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…

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….

Eostre

I stand on the steep slope of the Edge.Greet the hills around me,one by one by name.Welcome the warmth of the sun above,feeling its touch on my bodyand settle myself down into my scrapeto slowly scan the land below. I am here again and so are all the others.Buzzard arrives first.Flying low over the ruins…

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…

Dress

She was told to be quiet,to keep out of trouble.Not to retaliate to the bullies.Not to question the teacher. Don’t stand out.Don’t challenge.Keep your head down.‘Quiet as a mouse.’ Other girls could do it,Why couldn’t she? ‘Come down from that tree’Her mother scolded. But the voice inside her head,Would not keep silent,She asked questions.She didn’t…

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…

Pan’s time

3am. All is still, as I wake befuddled, Drawn, sleepy- eyed from my slumber, with a nagging thought, too insistant to push away. Outside the van, the woodland Is shrouded in mist. Soup thick and clouding. A veil of otherworld time, Closing in on Beltane Eve. I do not want to go down to the…