Author: harrietsams

Opening my eyes when the children aren’t here is a little bit of a confusing event. I have forgotten myself in my sleep again and I cannot, for a split second, remember what I am. I simply have no purpose, no one to dress or feed, to hunt for shoes for or to encourage to read their homework books for me. I have no other reason to get out of bed, other than I just want to. The day suddenly is precious and I need to get up and be in it. Be of it.

But instead I lie a little longer and my mind trips and skips over reason why it’s not ok to do so. I’m not meditating, nor am I reading, I’m not doing anything at all and my mind is not at peace. It frets and worries, chews the sides of my nails and grimaces. It trips over things I should be doing: walk the dog, check the seedlings, check for eggs, have a coffee at least and accept that you’re awake. I lie still and watch this cascading dribbling of worry as it falls. I am conscious that I’m feeling urged by it but that I’m going to just lie here a little longer and let it do its thing, while I carry on doing nothing.

Outside the window the midsummer morning light makes brilliant lime yellow the conifer over the road. It waves its soft fronds gently in the breeze. Slowly it is encroaching on the telegraph pole where the common woodpecker sits and I really should talk to my neighbour about getting it trimmed. Just gently, though, like a haircut. Behind it a tall, ladylike and elegant silver fern shimmers too, as if to say I was here first. She stays in cool shadow as the conifer wakes in the sun. There is no woodpecker today, so I am free to hear the Mediterranean chatter of the sparrows. They always remind me of hot French village lanes. Ubiquitous to Britain they may be, but I never heard them until childhood holidays in hot summer France for some reason. And now the connection has been made in my mind and there it shall stay. The sound transports me from mild and upland Teesdale to the wild Atlantic coast, where wine and salt are harvested in abundance. Where donkeys wear gaiters and men wear battered hats.

Every waking is my chance to dream awake. Again and again.

I listen to the rhythmic, deep, healing breath of my husband as he sleeps his weekend sleep beside me. He is my reason. When I forget my own, he gently brings me back to myself. I know that when he awakes he will want to get out and dream awake too, it’s just that he calls it something else.

The conifer dips into shadow and turns just green again. Now back to lime yellow. Now back to green. It’s a dappled day. The wood pigeon is awake. The frantic nesting days are behind them all and now it’s the time for scrawny fledglings on hedges. Once a baby great tit got a bit discombobulated and fluttered onto my finger. Gripping tightly into my flesh like a baby’s pinch it surprised me with its power of life. Then it realised its mistake and jumped clumsily off into tall grass. I detached my wonder and joy and walked away. For it may be dinner for the circling crow, or wrapped around by the slow worms that are abundant in these parts, if they eat baby great tits that is. Maybe it will fight it off and learn a great lesson in the meantime. Of the urge to life that courses unbidden through its veins and will make it do unbidden things, to survive. And to continue.

The lime green conifer now has a back drop of grey massing clouds where before there was the freshly washed blue of morning. I really should get up. Because. Who knows why. I’ve a feeling there are things to be done, things to be felt and seen and joys to be had. Other joys, I am nudged to believe. This daily premonition is what urges me on to live my life outside and beyond, what makes each day a reward for the last one I had.

For the children will be back soon and I like to tell them of my little adventures just as they tell me of theirs. I may show them a fossil I found, or a bright pheasant feather, or tell them the story of the baby great tit. The day needs to be lived before it can be told as the curtains are drawn and bedtime beckons.

Off I go.

I have long felt that the way things are cannot be sustained. I have felt that we cannot disconnect the suffering we see in a far away land from the comfort I feel here in my home. When I sit by and allow things I cannot condone to happen, then I am as bad as if I’d done it myself. So, it is clear to me that the ways things are surely must come to an end. By shaking the foundations of the very establishments that hold us so secure, we are actually forwarding the painful process of change. In the long view, what is unleashed in the process cannot last and will not last. Fear, prejudice, selfishness, these are the now overt elements of what was already here. The trick of the Establishment has ever been to keep us from looking them directly in the eye yet using them to justify immoral means. But now these are open, above ground, visible. And now we cannot hide from what has been festering within our comfortable world.

