Life as a wolf

 Life as a Wolf
Dundreggan Project Wolf

In 2016 and 2017 at Trees for Life, Dundreggan, a remarkable project invited small groups of people to spend a month at a time as wolfpack, watching, prowling, patrolling the woods to keep the deer away from new saplings

 

As part of encouraging wider participation in The Last Wolf project, we’re featuring exciting artwork and projects from other people that draw upon ideas about the connections between people and the world around us. This is the first of those posts. Here, in the woods of Dundreggan, from whence we have lost our wolves, there was a fascinating experiment inviting humans to explore a wolf's way of being…..

A visiting Sami singer blessed the Wolf Den where the humandwolves rested during their prowlings with a joik: https://youtu.be/0gSomkEpnLM?si=rYJIaODHpIpB55T2

and Alan Watson Featherstone, the founder of Trees for Life, wrote about meeting the wolves: https://alanwatsonfeatherstone.com/a-night-with-the-wolves/

 

Conceived by Doug Gilbert, the manager of Dundreggan at the time, the humandwolves project was challenging and inspiring and regrettably shortlived! It created fascinating insights into how humans connect to natural spaces and other species….

 

For The Last Wolf, it offers us some wonderful reflections from the humandwolves about just being so immersed in a landscape and a role within a habitat. 

 

If these people were humandwolves – what would you choose to be?

 

Poet Alec Finlay gathered responses to a questionnaire from the participants and out of that grew the poem below

 

See more about Alec’s work here: https://petrichormag.com/current-issue/

 

And the full text of the poem is here: https://petrichormag.com/22-alec-finlay/

 

 

I was a humandwolf

I felt very natural
        very human
          on my nights as a wolf

          walking the routes
          as tracker and hunter

           connected to the land

              with favorite places for sleeping

                and spots to watch from

                  waiting by the tree-line at dusk

                   content to be silent

                                becoming part of the wood

                                    familiar with nooks
                                      and crannies

                                    patterns of growth
                                      and decay

I felt safe in the woods
   with an underlying awareness
      I had a purpose

                                  when I’m out there
                                  I want for nothing
                                                                   (except maybe dry socks)

                                                                   when I’m back home
                                                                   I want more than anything
                                                                   to go back.

 

 

(II)

looking for signs
                                                                        hoof-
                                                                        prints

                                 scat

                                                    hair
in the dark
                                                                                             trails
                                           head-
                                        torches

                                                                  sniffing the air for
                                                                  the musty order

                                              bright reflections
                                         of cornea

your senses pick out

                                                                       faint smell
                                                                       of something
                                                                       that just passed

(III)

 

while being a wolf
I dreamt of deer
and the moon

                                       because of the dreamlike nature
                                       of the nights by night
                                       the veil becomes thinner
                                       lucid dreaming easier

 

 

This poem is composed from answers to a questionnaire completed by ‘humandwolves – individuals who volunteered to join one of the four wolf packs, in 2016 and 2017, at Trees for Life, Dundreggan. Each pack spent one month as a ‘humandwolf’, warding deer from saplings.

Project Wolf was conceived by Douglas Gilbert of Trees for Life

The Humandwolves:
Martina Baltkalne
Millie Barrett
Nick Belt
Lotte Brockbank
Liv Glatt
Claire Large
Matt McMullen
Lorna Meek
Chanel Valento-Bovell
Alex Volkers

All photos by Mhairi Law for Alec Finlay's Humandwolf Project, 2017 

 

Frogsong in February

 Frogsongs in February

A cold February afternoon and the ponds are, thankfully, silent. A watchful, but frogless, heron took off as I arrived. Friends have seen them taking frogs already this year - from ponds in those warmer garden microclimates "just down the road" but here in this hollow of the hills on the edge of town, the cold still holds them all, frogs, toads and newts, asleep. 

