'me'.

Yesterday a leaf chased me along a lane. What was it trying to tell me? I don't know. I feel so close to such messengers. So sensitised to them. But can't hear their messages.

These feelings are getting more intense. And I keep imagining another 'me', following me when I go for walks, watching me through the trees. Or is it someone else? My everyday life isn't obviously affected by this. I just carry on doing what I have to do. But it's like a dream compared to the real life out there. Those feelings of shadowing myself. I don't worry about this, except that I might lose the intensity of it all and just have the everyday life to live. That could happen anytime and I would be bereft.Without that other self to keep me company. But things would then be 'normal' and I'd just get on with my life.

Waterfall

It's supposed to be therapeutic to walk to waterfalls, so I walked to this one. You can only get to it if you walk, so I knew that the way would take me away from things.  To get there I had to turn off the main road where the river runs under a bridge and follow a minor road along the river to a village. This is as far as it makes sense to go by car. From the village another road - only just wide enough for a car - winds up the valley with the river rushing past in a ravine below. It turns around some sharp hairpin bends, passes a few remote farms, then becomes a dirt road to the last farm at the top of the valley. After that it's a footpath, then just a hardly visible line across some fields, which brought me to a huge ash tree where I sat, ate my lunch, and took the photograph above. I didn't meet anyone on the way except a dog that barked at me through a farmyard, quite a few sheep in the fields, and a toad that crossed the road just in front of me and was kind enough to to stop by the hedge and be admired.

So I sat and drunk the waters of the waterfall in my mind, drinking in peace and harmony even though the cascading water was anything but tranquil. I was here, and sane, and at the end of the world with a wall of rock enclosing the top of the valley. A glacier had made this. But in my moments of  escape it was a wall against the world. Feeling restored after a while I left the tree and dropped down to a lower field which was the way to the falls. This was a bog and it was difficult to get much closer without going through it. I squelched around for a while, then turned back. I could only go back by the way I had come, reversing the way across fields, the track and the narrow road. Thankfully the dog was not in the farmyard, then I saw him up on the hillside with the farmer rounding up sheep. The toad had gone too. Arriving back at the village I met a man cutting the grass on the bank outside his cottage. He wished me good day. It was a welcome back to the human world.

At home I lit a candle. Imagined myself human again. Reconciled to the world.

A Tear for Midsummer

Among the trees on the Longest Day. The idea is that it should be warm and sunny. The reality is that it is raining. But everything is so green as I stand underneath the dripping leaves. I am totally immersed in the reality rather than the idea. A tear runs down my cheek. I could think of it as symbolic of the rain falling. This is a nice idea. But the reality is that this is a tear of empathy. Not sad. Not disappointed. Shedding a tear because that is my response to the rain falling and dripping down off the leaves. I feel the tear and the rain together on my face as a blessing and a joy. I feel part of this green place, a northern rain forest where the greenness glows in the grey light under the open canopy and darkens in the shadier places where the roof of leaves is thicker. In the grey light of a rainy evening in the mid of Summer I am in the enchantment of an other world. This is not an idea. It is real.

HAWKWEED

Orange Hawkweed (Hieracium aurantiacum)

Heavy rain today after a long dryish spell.  I went out this morning to wet my hair and welcome the rain.  But now I'm having a rare sunday afternoon indoors, remembering yesterday when I took the photo above of a stand of Orange Hawkweed (also known as 'fox and cubs'). It's a plant I love to see. The books say it is a naturalized garden escape, but it seems to me to be naturally a part of the local flora besides the wild yellow hawkweeds and other dandelion-type flowers that grow tall in the hedges and field corners.

According to one book, hawkweeds were named after a belief of the ancient Romans that hawks ate them to strengthen their eyesight. A lovely idea. I hope to get some more books with stuff like that in them, maybe some of the old herbals, to add to my scientific knowledge of plants.

Re-visiting my Newly Discovered Place

Have been back to the woodland I found for a longer exploration (I love these late evenings as we move towards the Midsummer Solstice).