Yet these too will diminish in time as what they fought for turns out to be a horrendous mutant of what went before. They perhaps don’t realise that they are only taking the underbelly of emotions of what has always been and making them new. What will really be new is when the Earth Herself heaves up in cataclysmic protest against all who have undone Her delicate balance, when capitals are flooded and humans drown in their own confusion. When the paper that fiscal policy is written upon disintegrates in the water and the air poisons swathes of this green and pleasant land. And if it’s not our own British green and pleasant land being poisoned, it will be that of lands once flourishing in the cradle of farming, or the dawning of new religions. The people fleeing to us. To us! As if we have different answers to the ones they once dared to dream were right. People, like me and my husband, my daughters and their unborn sibling. Bodies with dreams and wishes, memories and desires, with thoughts and learning, joys and tears. People. Who drowned off our shores because of the death rattle of the establishments, like the one we’ve just taken away.

This is a globe and these are global times. What happens to you happens to me. It’s always been thus, but now it is so very obvious. I am retreating, slowly from the world. I retreat from the cyber world for my personal mental health, I have retreated from fashions and consumerism. I have retreated into good friends and good food, soul-nourishing experiences and deeply meaningful moments. I have retreated into work that reconnects. Yet I need to forever renew my retreating. For this is a damaged world and a damaged mess to which I cannot see an end.

Yet, nothing is ever the same, from moment to moment. What we feel today will be a fuzzy memory in time. Things may not even have been important enough to worry about, but perhaps only time really shows us that. Time long after my time. For now, I will meditate under the apple tree and feel the cells of who went before all around me. For now.

The mediation Circle is returning this Thursday 9th June, 7.30pm every week. Come along if you can, £3 donation towards costs.

Ecotherapy workshop this September: the need for personal change in a consumer world is upon us. Through this workshop you will find out about your connection to the landscape and find ways to look at how your life reflects your views on the world. The workshop will show you ways in which you can connect on a deeper level to the beautiful world around you, through consumer choices, use of materials, your use of fuels and anything else which may be an important aspect upon which to look. It is  a one-day workshop to connect to your living landscape, and to find your place within it. We will use meditation techniques and guided visualisations in a group setting to allow you to access your inner understanding of this relationship, as well as discussion and self-exploration. The work is mainly outdoors, so be prepared.

Bring your own lunch. £35 Dates TBA, please look out for posters and online notifications!

  The Easter holidays have been upon us. It is not a universal truth that the holidays are a time for great release and out-breathing. Many people have to struggle with work and family commitments, no time nor money to do much at all. The weather no doubt plays a deeply important role in enjoyment at this time of year: a warm sun and a gentle breeze can lift even the dourest of spirits, where rain and perpetual cold can dampen anyone’s joie de vivre. Yet surely and obviously, once we actually stop making excuses to ourselves and stop believing our own negative reasoning, adventure is there to be had.

For isn’t this your life? Right here, right now? Why are you even looking at your screen and not rushing out to step into the great flow of chaos that is out there, ready to sweep you and your imagination out into the Wild Unknown?  When did the worry of not-now-ness drag you away from the scream of YES that is so, so close to the tips of your lips you can almost hear it? That tingling in your spine that meant you were about to do something a bit crazy with no idea if the ending was going to be good or bad, or even if there was going to be an ending at all? Don’t book anything or think about anything, JUST DO IT, as the old advert so wisely declares.

Some things occasionally remind me that this really is my life and that I’d better get on with it. Quitting my day job, buds upon trees that I’m pretty sure weren’t there the other day, mountain walks with friends, tears of joy of the marking of a big birthday in someone’s life, children making odd and wise statements for the very first time…. So much reminds me that I’ve actually no clue about what is going to happen next. I am constantly surprised and overjoyed by life, when I stop talking myself out of living it.

