Leaving Orkney

Left overs?

welcome to the darkness of Wideford Hill

(notes from the Tomb of the Eagles and scrabbling about in the mud of Wideford Hill Cairn)

To be chosen to lie

In bone on stone

For generations,

Was that the honour,

A privileged obligation?

To wait down the centuries

Bound in stone,

Questioned, petitioned,

Left behind until,

I arrive with a metal light

And listen for your whisper in

The broken dark

Or did a freedom in death

Wait for the flaying

By eagles,
A used skull picked clean

And tumbled off the cliff edge,

Into the sea

And a freedom of soul along the wind,

On the wave,

A chance to turn and run again

In fur, in feather, in family skin?

step out of the Cairn and into a wider landscape

Leaving Orkney

How to write this horizon

That sweeps from blue and shining white clouds

Into rain drifting over 

A bleak shuttered house on 

A bleak stone-walled headland and 

Then out into light again, 

Sunlight reflecting grey and silver on a rippling sea and 

Back into distant rain, 

Shifting curtains beyond those quicksilver waves.

Standing on the sighing deck

Watching our wake curve across the waves

And fade.

Tomb of the Eagles

approaching the Tomb

look out, away, beyond

a very modern entry with trolley for pulling
along the entrance tunnel!

Gulls scream in the brightness

Beyond the stacked stones,

And here,

It is no longer dark,

Three shafts in a concrete cap

Pierce.

But under the stones,

In the corners and the cavities,

The silence remains, until

One breathing fills the space

With sound

Where five thousand years slept quiet.

leave quietly, noticing the small things

A Wanton return!

Revised copies of The Wanton Green have just come in, so grab your cheque books, or contact me for paypal ideas and give yourself a treat (well, we think it is!)

From original blog posting:

Over the last year, I have been one of a team editing a book that has now been released. The Wanton Green is an exciting collection of essays from (mostly) British pagans exploring their relations to places

From the lost magics and holy waters of London to bleak Staffordshire Moorlands; from childhood adventures in Rochdale to faeries in Devon and Cumbria, a new book, The Wanton Green, offers readers a different perspective on landscape

As our relationship with the world unravels and needs to take new form, or maybe to reconnect with an older pattern, The Wanton Green presents a collection of inspiring, provoking and engaging essays by modern pagans talking about their own deep and passionate relationships with the Earth. With contributions from 20 authors that range from Druids to Heathens, from Chaos Magicians to Witches, Shamans and Voudou Mambo, Wanton Green brings voices from the diverse and growing Pagan community of Britain to the environmental debate and promises food for thought and inspiration for the spirit

Contributors include Emma Restall Orr, Runic John, Robert Wallsi, Jenny Blain, Melissa Harrington, Graham Harvey, Maria van Daalen, Susan Greenwood and Susan Cross. (Visit the Wanton Green blog for tastes of the treats within...)

All the contributors have forgone their royalties, allowing any arising to go to Honouring the Ancient Dead 

Ordering copies

a) direct from me £ 11.99 a copy, + £2.00 P&P for first copy and £1 per copy after that (cheques to Creeping Toad, or I can invoice you - 51-d West, Rd, Buxton, Derbyshire, SK17 6HQ, UK

b) from Mandrake, the publishers

c) through a local bookshop or on-line store

Details

The Wanton Green:

contemporary pagan writings on place

editors: G MacLellan and S Cross

Mandrake Books, Oxford, 2011

ISBN: 978 1  906958 29 9

there is a chapter on Lud's Church where icicles
drip from the ivy and grass at Midwinter (sometimes)

‘From Apathy to Empathy – Reconnecting People and Place’

‘From Apathy to Empathy – Reconnecting People and Place’

featuring leading international and national experts in place-based education

 

22^nd-24^th August 2012, The Burren

 

Burrenbeo Trust are delighted to announce that we are now accepting bookings for our inaugural Learning Landscape Symposium titled ‘From Apathy to Empathy – Reconnecting People and Place’. This unique event will bring together leading local, national and international thinkers and practitioners who specialise in the theme of place-based learning.  Place-based learning encourages the use of the local environment as a learning resource. It immerses individuals in local heritage, culture and landscape, encouraging them to become more aware of and engaged with their place.

