Finding Beauty – A Year of Nature Outside Your Door.

Well they are here and I did say in my blog last week that I’d be jumping with joy and I am. The books have arrived back from the printers just in the nick of time for Christmas, but like my dog are for any and all times of the year! ‘Finding Beauty – A…

‘Finding Beauty’ the new book is almost ready. Here’s what’s been going on for me this year…

This was just going to be a blog about my soon to be released new book ‘Finding  Beauty – A Year of Nature Outside Your Door.’ I was going to be showing you pictures of the boxes of books, photos from inside it, telling you  where you could buy it, it was all going to…

Weaving the World – the making of an album.

The day is here and I’m holding a box full of CDs. They wink back up at me, folded sides showing their name, my name and Rick’s, telling of their creation. I am lost for words and feeling a surge of welling emotion. This is the result of a journey I started three years ago….

Old Man Lime

For years I’ve been visiting the ancient trees up on Wenlock Edge. There are many beautiful trees up there but some particular specimens are even more unusual and special than most. Hidden off a path on the secret, lower slopes of the Edge are two such trees, both venerable pollarded limes. The first one just…

January

Long Forest stretches out. A green sleeve reaching over the  arm of the Edge. Here, I am drawn repeatedly into its folds.  Slithering down animal tracks. Entering its secret spaces. That sweet spot where my human body  is shed once more.  Beneath me the feel of the land shifts. I am lighter, more agile. Feet…

Sacred Grove

‘The woods are lovely dark and deep, but I have promises to keep’ The promises I had today were to go on a ‘date’, a date with a secret, special place. A place I stumbled across a few years ago whilst writing my book ‘Finding Home -Journeys with the Hillforts of Shropshire’. The journey in…

The Scream

The day began with a scream. Then a wail, and finally, …a sob. Shaking like a child, in horror and disbelief, I took in the devastation. The trees, the trees, the trees, the trees. All of them, all of them, gone. Rows upon row now like on the ground, dismembered bodies awaiting cremation. The majestic…

Held

Bathed in dappled sunlight, The trees hold me in a cosseted embrace. Their crowns swaying with the breeze, Branches singing me a soothing lullaby. Bird song reigns, wild and untempered, Melting away my worried mind, Full of human busy-ness. The air is changed here, Yew and ash and birch and beech, Mixing into the perfect…

Spring Equinox – Ostara

Walking out into this beautifully bright, sunny morning, I’m suddenly thinking of the eighties film ‘Highlander’. The bit where Sean Connery’s character is explaining to Christopher Lambert’s highlander about the ‘quickening’, that surging pulse of energy and life force that makes him feel stronger, more alive and immortal. So today, standing on top of Windmill…

Spring

Down under the long slope of the Edge, a woodpecker drums for spring. The steady beat echoes out over the woods, a new seasons dance. The trees gladden to his bass line as blue tits, blackbirds and robins join in the orchestra. On the ground below celandines angle their buttery faces up towards the light….

Yew

Yew roots fan out like the folds of a skirt. Great octopus arms encircling the earth in coital embrace. In between the tangle of limbs, faces appear and dissolve again as I draw near to explore the hidden places within. Each tree growing its own signiture of anchoring curls. I’ve been visiting these yews for…

Oak

As soon as I saw it, I was beckoned. Forced to leave the easy-going forest track and set off on a new trajectory, over fallen trees, up slippery slopes, jumping across hollows, drops and dips in the forest floor – captured by his invisible force field. There was no sense resisting the pull. It was,…