But it IS February and further south and lower down, the frogs have started moving, the Toadwatchers of the Toad Patrols are polishing their boots and filing road closure requests (and getting national headlines!). Here I just hope the cold holds for a few weeks more: too often in recent years, there is a flurry of early wakefulness, and a hasty spawning before March snow or late frosts interrupts everything....

But it IS February and there have been those mornings when I wake up and the world smells full of the promise of frogsong and jellied spawn....

FROGSONG

Gordon MacLellan 

It is March and

This morning held a cold smell of spring

Of frogsong and wonder.

Reflections of blue skies and

Willow trees are

Broken by the weeds that break

The pond’s mirror.

There is movement,

A small turning, splashing

Disturbance,

But there is no-one to see.

The wind across the water

Traces deceptive arrows

And by the far bank,

A bigger movement

Sends a ripple, a wave spreading outwards

But still there is no cause to see,

No culprit to celebrate.

 

The pool settles again,

And me, I rest

Here on the grass, watching.

It is March and

I am still hoping for frogs.

 

NOTES

Frogsong was published as "A Pond in March"in Froglife's Autumn/Winter 2-024 edition of Natterchat

Froglife organises the national Toads on Roads initiative: https://www.froglife.org/what-we-do/toads-on-roads/

Northern words and winter

 

snow on the Cairngorms, Nov 2024

Northern words and winter

 

extract from Wave Soaring

I feel very honoured that one of my poems has been included in the latest issue of Northwords Now (Winter 2024/25). NNow features "New writing, fresh from Scotland and the wider North (Sgrìobhadh ùr à Alba agus an Àird a Tuath)"

 

(So, yes: it includes work in English, Gaelic and Scots)

 

Copies are free and the printed copies can be found in bookshops, information centres, cafes and all sorts of places across the Highlands and Islands, or you can download a free copy from the website: 

https://www.northwordsnow.co.uk/Issue45

 

The cover image of Issue 45 is "Wave Soaring" by my lovely friend Alice V Taylor whose work can be seen here: 

https://www.instagram.com/alicev.taylor/?hl=en

 

As we are sort of in the cold now, the full text of "Now we are in the cold" follows. It is part of my latest collection, "Waiting for the Snow" and was first published in Issue 4 of Forget-me-Not Press (2022) "In The Dark":

https://forgetmenotpress.net/in-the-dark

 

Waiting for the Snow can be found on ebay or direct from me

 

 

Now We Are In the Cold. 

 

Now we are in the cold,

Now we are the hunting time,

And the wild geese fly in from the north of the world,

Stitching grey clouds to the hills below

With the long, wavering threads of their flight.

Winter waits,

For the silent, cautious deer,

For the birds to settle in the stubble,

For the hungry fox to take a chance.

 

Now we are in the cold,

Now we are in the hunting time,

And the stillness breathes

In the softest voice of the wind,

Whispering between the trunks, under the branches,

Among summer’s bones in the echoing wood.

Winter waits,

In the cracked ice,

In the wonder of an oak leaf, 

Frosted sharp on the bare ground

 

Now we are in the cold,

Now we are in the dark,

And we are hunted by the wildness,

And a bitter wind through the treetops,

And the cold, brittle silence of a snowy night.

And now, winter waits

For the sigh after the storm, 

For the single candle on the window sill

For my heart settling quiet beside a midnight hearth.

more snow on the Cairngorms, Nov 2024

Words and journals

 Where are Toadwords going?

Fossicking in the undergrowth of ideas 
and swapping stories with 

rooks and rats and midwinter wrens
....that's part of what writing is for me...

and music...working with Gifts from Crows

 

Adventures in print....the last couple of years have been lively for keyboards and scribbling pads (I usually write long-hand first, or at least cover an A3 sheet with notes!). I paused to look at where my writing had gone in these months. There are my new books: Waiting for the Snow and Baba Yaga: tales of an old witch that came out this year and Sacred Animals from last year. And then there are reviews, articles, poems and bits in all sorts of other publications....These pick up that Creeping Toad principle of looking creatively and emotionally at the world around us and explore past projects or unpack ideas and possibilities or are just delighted* wanders through the woods of imagination

 

Forget-me-Not Press: online art and poetry journal from Canada: I have work in Issues 4, 5, 6 and 7

Touchstone: the journal of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids

Faith Initiative: Issue 47 June 2023: the aim of the magazine is to open windows on the beliefs and practices of people of different faiths and cultures to foster understanding and reduce racially and religiously motivated violence. 