This is not to say that the things that go on in our lives, the big things, the worries and concerns will simply  disappear at the rattle of a handful of acorns. Of course they do not. And this is also not to advocate sticking one’s head in the sand and pretending that we are not of this world, whether we like it or not. Because we are.  Bills need to be paid, health maintained, relationships managed and other things that seem so terribly mundane must be worked upon. Yet, there is deep wisdom in saying the following mantra to yourself at least once a day, and more, if necessary:

Fuck it.

Just that. Fuck it.

Let yourself smile. Because the mountains exist, birthdays come and go, friends in human and animal form bless our lives, as do friends in all the other forms that we love. I don’t know about you but I collect beautiful things that I find on my walks and I put them onto my Windowsill of Wonder. They sit there and I observe them as I cook. They remind me of the things that make me happy and they are there, just being, precious in their own right. They are talismans of the days I said fuck it and I went out to find what the world showed me.

I saw the power of love this week. I saw how kindness, patience, gentleness and a loving spirit in a person attracts that back. I saw and was blessed to be a witness to what a single person can mean to others and that marking their birthday marked everything in their lives that had led to this moment; good and bad, sad and joyful, without judgement and without pride nor rancour. I saw that friendship can heal great wounds, open up hearts, give closure to those who needed it and make people smile. I felt gratitude flowing like a great swirling vortex, engulfing us, connecting us and drawing us ever closer to what we secretly yearn for all of our lives: honesty. Honesty of being. No facades of politeness and etiquette, no worrying about reputation or attitudes. Good, marvellous honesty.

There was honesty right there alright, and it swept away the murky, polluted stagnation of lives of not-now. fuck it dwelt inside us all and was given voice to speak, then legs to walk and dance, then teeth to eat and ears to hear. Fuck it made the days shine and the people glow. It was an arena within which people looked towards a place of safety and security where they really could just be. How rare this is! How gratefully received.

We were blessed those days. But, then I catch myself wondering if all days have this inherently within them, yet we have lost the eyes to see it, the senses to feel it any more? Do I really need to take a couple of days out for a significant birthday, a rite of passage, to invite the spirit of honesty into my life? Perhaps it needs no invitation and it is I who needs to simply walk through an open door. It is always there, you know, honesty, magic, connection, nwyfre.

I am struck by the amount of mature trees that this winter has claimed in its ferociousness. Ashes bent and humiliated, the land torn up and roots splintered by the collapse of such enormous beings that have stood sentinel for so long, unnoticed for so long, lucky in the story of survival, of the hundreds of years they have witnessed. The sky line can never be the same again. It is clear that many of these beautiful lives had grown old and perhaps were ready to fall some day. But there are so many, so many. Paths meander round the fallen canopy, or over the trailing trunk, allowing me to walk in solemnity around their rather imposing size. How come, as they soar above, it can pass my attention by that they really are so huge, hulky, vast? Held up by watery sinew, resilience and sheer force of the will to grow, to Be. I have hugged trees and felt them bend and sway beneath me. I have stood on a grand oak’s roots barefoot and felt the humbling power of the grip they have upon the Earth in order to hold up such a creature. I have eaten brand new beech leaves, soft and bright green, tanniny taste making my mouth salivate with its bitterness. I have sucked the sugary blossom leaves of the hawthorn in May, a little way-side treat. I have watched the same leaves grow, flourish, turn and fall in a single year on a single tree and I have been thankful that the creature itself was doing what it knows to do.

“Treebeard: Many of these trees were my friends. Creatures I had known from nut or acorn.
Pippin: I’m sorry, Treebeard.
Treebeard: They had voices of their own.”

There is a grief that wells within me at this devastation. These trees really were my friends, they have shaped this landscape for far more years than I hold. They have led the eye on gentle meanderings, on joyous Spring days and head-down-coat-zipped freezing, wet winter walks of necessity and magiclessness. They have been there, noted or not. And now they are gone, bypassed, circumnavigated, reconfigured, and eventually cleared away by industrious landowners for firewood.

