Before she was…


The draw to the hut was strong. My body ached with the need and desire to go there. 

‘I will come and stay for a month,’ I turned to him and said running my hand across a wooden log, the cabin was made from. I was there, but I was not, not fully, not like I needed or wanted to. 

‘I will stay with you. We can go fishing and berry picking.’ He wiped mosquito off his cheek. The stickiness of the summer evening on my skin felt strange and it smelt strongly of jasmine. That place was ripe with everything nature, just like in my childhood. I wanted to drink it in. 

In the cabin there were people. They looked happy going about their business. I remember being overcome by jealousy for their fortune of being able to stay there. It was like I was there, but I was not. From my dream I observed it all. I was just a visitor in that place, but in my blood, I knew it as my home from long ago. The ache of wanting to live there rose again. 

There were several rooms: a hall, a big lounge, and an attic. Each room had its purpose. A child joined me and began following me everywhere. It was a small boy but had a girl’s name and looks very pretty. I sat on a sofa and a young woman came and covered me with a blanket. A young man, who showed me around appeared to be in charge. The place felt pure, kind, yet it held secrets, codes, treasures to be discovered. I became very curious. 

‘Where can I find her,’ I asked him. 

He turned away fiddling with a piece of wood in his hand. 

‘I should not really tell you. May be just leave it. It has been a long time and you do not know what it will lead to.’ He looked at me with understanding and warmth. 

‘I do know what you are saying. I do. I just wondered if she was around.’

And then he said, ‘She is around, all around. She is right next door.’

‘Left, or right?’ I asked. 

He looked right but meant left. Somehow, I understood that. 

Once outside everything was lush green with rowans lining up the road on both sides. Late summer. Berries were beginning to redden. I took it all in. It smelt like rich soil and home. I was home. And then darkness. I plunged into it suddenly and it felt comforting. The thing about darkness, you might not be able to see anyone, but no one can see you either. I always found that comforting to know. I took my shoes off and walked out of the gate and looked where her house was. It was large and beautiful. Luxurious with big windows. I felt scared. Night summer air intoxicatingly alluring. I took another deep breath. 

‘I could not possible go in that house,’ I thought. So imposing and grand, not what I expected, and it was right there, next to the house I stayed in. 

Next, I walked back through the gate and stood on a bench lined up against the gate to peek into the windows next door. I knew I should not be doing it but could not help it. Curiosity took over. And then I saw cats, lots of back cats. They were the size of dogs. They roamed the boarder scowling. They began moving towards me as soon as they spotted me. I froze in terror. They snarled at me, and one sank her teeth into my leg. I felt sharp pain. They withdrew.

I ran into the house, but someone followed me in. I turned around and there she was. Young and beautiful, simply dressed. Her hair colour I recognised, as my own, when I was a child. Decorative small earrings, nothing out of the ordinary apart from her face. Intensely kind, shining from within she was. I felt her goodness, but also darkness all at the same time. She was both life and death. She took my hand in hers, which felt clammy and cool, but not unpleasant. I froze, fascinated, honoured, and humbled all at the same time. Then she told me her name… It was her, before she was her.

It was one of those significant dreams, which I have not had for some time. I am grateful to receive one last night. Dreams are products of our psyche. They are from us, about us and for us. Over my lifetime I learnt to recognise various categories of dreams. This one belongs to a ‘telling’ dream that contained several messages for me and reflected aspects of my own consciousness that should help me moving forward. It was fairy tale like with vivid landscapes, vibrant colours, and strong smells. I touched objects and people with intent and purpose that remains with me now on waking. I love sensory dreams like this one and it just had to be recorded. She was there, the young version of her, before she became her… 

Happy Yule, everyone!

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What nature does

Summer meadow

It keeps me in balance in the body, mind and spirit. When seasons are aligned externally I am aligned internally. When it is off, I am off. It is a point of reference for me physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. It is a way of knowing myself as part of a bigger picture. The way it makes us feel insignificant is beneficial for us to bring us back into a place of humble being. Landscapes surrounding us and there are multiple landscapes, each of which, can offer a perspective. I like to think in terms of the four elements. Water, earth, fire and air. Each landscape has all of it entwined with one or more dominating, just like us, humans do and through immersion into the elements we get to restore back into balance.


Nature is an incredible life-partner, one I can not live without, as without it there will not be me. The deep knowing of it being within and without brings a profound sense of ‘this is it’. It comforts and reassures like nothing else.


It helps my mind be simply a function in aid to all my other functions, no more and no less. There’s always just enough thinking and clear enough to begin and end where it should. There’s no ruminating, overthinking and becoming overwhelmed by my thoughts to a point everything else shuts down. For me this is specifically related to hiking in nature landscapes, physically moving through places of natural environments and again there is a place for each desired effect I might be seeking.