With 20 talks and interactive sessions, this workshop will have something for everyone.  Leading experts from the US - David Sobel and David Orr- and the UK - Gordon MacLellan and Tony Kendle - will be joined by our own place based educators including Michael Gibbons, Katy Egan, Sean McDonagh, John Feehan, Gordon D’Arcy, Nessa Cronin, Karen Till, Patrick McCormack, Eugene Lambe and many, many more . Participants will be immersed in one of the nation’s most inspiring places and challenged to engage fully with this place and the issues that impact on it, learning lessons and techniques which can be adapted to their own place and its needs.

The Learning Landscape Workshop will feature a combination of keynote lectures at the Burren College of Art in Ballyvaughan, themed workshops in venues across the beautiful village of Kinvara and site based workshops in the stunning Burren landscape.  Areas that will be explored during the event include: what are the benefits, for people and places, of place-based learning? What is best practice worldwide in engaging and inspiring people with regard to their place? And how can the Burren, Ireland ’s ultimate outdoor classroom, be better utilised and developed as a learning landscape? 

This event is open to everyone.  The workshop price is €150 (€125 for Trust members).  Day rates may be offered on request, however these are subject to availability.  

THERE ARE ONLY 100 PLACES AVAILABLE for this event.  Those that book first will be given priority when choosing workshops so get booking if you don’t want to be disappointed.

To book your place please fill in the attached booking form and pop it in the post or send us the necessary details by email or phone to trust@burrenbeo.com or 091-638096.  To view the evolving programme, go to www.burrenbeo.com  A final programme will be circulated well in advance of the event.

Burrenbeo will be offering two full scholarships to attend this workshop (worth €150 each).  To be considered for these please send us 250 words on why you would benefit from attending this workshop, including information on your background on place based learning.  The deadline for such proposals is the 1^st August.  

This workshop has been part-supported by The Heritage Council.

Word on paper and other places

I tend to operate at a gallop most of the time and don't give myself the time I need - and want - to do more of my own writing and other personal creative pursuits. So, I recognise a degree of envy in recommending to people to go and enjoy these products of other people's creativity! Never mind! Buy a book, read a poem, visit a blog, regardless of some ol' toad muttering into his fishtanks!

Three places and ideas to recommend

The Beauty in the Beast

A new book by my lovely hedgehog fried Hugh Warwick. Following A Prickly Affair (his book about a lifetime interest in hedgehogs), he has gone out and talked to people as interested (or as obsessed?) in other animals as he is in urchins. It is a wonderfully unexpected selection of (British) wildlife from solitary bees to otters, dragon flies, and house sparrows to foxes. I've hopped in there, too, as an amphibian voice

Book details:

The Beauty in the Beast by Hugh Warwick, ISBN 978-0-85720-395-3

Hugh's website: www.urchin.info

Caroline Hawkridge

Ona quieter, and dare I say, more elegant note, why not visit Caroline's site? Poet and delighter-in-wildlife, Caroline writes beautifully and has just launched this site about her work including a poem inspired by the peregrines nesting on Derby Cathedral. 

Caroline has also written about bilberries

And then I did manage to get some writing done! Hoorah! (well I enjoyed it) and then we had to edit the piece down, so I'm going to post the missing paragraphs below. These were the opening sections for a piece for the Summer edition of an on-line magazine, "Native British Spirituality"

"The purpose of this website is to provide a focus of re-connection with these islands – so that we make the land well, and the land makes us well. Our intention is to share our lived experiences of these islands, their cycles and seasons, the elements, sacred places, spirits of place, and native flora & fauna, defining ‘spirituality’ as ‘connection with Spirit’, or ‘alignment with Nature’."

My piece is on the Air page and originally was due to start:

“Bright are the willow tops,

Playful the fish in the lake

The wind whistles over the tops of the branches

Nature is superior to learning”

All of a sudden, “getting out there and connecting with nature” seems to be the thing to do. BBC Wildlife is advocating “52 wild things to do this year”, the National Trust has “50 things to do before you're 11”. Even staid Natural England is trying to get 1 million children out into the countryside (but not all at once). There is also another strand which turns the need to make connections with nature into an intellectual discussion with debates on “nature deficiency disorders” and the problems of environmental disassociation.