Here's one of the paths running down to the valley bottom:

And here's an old hollow lime tree:

The valley bottom with a wide stream running along it really is the most atmospheric place - full of dark shady groves, lighter flowery dells and a real sense of depth not just in the number of trees but the very presence of the place. Much more than a collection of trees this really feels like an archetypal forest.


'll leave this post with another pic from my first visit of some foxgloves from a bit higher up where the canopy is more open. This area has a different quality. There is more light and there are more flowers. It is also 'lighter' in atmosphere. But wonderful too in its own way.

I could dance naked in these glades if I dared. But it is a public place :O

New Discovery

I found a woodland site this weekend that is only fifteen minutes from where I live. I didn't know what was there until I decided to stop and explore. I have passed it quite often and noticed a sign for a picnic site but never explored it until now. 

It's a Forestry Commission woodland with the usual conifer plantation along one side of it, but the rest is a natural broadleaved wood. Away from the picnic site there are some wide paths where people stroll and walk dogs, but beyond that you get into lovely mature woodland where hardly anyone else seems to go. The picture above is of a sycamore that has spread into three trunks. A lovely tree that I spent some time with.  There are also some deep lanes through the trees along the lowest part of the wood, dark paths running through the shade with wood garlic and other flowers of damp woodland in an atmosphere of mystery and enchantment. I stood among the trees here with my breath held sensing something deep as I felt the presence of the wood spirits all around me. 

The wood also runs up the hillside and on the slopes there is more light and  it is more open. There was a clearing here full of foxgloves and a seat to sit on to admire the view of trees and, further away, fields stretching to the horizon.

I'll be going back to this place often especially as it is so near. Before long I will know it intimately. And I hope it will know me and accept me too.

Moth Safari

I've not had much time for blogging recently as I've been out day and night. Doing things like bat-watching and also a moth survey. We went out in the evening with a special box which has a funnel at the top and some old cardboard egg boxes in the bottom and we fixed up a torch and turned this on just after dark. The next morning we went back to see what we would find.On a warm and still night it would be full of insects of various kinds. Unfortunately, May has not been so warm as April was and some of the nights have been quite windy. But we have found and recorded lots of different moths. Here's a pic I took of a poplar hawk moth after we had removed it from the box and put it on a suitable tree:

The photo is not too sharp as there was a strong breeze and its wings were fluttering quite a bit.On that occasion we also found quite a few beautiful white ermines, though all quite small ones and several other common species. 

This was in quite a marshy area so we got things like caddis flies and other insects too, all of which we released - even the biting ones!

In the wet marshy ground I also spotted this:

The beautiful Marsh Cinquefoil with its flower heads showing an almost translucent purple in the pale light. Further out - too far to photograph - I saw the elusive Marsh Andromeda with leaves like Rosemary but flowers like Bell Heather.

Nature is so full of  deep and mysterious things.

Willow Fluff

I’ve been away from the hills where I live visiting family in the flatlands. We went out to a wetland nature reserve, which was a treat for me. It was mostly reed beds but alongside these a marshy woodland with willow trees. The ‘pussy willows’ (Salix caprea) were all in fluff and shedding the cottony white fibres from the flowering catkins which were drifting everywhere on a light breeze. The picture above shows some dead blackthorns covered in beards of grey-green lichen with the white fluff from the catkins all stuck to them. This was truly a magical sight.

I tried to get in amongst the willows but it was not an accessible area. Here’s a picture of one that was nearer the path seen from below with some catkins outlined against the sky.

We took a leisurely stroll all around the reserve, saw swans, herons, geese, several species of ducks along the river and reed buntings in amongst the reedy areas. I spotted a marsh orchid right by the path. In the marshy groves Yellow Flag irises were everywhere and other wetland plants like Ragged Robin, Brooklime, Horsetails …. And others that I might have identified with my book but I was trying the patience of my hosts with my constant lingering over flowers.

On the way out of the reserve the path was carpeted with willow fluff

This is my silver-white memory of a lovely silver-white day on the marshes.

Orlando

Tilda Swinton as Orlando

I've had a sort of virus this last week or so, like flu but no sore throat, runny nose, cough or any anything, just aching joints and feeling all weak and shivery.

