Gwendolen lived in this Pembrokeshire cave: she was part woman, part crow, part rock. She decorated her glistening black body with kelp, and collected bird’s foot trefoil and celandine stars to place around her cave as night lights. This way, the deep darkness of her home was always studded by a warm yellow glow, even when storms raged outside it. Gwendolen lived in this cave for a great many years longer than any human can remember. She lived a not-quite-immortal life in silence, listening to the sounds of the waves crashing against the edges of the world. It is said that she loved how her eye would land upon infinity when she scanned the empty horizon of the sea. That her hands knew the rough dragon tooth edges of the world as if they were its maker. Gwendolen lived in this cave for just less than forever and she marked time
Some people can walk past a field with a big rock in it. Others can go on an epic adventure which involves getting chased by a herd of cows, being entranced by swallows swooping in and out of a barn, falling in a bog during an attempt to evade a second herd of cows, and discovering Norman, Vice-Chair of the Alien Interminglingatory. You’re probably thinking that I made a mistake with my language there, that I failed in my linguistic precision. You’re probably thinking, “oh, she means she found a sculpture of Norman”, but no. I mean: this Ffynnion Druidion standing stone is Norman. Or was, anyway. And will be again, if I have anything to do with it. People are always wondering how the ancients got the stones to stand up or balance in the variety of rather miraculous ways they do. They think about the kind of technology we’d
This tree’s name is Bartholomew Bartisimus Folistorious III and he is from the Chivalric Order of Beech Knights. As you can tell, he is bent over backwards in order to serve. Bartholomew’s service is a sacred service. He was called upon when he was a mere sapling and takes his duty very seriously, as indeed he should. It is said that a wren first proposed the service to him, and that an entire intergenerational murder of crows performed the ceremony once he said yes. It took that many cawing and bobbing crows to call up the ancient animating power from the deep. Bartholomew’s principal job is to connect the earth with the sky. You can see his heart-centre is open to the heavens and that his tree-arms and nose are similarly thrust skywards, linking the energy of above with below. Through this link, he draws down the cosmogonic forces of the
It is an undeniable fact that some woods are more alive than others. I should know, I have walked enough of them. Some woods, like this beech woods near Upper Enham, have a thickness to the air. Once you walk in, you feel yourself pass through some kind of invisible wall, safe in the liquid embrace of the life of the forest. There is an overwhelming sense of abundance and you hear something beyond the edge of sound. You cannot but be aware of the unseen energy of the forest. Feel it pushing up against your body, providing you with some essential thing you didn’t even know was missing. There is something undisturbed about some woods and in that peace, the trees swell out from themselves, filling the spaces between them with their spirit bodies. So when you walk—a quiet, slow walk of wonder—you come to know the life of the
This story begins with some fingers flicking this bauble back and forth through the air. Flick-flick, flick-flick, imagine the bauble swinging there like a pendulum; flick-flick, flick-flick, a sparkly metronome in time. When the bauble swings, it passes over invisible strings which call out in song in another dimension. Strings so clustered, that even a micrometer difference in direction results in a profoundly different tune. In that other dimension, music is the intelligent life form. Songs roam about in the air the way sunlight and shadows do here. In that dimension, the strings of existence are strummed by wind or rain and this is what causes procreation. Natural processes pass over the strings and give birth to song after song after song. Songs who roam that dimension, creating choruses and clustering in the sky the way starlings call and murmur here. Flick-flick, flick-flick. As the bauble passes over the strings in that