Of course, none of this is new. A lot of us have never stopped “connecting” with the world around us. Simple test: are you still breathing? Connected! Have you stopped breathing? Still connected. Cynicism aside, of course it is good to encourage people to go out, to get out, to enjoy this beautiful world we live in

And it is so easy. Renewing connections doesn't need trips to National  Trust houses or Natural England Nature Reserves. A garden would do it, or  park or even shut a walk along a street....

  As “Creeping Toad” a lot of my work is about celebrating the relationships between people and places and encouraging individuals, groups and communities to explore their connections to  those places around them. We use activities like these, simple light-hearted adventures to invite people to step back into an awareness of the world......

(Opening quote from The Red Book of Hergest)

My Forgotten Forests

Picking up on the lovely "Forgotten Forests" project, I made a point of going back to some of my personal Forgotten Forests when I was visiting my parents a couple of weeks ago. They still live in the house where we all grew up, in the 'concrete jungle' that is Cumbernauld New Town. Out of that visit, came the following…. (picture 1: Red Fox Valley)

I spend a lot of my time "on the road", travelling around, visiting schools, telling stories, leading workshops. Emotionally, I'm very self-contained but once in a while, I find myself wishing I was travelling with someone else, someone to share experiences with. And this time, to share these woods with. For these are the woods that shaped me, gave me the chance to become who I am now. These trees, stones and pools offered solace and shelter and inspiration to my teenage self. These forgotten forests were my refuge as I grew into an awareness of myself as both gay and pagan.

Red Fox Valley. Blackwood. Here I watched my first roebuck, encountered the scarab-excitement of dor beetles for the first time, caught my first Great Diving Beetle, met wood anemones and the sharp, sour leaves of wood sorrel. There are pools at the heart of both places: ponds for exploring, offering palmate newts and common toads and a richness of delight.

 (picture 2: Blackwood)

Blackwood in spring sports bluebell clouds among the rubbish that is scattered through the trees. The bluebells suggest age and some of the trees hold a century or two, predating the quarry and somehow surviving the devastation of the rest of the hillside. Now the trees have claimed the quarry site as well, branches knitting over awkward hollows and sudden drops. The main quarry flooded at some point. A deep, dirty brown pool with fish that moved the water but that I never quite saw. The water gave no clues, reflective but with no clarity, it could have been bottomless or maybe just waistdeep. Mysterious. Kelpie waters, full of invitation, promise and threat. The oldest trees are on the edge of the woods. Their offspring crowded inwards, to the very banks of the pond. They are not big trees, but hefty, gnarled and twisted, holding their own mystery with their moss and lichen and those defiant, enchanted bluebells. The faerie trilogy of trees: Oak, Ash and Thorn.

(Blackwood's old trees)

To walk through Glencryan Woods, along the edge of Red Fox Valley is to look down into a forested depth. A canopy view from the rim of the glen, peering down into the burn's cut, layers of sandstone quarried by water and tunnelled by men looking for fireclay. The old mine workings were always a temptation and a threat, unstable tunnels, dropping bricks. There were caves too, to scramble into and dream of wildlives, living rough, foraging Crusoes; the lost, unknown, mysterious wildmen of the woods. For me, greater and more lasting than adventure, Red Fox Valley woods brought stillness. The pool at the head of the glen was where "meditation" moved from exercise to experience with the reflections in that water and the trembling leaves of birch trees.  Back down in the glen, line of old, old beeches taught me patience, with branches to scramble onto and there to sit and simply stop. The beeches' presence kept clear the earth beneath green-filtered canopy, offering a space for my first dances of transformation, My first, adolescent, ceremonies were here, opening myself, giving myself to a green world.

 (Red Fox Valley: the path through the trees) 

These were the forests that shaped me, that held my heart safe in their wooden treasure-chests until I was ready to leave, a sapling myself, and go out into the world beyond the woods. My own Broceliande, a faerie land where I could disappear and be safe from that other world from a while. They are still there, these woods. Maybe not forgotten anymore. They look more cared for now. There is less rubbish, but more people. Blackwood is ringed by some new estate of smart houses but the old, twisted trees have survived; while the woods in Red Fox Valley have grown, are growing, swallowing the old sneaky tracks through the trees, offering sensible gravelled paths instead. But a wildness is still there, in both woods; a freedom of toads, adventure and stillness. A wildness at the heart of things.

Red Fox Valley