So I haven't been able to get out much and take advantage of the magical Mayday weather. I did try to do a bit in my small garden when I thought I was better, but I came in exhausted after less than an hour.

So I've been spending time with Orlando. I first read Virginia Woolf's novel almost by accident and was bowled over by it and have re-read it a few times since. I tried reading her other novels but I couldn't get on with them. The novel starts in Elizabethan England when Orlando is a man. He lives until the twentieth century(and beyond?) and changes into a woman on the way. But the story is told so naturally that you don't question any of this. I am fascinated every time I read it. It is a place on the borders of time, gender and society. You never quite know where you are and neither does Orlando.

There is also a film of the book made in the 1990's with Tilda Swinton as Orlando. She is so good in the part that I have to watch the film again every so often. The way she looks at the camera with a knowing glint in her eye every time something interesting happens is just perfect. I always feel she is doing it just for me and get even more involved in the film. And she just looks so good herself too. The film is very 'arty' and not at all slick like most popular films. It's like a series of vivid paintings and the Director, Sally Potter, said she used a particular 'colour palette' for each scene. It misses out some bits of the book. And sometimes I want things that are in the book to be there. I'm not sure if someone who did not know the book would understand what is going on sometimes, but that might not be too important. The film doesn't really feature the evolving manuscript she works on for 400 years as much as the book. At the end of the book she has a sort of vision up on a hillside looking over the country and plans to bury the manuscript under an old oak tree that had been there when she began. But:“she let her book lie unburied and dishevelled on the ground, and watched the vast view, varied like an ocean floor this evening with the sun lightening it and shadows darkening it.” The film doesn't really convey the feeling of mystical union with Nature that I find in the book. Then an aeroplane arrives (an old-type plane – this is the 1920's) with one of her previous lovers in it. In the film this appears as a golden figure in the sky and is left to speak for itself. So after I watched the film I re-read the end of the book. For completeness.

The DVD box has another disk in it with gallery pictures and things including an interview with Sally Potter. I watched all this stuff too, sipped a few sloe gins and told myself I would feel better soon and get back to my haunts in the woods once again, and maybe meet Orlando there.

A Lake in the Hills

I walked to this lake at the weekend. It sits in a hollow in the hills. The weather was a bit cooler than it has been as it had rained overnight and the morning was misty. But there were flowers everywhere and the feel of Summer which has come early. At the shallow end of the lake reeds were still standing from last year:

There was also some new green shoots of this year's reeds breaking the water surface, though they can't be seen in the picture. Further out in the centre of the lake  the big globes of yellow water lilies were opening:

In my flower identification book it says they should flower in June or July so that is an indication of just how early things are coming on. Over in the boggy ground at the other end of the lake, beneath the willows, I found some bog bean in flower, fluffy pink-white stars and three big leaves to each one.

As I sat eating my lunch I watched a heron fly over the lake, do a loop around once, then fly away over the ridge of the hills behind me. I also heard the call of another bird coming from the other side of the reeds, but couldn't identify it.

By the afternoon the warmer weather was returning and I took notes on what trees were in leaf. Oaks were out, and sycamore and beech, and on the hawthorns the flowers were about to open - May blossom in April!  But the ash trees were still bare. According to the traditional rhyme that means we are in for a splash rather than  a soak. But whatever the Summer brings I will be joyful.

Apple Blossom

The blossom is on the apple tree.

Other trees are making the hedgerows white. Flowers are everywhere in full blossom.

Last night a light mist drifted up the valley just before it began to get dark. I feel so glad, so peaceful, so much as if I live in a land of enchantment and magic that I don't really know what to say. Words don't seem to be enough.

But I do so love this time of year. I feel so much a part of everything. So attached. So enclosed. So free from care. So blessed.

Bluebells

What a glorious weekend it has been.  I’ve been saying that Spring is late. Most of March felt like it was still February. But April is beginning to feel like it’s already May. I went to the forest where the bluebells usually put on a display in May. I knew the leaves were already out. But walking along the path into the trees I saw this

A bluebell in flower!

