Moss-Gardening in Paradise
Excerpts from my book.
“The light of an almost-full moon…”
“The light of an almost-full moon falls gently into the midnight woods, dusting the canopy with pale silver and casting inky-black moon-shadows onto the woodland floor.
I’m hanging out in a beautiful old oak I know quite well, nestled about halfway up in a comfortable mossy fork of her branches.
A stand of hollies clusters below, catching the falling moonlight on the points of their spiked leaves…”
“Here my normal references dissolve…”
“Here my normal references dissolve, familiar modes of seeing and being falling away, senses derailed by the wild mind of the nameless, restoring me to my native sense of wonder for the startling mystery I live and breath and move within.
I nibble things as I move about, exploring the entangled realm with my teeth and tastebuds, imbibing the wildness.
I browse carefully on tender leaves, buds, small twigs, bark…”
“I awaken, as if on wings of birdsong…”
“I awaken, as if on wings of birdsong, from dreams woven upon singing waters.
It’s dawn, and the sun’s early light is slowly filling the jungly woods.
The music of the morning pours bright and clear through my open door from the woodland clearing in which my little hut sits.
The dawn chorus of the birds, the lively burbling of the mossy stream just outside, and the gentle breeze playing through the leaves of the trees all co-mingle into a harmony of soothing sound, massaging my body-mind into wakefulness…”
“I come to this oak often…”
“I come to this oak often in the daytime, to sit at her feet and immerse myself in her quiet presence – leaning my back against her craggy trunk, letting my breathing slow, inviting my mind to attune to the powerful pulse of her life-force.
The more fully I can do this, the more those parts of me which seem to exist in separation to the natural world are quietened, and I feel myself subsumed into the living body of the earth – not merely an observer, or a somehow alien agent, but integral to the throb and hum of the complex dance of life…
“We let our feet take us…”
“We let our feet take us out of the small local settlement and along a little lane into the North Pembrokeshire hills.
It’s the kind of single-track lane with a rogue strip of moss and grass growing down the middle of it, running between drystone walls and tumbling hedges.
It climbs up and over the boulder-strewn shoulder of a mountain and then down into a valley heavily wooded with broadleaf trees.
At a certain unremarkable bend in the lane there’s a greenway branching off to the left.
We take this track and leave the tattered tarmac behind…
“Yes, this is why I came here…”
“Yes, this is why I came here to the wild woods, to shrug off the strange conceptual armouring wrought to shield me from feeling one with the fabric of magic of which our earth is folded like living origami.
In this way these woods are my healer…”
“We were nearly at her hut…”
“We were nearly at her hut, passing beside a large, circular vegetable and herb garden and through a young orchard where a dozen or so chickens were scratching about.
On the other side of the orchard was the edge of the woods, where her hut nestled amongst the trees at woodland edge.
It was almost invisible from even 20 yards away, its green roof trailing down over low, round earthen walls.
It had the gentlest, most natural presence I’d ever met in a built structure.
I was moved almost to tears.
Here was a home that completely embodied the elemental simplicity and connection to the earth I had been longing for.
I could hardly believe my eyes – and even less so after stepping inside through the blanket door…”
“We all feel some form of deep longing…”
“We all feel some form of deep longing for a home we’ve either lost, or briefly glimpsed in some special moment, or have never known yet somehow remember.
We all, to some degree, and each in our own way, feel the ache and yearning for an unnamable wholeness—and we all respond uniquely to its wordless call.
My own yearning took the form of hunger for the wild embrace of the great elements and for a sense of truly belonging on, and to, the living earth…”
“There’s no tidy flower garden here…”
“There’s no tidy flower garden here, and no garden walls or fences.
There’s no gate and no paved pathway up to the front door—only the narrow ribbon of a track worn gently through the woods, with the occasional flat stone placed at a particularly muddy spot and some more just outside the entrance…