As I walk home, I remember that last year I bought a little pear sapling, to keep company the struggling Old Pear tree that clings to life in the tangle of the bottom garden. I should have planted it in the winter. Perhaps I’m too late already. I walk up to it. It is budding. Pear is awakening. It needs a home. I should plant no more than four meters from Old Pear. Like an orchard of two. There are three apple trees already in the garden and like frilly, blowsy old ladies at a tea and cake morning, they are getting on famously. Old Pear has needed some help for some time, even though I was delighted that It produced two fruits last year, it is not famous for bumper crops. I fetch my spade and the sapling and I bring them down into the bottom garden, where inquisitive chickens come to oversee and scratch around where I work. I dig a hole.

Dig. The blade cuts smoothly into the brown earth and I feel a wave of calm spread up from it, into my being and into my face. It changes my muscles, contracting my mouth into a little smile. Soft tears start to well in my eyes as I make the hole even on each side. I feel the scrape of a pebble against the spade, the momentary halt, then the juddering descent into the ground as the earth rearranges herself and yields to the cut. I dig more. The little mound of excavated soil grows and the chickens investigate. Scratch, buuuuurrrrp, scratch, scratch, burrrp beeuuuurp. Contented are we. Their soft throaty sounds mingle with the gentle swish of the branches overhead. Even with mere buds upon the boughs, the sound of trees in the wind is changing from the dull clack of wintery, wind-swept branches to the prelude to the full, oceanic, rustle of Spring.

The hole is dug. I take New Pear out of Its pot and I place it into the ground. Yes, I think, I’m just in time. It is hungry for the earth and I should have done this before now. I feel an urgency to the job, this sapling is in my care and it needs all the help it can get. I replace the earth and water the ground. Blessings come to my lips, without a thought: grow and be fruitful. The simplest of blessings, calling straight to its heart. Do what you need to do, because your nature requires it of you.

As I turn away, I remind myself to do what I am requiring of myself to do. Old trees fall and new trees grow. This is the unassailable truth. But planting, that is a choice.

Excerpt from The Lord of The Rings- The Two Towers J.R.R. Tolkein

 I know why

Winter is drab,

Bleak, grey, dismal,

Sad, dead. 

I know why

Living in the city 

Makes a walk through dirty streets 

Deny any colour to

Surprise and uplift,

Where Winter has died unto itself.

I know why there is no patience with crisp, golden days,

Told by joyous strangers in muddy boots,

Get out more

They say as if that is the answer when

Really it is prolonging the truth,

That here has no life and I’m best 

In central heated denial on built-up land,

In man-made, bill-paid 

Comfort.

I know why what they means is really,

Winter has slept all this while,

And to look upon a loved one in deep,

Innocent,

Exhausted rest

Is to view beauty unbound by living requirements.

Is to look at living in stasis,

And only then do the visions of creation begin to show.

Pine cone in Fibonacci perfection on my windowsill,

Opened up in the last light moments of the Slumber in blueprint infallibility,

Made in Winter and found on the day of Equinox

And I know why there is no fear,

Of muddy booted preachers,

Nor the awakening trees,

Nor even of the time of rest,

Because the blueprints are beautiful

And the story even more so,

And to hear them and

See them

in the darkest,

Most fearful days

Is to hold knowing like a feather of hope

I am struck by how there are countless busy birds all around me, yet I cannot see them at all. Occasionally I see the shudder of a hedge sprig, or a tiny body as it flits in a hurry into a tree. Yet, all I perceive is singing. Singing in earnestness, in abundance, in competition, even just for the joy of it, perhaps. How can so many souls be so invisible yet so audible? How can such tiny beings make these days seem so springy?

Yes, Spring is arrived. And with it come birdsong and business. The battle of procreation begins. Nest building and posturing, squabbling and singing. All these are signs that the Great Dance has begun again. We can dare to go outdoors with one less layer on, we can venture out in the evenings without a torch to walk Dog. I spent an hour watching a collared dove diligently build a nest under a privet thicket. Building grass by spindly grass her cosy nest, hidden from threatening eyes, safe for when she settles upon her eggs for the Great Wait. The great in-breath has begun. She will sit and pause, holding the air in, brooding, waiting. 