Then further along some wood sorrel

And blackthorn:  These flowers come before the leaves, unlike hawthorn which is the very scent of Summer when it flowers later in May.

But what I still didn’t expect was this

So many bluebells so early. And there’s plenty more to come. Over the next few weekends the forest floor will be a carpet of blue. For me that is sheer delight

Lichens (again!)

My garden backs onto a field, so there is a farmers fence with barbed wire along it. The field has a public right of way across it in a direction I like to go for walks. So I have made myself a place to get over the fence. I wrapped some cloth around the barbs and tied plasticised wire around it to protect my legs when lifting them over the fence. The cloth has now begun to rot and it is covered with lichens of the species Cladonia pyxidata (sometimes called 'Fairy Cup' lichen).

They are a delight to me every time I step up onto the stone I have put there to climb over the wire. I suppose the cloth will eventually fall off with the lichens that are now a part of it. If so I'll wrap around another cloth and hope that this too will become a home for lichens.

Bath Time

Soapwort (Saponaria officinalis)

I wrote on here a while back about coming home cold and wet and taking a hot bath. I have gradually turned this into a sort of ritual. I love to take long soaks in the bath when I have the time to relax. I invite the water spirits to the bathroom as the taps are running. I light candles for atmosphere. I don’t much like incense or overbearing aromas, but I do like lavender.

So I have made up some special bath salts based on recipes on Kim’s Blog. To her recommended mix of salts I add essential oil of lavender, dried rose petals and some ground-up leaves of soapwort and rosemary. I sprinkle this mixture under the running taps then lie in the water, giving myself up to the waters completely and stay there until it starts to get cold. I have also begun to set up a sort of altar in the bathroom with tea lights and images of water spirits and mermaids. So I can recreate the Water World.

Other times I shower, but bathing is special. It’s not just getting clean. It’s not even just therapy. It’s a communion with the elemental spirits of Water.

Lichen Tree

I took this picture of a tree with lichens hanging from it over the weekend. It’s almost as if there were leaves on it. It stands next to a river up in the high hills. It’s quite a way from any road and more than 20 miles from the nearest busy road. So the air is clean which means the lichens can grow in a healthy state. They are often used as indicators of clean air.

Finding this tree was such a magical experience and I sat on a rock with the sound of the river falling over a small waterfall just looking at the tree. It made the long walk up to the high ground more than worthwhile. Although this is wild and beautiful place, I sat for over an hour without seeing another human. Further down, on the way back, I exchanged greetings with a couple of hikers. Then no-one else until I was nearly back to the road. I’ve never been one for hiking for the sake of it. But being able to get to such places makes the effort of hiking so worthwhile.

Birch Trees

I walked to these birch trees today. On the way the banks were all yellow with shiny celandines and I saw a couple of tortoiseshell butterflies too. It was a glorious day and though it took a long time to get here I felt elated rather than tired. I feel a great affinity for birch trees and these made me feel quite tender. I walked through them touching the smooth, white skin of the bark and feeling that I was one of them, tall, slim and pale in the early Spring. I got even more deeply involved with the place and stood by one tree for a long intense communing, tying my hair around it.

Before leaving that tree I tied a few strands of my hair to her, for something of  me to be in that place. And I left other things, personal whispers, saliva, pee (reverently given) and bits of me that I could share. I really was quite overcome by the place. I brought home with me just a few simple things. Some dry leaves, a twig, some pieces of moss that I will keep moist in the garden. These will be tokens for my affinity with the place. They will be my contact with it from home until I can come again. And again and again.

And I hope I will always be as welcome as I was today.

Coltsfoot

With most flowers the leaves come first. Coltsfoot is different. The flowers appear well before the leaves which come much later. The leaves can be used in herbal tobacco and to make cough medicines.

The flowers can sometimes show as early as January and push up through stony soil or gravel. Here are some I saw today not yet open:

And here are some more, opening in a less shady spot:

Spring is late  so they are only coming through now up in the hills. Elsewhere, perhaps further south or lower down, they have bloomed earlier. But these are the first that I have seen this year. 