Nature is a source of inspiration, awe, enchantment and wonder and it is the greatest feeder of my soul. Spirit is in the land and it is felt no matter where I am. It speaks a language that is so specific to nuances of the heart that it can take your breath away and it often does. One might say an understanding can be had from nature towards us. It has no judgement or punishment or even interest in particular in us. It just is and that is perfection, something for us takes a life-time to comprehend, if at all.


Nature is the greatest gift to humanity yet we abuse it daily. That’s what humans do through ignorance and arrogance. It does continue and regenerate though, it carries on regardless and if only we had reverence for that kind of resilience and beingness the world would be a different place. Think heaven on earth, well it is all there, in nature, in the land itself. It’s always been heavenly and always will be. Why we don’t want to be part of that I will never know…


Nature is sacred. There is mystery, magic, truth and life all locked within it. That is all there is to it. It is the most important creation on earth and always will be long after we are all gone. Ending up without our nature landscapes would erase all meaning for me. I can not comprehend existing without it and every day looking out of the window to a birch tree outside I feel blessed to have witnessed nature for real, in my life time. I fear it won’t be here forever…

Primordial land

Harris, Scotland

Primordial land is the monument to eternity. Jagged, raw, windswept into position of timelessness. Wild grasses and flowers scatter across the cliff tops and the land and sea are like the oldest companions of all elemental beauty. It doesn’t just tag at your heart and takes your breath away it consumes your soul.

With a single breath one transports into a place of deep belonging to the times long gone yet still running through your blood. It is a sort of remembrance for me. I know who I am there instantly. There are no barriers or limits, only recognition between the primal in me and the land. There’s no feeling like it.

I describe that feeling as merging with the core of something so familiar. Rocks are like tough thick lizard-like skin and breathe of the sea and mountains is like cells weaving together to form a being that can not be described, only felt from within.

It is a shape shifting experience one might say that is effortless there. It feels like wings and claws can grow out of the body and an animal-self comes home. Otherworldly place yet deeply grounding, which makes it a true manifestation of spirit on Earth type of experience. Heavenly, surreal yet so physically felt with all senses in perfect alignment that can be overwhelming. But the land holds you tight in its casing of rocks, plants and roaring water that you can’t help but become it.

Nature is all there is…

Nature is the original intelligence, life-force, evolution and transformative realm that just is. I like working with nature as the most primary source of all intelligence grounded in the body, clarity of thinking and depth of feeling. Most of all it doesn’t seek to enslave, manipulate or control. It is of free will and choice and in not wanting anything from you essentially encourages sovereignty and that is priceless. It demonstrates and shows how things can unfold naturally when one is allowed to be and grow in a way one chooses. I admire all things nature for that.

Another aspect is simplicity and inclusive sense of all belonging together and working together. It doesn’t try to be something it is not and has no concern for whether you are for it or against. To me it is the most perfect example of how to live. It is all consciousness and it doesn’t have labels. It has clear, purposeful, intentional cycles of life and death. In its inclusiveness it is perfection.


As an elemental and intuitive witch and all around nature-based spiritual practitioner, I have learnt from nature starting from the ground up with studying the nature elements and the qualities of each, which like a mirror reflected back to me what my qualities are; those that are weaker and those that are distorted and where I am most balanced. It taught me that listening to your own elemental self will never lead us astray. It just wouldn’t make sense for that not to be true.

Another thing that I can’t live without and is like breathing to me is beauty and where else one can experience things more beautiful than in nature. My belief has been for a long time that beauty will save the world. In nature it is not all butterflies and flowers, however, it is about survival and predation, violence and death yet even in those manifestations there’s immense beauty. One only has to experience a storm and the devastation it can cause or get in contact with the poisonous and dangerous species yet so stunning. I don’t believe it is always a disguise I believe it is meant to be beautiful in all forms. We only have to see it for what it is and not for what it is not depending on what our mind would tell us is good for us or our needs. Beauty is everywhere and it only takes one moment of immersion into something beautiful, however minute, allows a possibility of being pulled back into our own beauty, because we are one with that in our combined elemental nature. Nature brings enchantment back into our hearts and that enchantment can bring such changes to how we live.


Many treat nature as God and it is easy to see why and it is not wrong, but what I most appreciate is that it doesn’t see itself as either above or below. It just is, being, flowing and morphing from one manifestation to another without any concern for an external human or any other influence. It doesn’t have that need or awareness of that being necessary. It is sovereign and it encourages us all to be. It calls for us to get in touch with our souls and return to self, to the original.


To understand what I mean one only has to connect to something nature-based, anything of what you consider nature and in time a sight develops, things become clear, parallels are drawn and lessons learnt. There’s no greater teacher than our natural world and it will remain my religion, solace, happiness and peace.

Soul Land review

From a Druid, writer and poet, Nimue Brown, the author of many wonderful books on nature-based spirituality, comes a review of my poetry collection. I am so pleased she enjoyed it.

I love how she framed them as Bardic songs, letters. So interesting, which makes it even more significant for me.

https://druidlife.wordpress.com/2020/07/19/soul-land-a-review/

ORDER a signed copy from the author