Spring is the infancy of the year, where baby shoots begin to grow and trees start to bud. Mistakes and learning will come, as the year matures but for now, it is the time of chaotic wonder of a child. How wondrous to see a field of lambs, or snowdrops in abundance. Every single year it is a delight, newness surprises us yet again. We are so simply and beautifully connected to the seasons, all we have to do is look, when driving the car, or walking. Many now watch tv programmes that give us Spring without us leaving our sofas. It is good to feel the laugh bubble up from within when these moments of joy come at us from the world. Perhaps it is the habit of slowing down and really seeing what is there to be seen that eludes us. 

Or maybe hearing. What if we spent a moment feeling, smelling, tasting Spring? The other day I picked a handful of wild garlic in the woods and had a wayside snack. The taste was pungent, garlicky, filled with Nwyfre, the force of it that compels it to grow. I ate it half a second after it came out of the ground so I could taste the earth, smell its freshness. I gave thanks for its tingling growth, going straight into my body and nourishing it. 

The birds spend every waking moment dancing the dance. The trees and bushes have awoken. As have us human beings. I wonder what would happen to our souls if we too went outside deliberately, to listen, feel, smell and taste, as well as see the great magic that is awakening all around us. Perhaps we are in our tenth Spring, maybe our 90th, yet wonder abounds and we cannot help to feel it. Go. Enjoy. It is free and it is beautiful. 

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

I never intend much, I generally just see how things pan out. This blog started out with the intention to be a space for spiritual things: workshops; event; quotes and such like. Anything goes, I suppose. So, in my mind it seems right to write about running, or walking, yoga, dancing, even sex, perhaps recipes and books too. All these things are actions that lead along the path of happiness. It’s wise to never rule anything out. I do not pretend to be very enlightened, certainly not more than the average person. I have learned a few things along the way, though, about what brings peace. What within me answers the call of joy.

I’ve noticed that joy calls very subtly: often its call is hidden in what I can only describe as the false urge of materialistic values. ‘If you run you’ll be all fit-looking and slim’.  ‘If you eat fresh vegetables and forage from the Earth then it’s better for you than eating cake and biscuits’, ‘don’t drink beer, it makes you bloated and that doesn’t feel very nice, does it?’ ‘Do your yoga, NOW! If you don’t you’ll feel regret and guilt.’ The mind races through all of these options, day in and day out, from moment to moment. It is true that we are paying rent on our bodies, and just like if we choose to pay rent for a beautiful house, then the rent must be kept up, or we lose that which makes us comfortable. Our bodies demand rent, to keep healthy and well, to keep fit, to sleep in security and comfort, without the chasing dreams of drunkenness or lack of movement during the day. But, how do we quieten the mind of these false urges and find the simple urge of joy beneath?

It takes patience and practice to release ourselves from these urges, yet keep the well-intended habits that these negative urges have created. It takes a good, objective look at those things that we say to ourselves which seem like sense on the surface, but are actually trapping us in a cycle of negative reactions. It takes patience and love of ourselves, and, simply, it takes thinking about ourselves just a little bit better. Instead of ‘don’t do that, you’re letting yourself down’ running and re-running in our heads, change the tune to ‘let’s do THIS!’ and do a wonderful thing for yourself. If that small negative urge cannot be quietened, then that’s ok too, just look at it square in the face and let it carry on, just ignore it, as a bigger child may do to an irritating younger sibling.

This is why this blog has snippets of dawn walks in it, pictures of my muddy running shoes, some day I’ll post yoga asanas on here, recipes from better cooks than I, trees that have been hugged and ground that has produced wild garlic to eat on a chilly walk. These small things in themselves are how I answer the beckoning of joy within me. I’ve never managed to quieten that nagging voice within that demands its rent. But I have learned to be better at ignoring it. Like setting up a direct debit, I suppose. Everyone’s happy. And that, surely, is what it’s all about in the very end.