Hill-Top

Last weekend I went up to the top of a hill and just sat looking out across the valley at the hills on the other side. It was a still day. Quite clear, though with some low cloud drifting on the higher hills. Lower down the grass was green in the 'improved' fields. But on the higher ground the wild mollinia grass was the colour of bleached straw after the winter.

On one slope, covered with birch, alder and other slender trees, there was a reddish-purple haze over the distant view of the bare twigs with their new buds waiting for the longer days to open. I sat for over two hours just taking in the landscape, making a few notes, and drinking hot soup from my flask.

If I were a tree I could stand here for a lifetime watching the passing seasons.

Mosses and Lichens

Spent the weekend at a field study centre to learn about mosses and lichens. We were a very small group and gelled well. The evenings and overnights were a bonus - hello P if you've decided to look in ;)

One day we were on a Sphagnum Bog. The other we were in a Forestry plantation, but quite an old one with some lovely wet, green and mossy hollows. I learned a lot, especially about lichens which I hadn't looked at closely before.

Still in a dream about the weekend. I'll be living off it it for some time to come.  For the green things and for much more.

A Secluded Cove

I had to go to a town on the coast some distance away, so I got up early and got my business done quickly. By mid-morning I was on the beach and heading away from the town under the cliffs. I'd timed this visit so I'd be doing this a couple of hours after high tide. The waves come right up to the cliffs in places so I could only do it when the tide was going out. It was slow going over the rocky shore but soon I saw what I was looking for. A stream was running out of an inlet in the rocks. This leads back to a narrow valley running up a cleavage in the cliffs.

A little way in it broadens out and the steep slopes on the sides are covered in trees and the floor at the moment is a thick bed of snowdrops. It's only possible to get here from the beach, and then only when the tide is out, so I couldn't stay long. But I felt privileged to be there and gave my thanks to the spirits of the place and the nymph of the stream. Further up the valley narrows even more and no human can easily get there. In the distance, up there somewhere, I could hear a woodpecker hammering away. I listened for a bit, then walked back down to the beach.The waves were crashing in onto the rocks but still far enough away for me to get safely back.

I still had time to take a closer look at the rocks which must be compressed mud because you can see the fossilised impressions of pre-historic worm shapes twisted into the surface of them. This is all I need for a history and a geography lesson. All the knowledge that matters.

A good day out.

Mosses

They said today would be dry between two rainy days, and it was for most of the time but here in the hills grey clouds drifted across the sky and this afternoon, and for about ten minutes, a fine spray of rain fell and I raised my face to it, glad to receive its blessing.

I spent the morning in the forest that clothes the steep slopes looking at mosses. There aren’t many flowers at this time of year but the mosses are bright and green and luxuriant in the damp woods where water runs down the slopes and keeps them wet. I identified several species. Here and there I saw the leaves of wood sorrel which in the Spring will have white flowers with green veins in the petals hanging from them. But for now it is just the leaves, like clover, but a brighter green and sharp with the oxalic acid they contain.

Up above the forest there are narrow paths running along the steep hillside. These were once leets, channels to carry water from a lake to the old mine workings where the water turned huge wooden wheels. These are all gone now and it is hard to believe that this was a place of industry in the 19th century. It is quiet but for the calls of buzzards and kites and now the leets are filled in and make paths for people like me to wander my lonely way along them and feel that soft sprinkling of rain on my face.

Wind and Rain

A change in the weather. Warmer but very windy. The trees all swaying and creaking in the wind. I sat in the wood and let the sounds and the gusts of wind crash all around me.

All the dry brown leaves on the floor rustled in the wind around my feet buried deep in a drift of them. Sitting out among the trees I feel close to the weather and feel good about sharing it with the trees. Then the rain came in on the winds driving through the trees.

I sat wrapped in my waterproof coat with the hood up over my head. I felt like I was a wild creature in a shell or in a den with the wind and the rain up against it. But for me this is the place to be, with the wind's song  in the woods.