Homecoming: Aurochs 1, 2 (2023) and 3 (2024): journal of new animist writing

Primary Geography, Autumn 2024 the Geographical Association's journal for all Early Years and Primary Teachers and is published three times a year

Northern Earth, September 2024: exploring earth mysteries in Northern UK - and further afield

Pagan Dawn: the journal of the Pagan Federation

Magnet: 2024, an article on gardens as sanctuaries - both for humans and other-than-human people. Magnet seeks to nurture Christian faith in thoughtful, challenging ways, encouraging, enabling and equipping people of all faith traditions for life. 

Natterchat: the magazine of Froglife: I've hopped (and crept) into most of the latest issues

If you are associated with a publication and would like a Toad-piece, get in touch! Email is probably easiest: creepingtoad@btinternet.com

 

And there is music! a collaboration growing over the last year with the wonderful trio Gifts from Crows has grown into a release on bandcamp of "Whisper along the wind" combining Gift's music with my words and the beautiful images of Johanna Ronn

 

* delighted: at least I enjoy writing! hope other people enjoy the reading of it all!

Opening image: a white-faced owl who spent a day with me (recovering from flying into a window!) in Malawi in about 1984!

 

 

Words and Ash Trees

Words and Ash Trees

poems, puppets and reflections 

on the woodlands of Buxton

We are the trees

Who shed slim grey dresses

For coats of green and brown and lichen,

Who comb the air,

Who dance in the wind,

Who grow hope from seedlings.

(From We are the Trees)

Watching our woodscape change as ash dieback worked its way into the trees, we asked people if these woods were special to them and if so, why? We turned that question round and asked people to look at the world as the trees might.

Gathering responses, back in 2020 as various waves of lockdown tripped up public events and hands on workshops,  Stone and Water and Creeping Toad took all those words and shook them up in a word-blender (like a food-mixer but with a stronger dictionary-drive). As the summer went on, we also gathered pictures from visitors to the woodlands of Buxton (thanks to Buxton Civic Association for all their work keeping our woods open, accessible and beautiful)... eventually all this grew into a pair of poems: "We are the People" and "We are the Trees". Then those pictures on cloth and paper grew shoots and faces and became a pair of tall trees with the help of visitors, Two Left Hands and our Stone and Water team

 

Our Tree People have gone on to have their own adventures...

• 2020: sprouted full grown from the fresh shoots of wild imaginations
• 2020: filmed by OffTheFence for the CelebrationEarth! project
• 2022: featured in Treasuring Trees: celebrating the trees of Derbyshire at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery
• 2022: guest appearance in the Nairn Books and Arts Festival
• The poems themselves have also been recited in story performances, used in ceremonies, and been hung on trees to provoke thoughts on woodland wanders

 

Now, as their leaves begin to fall, it felt like a good time to celebrate our Tall Trees and the poems associated with them

 

• Download the full poems, here
• Watch We are the Trees, here
• Find out more about BCA and Buxton's woodlands, here
• And visit Stone and Water's website: https://stoneandwaterblog.wordpress.com/about/ash-keys/

We are the people

Who walked,

Who wondered,

Who laughed,

Who talked,

Who held hands,

Who strolled,

Who held their hearts and loves and hopes

Under Ash trees.

(from We are the People)

with many thanks to all the members of the public who added to our collections of words, phrases, thoughts and images, to the makers, painter, wild imaginers and reckless puppeteers and to James Lampard for wonderful saxophone playing to wake our puppets, 'way back when