This morning, Dog and I went for our dawn walk as usual, and stood for a little while under a tawny owl, as it hooted softly to itself. Owl looked down at Dog, as he snuffled waggily in the undergrowth after smells undecipherable to me. Deciding that we were just worth ignoring, Owl flew silently off to its next perch, leaving us to walk home, Earth-bound and ready for a coffee and a spot of breakfast. Joy waits everywhere, we just need the senses to find it.

I awoke this morning to a dull tooth ache. Enough to keep me awake, but not enough to call ‘pain’. So I got up in the dark to walk the dog. Walking out into the frosty morning, I could hear the birds calling, fluttering, darting in an new determination from place to place above my head. As I walked, I disturbed a tawny owl from right overhead. Doesn’t it just go to show how you never really know when you’re being watched.

I walked as the light quickly grew. At this time of year, the sun is really in a hurry to awaken the day. Twilight grows perceptibly from night to light; the liminal time lasts barely ten minutes now. I have to be aware with every step of the transition around me, for it goes in the blink of an eye, from the deep magic of dawn to the mundanity of day. 

Yesterday I went to the dentist for a filling on what seemed to be an average-looking hole in my tooth. Of course it turns out that the nerve was damaged and a lot more drilling had to be done. Today I have been awoken and kept very aware by this very real discomfort.  As I walked I explored these pain signals in my mouth, my face, even my eyes seemed to be reacting to the pain. The Beast has been awoken. All I can do now is endure it until the nerves calm down again and the bruising of the drilling subsides. Endure, or find a way to make aquantance with it, being with it in its overwhelming waves in my jaw. 
Two existences occurring at once: my personal pain and the eternal turning of the Sun. These things too shall pass. The day turns to night, the night turns to day. What overwhelms me today will pass in time. The relief in the liminal space that I feel as the pain begins to surrender to the calm of non-pain. I am not controlling this change. It is just happening and taking me along with it. 

All things will pass. And before they do, they will have a rythmn, a pulse. Today I am captured by this pulse and I have no choice but to face the Beast. 

The world is a very odd place sometimes. My place in it is put into question quite often. In fact, I’m pretty sure I have no ‘place’ at all. Last night I watched ‘Before sunrise’ and I realised that the innocence and certainty of youth simply morphs into cynicism, then into holding onto simple convictions that a career and money, perhaps even family will give life purpose. Then in fact, the circle completes itself again by returning you to a resigned innocence that perhaps, just perhaps, the world is as wonderful and magical as you thought it was when you were an innocent child. The word ‘journey’ gets banded about quite a lot, but perhaps that’s what it is.

Writing about the simple things that I see in the world around me is a way for me to find meaning. It isn’t The Answer, but it makes some sense of what can often seem to be chaos in its purest form. The things we assume to be controlled turns out to actually be completely out of any sort of order. There is chaos everywhere if you look hard enough. The task of turning from the safer way of perceiving order and deliberately inviting chaos into my life is a tricky one. But if there is a wasp in the room, I’d rather be able to see it. If I can be hit by chaos at any time, then perhaps it’s best to have been looking at it squarely, honestly, before it can take me by surprise.

And I get to see quite exquisite order and form along the way. In the chaos of a rainy, dingy winter’s morning, where I’m caked in mud and so is the dog, there’s rain going everywhere; down my neck, up my nose, through my ears, I’m slipping everywhere, and I’m really not feeling all that wonderful, my attention will be drawn upwards by the sound of honking geese in their unmistakable formation. Here, amongst the trudge and mundane, is beauty. I can pause for a second in my slipping and chaotic progress through the mud and look up. For a second I’m released from the world and I soar with powerful wings to somewhere far beyond here and far more bewildering than my small perception of this life has yet perceived.

When I was a single mum, my parents once came round to look after the girls, just so I could go for a bike ride and I could travel in a straight line for a change. My role is still so often meandering and repetitive, certainly not straightforward. Chaotic within the perception of an ordered day. But, having looked straight at the wasp and known of its existence, perhaps I feel more at peace with it within my life, meeting it head on.