Water Spirits

Another weekend of cold and bright weather. Ice on the pools along the side of the river. I sat down on the bank under the bare alder trees and watched the water rushing past. I made myself as still as a heron and had a heron dream like I was a heron spirit. I followed the spirit down into the river standing in the water.

In my water dream I went rushing down like a fish in the current and then I hid in the dark places under the bank. But heron found me and I went into heron and from heron came back into myself. Now the water spirits are my friends.

When I came back to myself I was numb with the cold and my bum was chilled from sitting on the frosty bank. I was almost too stiff to walk back to the village. In my cold cottage I just needed to get warm so I filled the bath with hot water and put some drops of essential oil of lavender in and went into the water. So the water spirits could still be with me as I soaked up the heat of the water and sighed with pleasure as my body was all wet and warm.

Now, wrapped in a cosy suit against the draughts I'm putting it  down here because it's a tale I have to tell to whoever will read this so they will know the water spirits were with me and I will remember when I come back to read this again in the future.

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Frog

I went out with the local walking group. I don't go out with them very often because I prefer to walk on my own.I like to stop and look at things rather than just walk on. It's hard when others are talking to listen to Nature.But they were going to a lake in the mountains that I had not been to before so I decided to join them.

The day was cold but clear and bright with a white frost over everything. Weather like this is unusual in Britain. The frost was thicker as we went up to the mountains. There were 'flowers' of frost coating the grass, everything glittering white in the sunshine.

The lake was covered in ice and as we did stop there for a break I moved off alone and stood by the edge for a bit. When I looked down I saw a shiny brown frog with legs spread out as if it was about to jump. But it was still. I touched it. It was completely frozen.

Later I thought that I should have taken a picture of it to put on here. I'll have to remember that for another time.

Full Moon

Coming home this evening I suddenly saw the light of the Moon through the branches of some bare trees. Then I saw the big white  round Moon herself. The disc was huge, I suppose because she was so low down and just rising. Breathtakingly beautiful.Now she doesn't look so big but is bright and silver in a clear and frosty  sky.

A Stream

Lovely bright and crisp sunny day. Had to go out to a meeting and stopped to eat a sandwich on the way in a place just off the road. I saw a stream running across the field that I didn't know was there. I could see that it was flowing into a larger stream by the road, but I couldn't see where it was coming from. There must be a spring somewhere as I'm sure there is no stream on the other side of the field where it seems to be coming from.

Going to discover where streams come from is a good thing to do. If I could find a spring that would be wonderful. I imagine myself washing my face in it, though today the water would be very cold. But the water would wash over me and I would be blessed.

Rain

Rain in the forest, it's lovely - if it's not very heavy you don't get soaked but just get the rain drifting down through the trees. I spent today in he empty woods with wet rain on my face but the rest of me wrapped up warm and dry. It's a special feeling being there in the rain - feels more elemental somehow. I sometimes fantasise about running naked through the rain though not at this time of year. But even in the summer I'd be too shy to do it. Even if I knew no-one else was about.

I'm feeling good about having this place to say things like this. Whether anyone else sees it or not.

My Woodland Glade

A sunny afternoon and I left work early to detour on the way home along a minor road and into the Forestry Commission car park leading to my special place. As usual at this time of year, there was no-one else there and I walked through the trees and down to the river with a lightness in my step as if it was Spring. There's an open glade with a seat by the river that I just sat down in and lost myself in the sound of the waters rushing past. I stayed until the light began to go. A dream way to start  the weekend.

Hamadryad Musings

As someone who prefers being outdoors and sitting under trees just trying to be 'part of the scenery' the recent weather in Britain has kept me uncomfortably indoors. So I'm turning to this as a diversion. After all the snow, I did get out a bit, but today rain has fallen solidly and this evening I made only the briefest stop in my favourite place by a woodland stream  on my way home as it was wet, misty, and the light was fading.

I'm not complaining about this (I never complain about the weather and I actually like the rain!) and in my ideal habitat I would inhabit all weathers happily among the trees of a forest. That's where I'll be most free time rather than here.But I will try to keep this up to date (it seems less trouble than Facebook) if only because there might be someone like-minded (like-souled?) enough out there to be worth exchanging words with.