Moss-Gardening in Paradise
Prose and Poems from the Wild Edge
This collection of writings comes directly out of my years in the woods, which provided me with a strong and sustained experience of what Arthur Rimbaud wonderfully called the ‘derailment of the senses’ — not derangement, de-railment: a shifting out of the patterns of perception shaped by participation in the linearity of life in industrial modernity. Unapologetically lyrical and often mystical, they combine descriptions of my life on the land with glimpses into the wild interiority of that life.
To complement the writings below, you can take a little photo tour of my little woodland abode here.
My Woodland Abode
My woodland abode is a little round hut nestled between two singing streams within a small natural clearing in a pocket of Welsh rainforest.
The clearing is encircled by gnarly oaks, hollies, hazels and rowans, beyond which the woods spread out all around in every direction—a profusion of trees, plants, fungi, insects, birds and animals all in the throes of the great wild party that feels like it’s been going on here, uninterrupted, since forever…
Home
We let our feet take us out of the small local settlement and along a single-track lane into the North Pembrokeshire hills.
It’s the kind of lane with a rogue strip of moss and grass growing down the middle of it, running between old dry-stone walls and lichen-crusted hawthorn hedges.
We follow it up over the boulder-strewn shoulder of a mountain and then down into a valley heavily wooded with broadleaf trees.
At an unremarkable bend there’s a greenway branching off to the left.
We take this track and leave the tattered tarmac behind…
Honey In The Heart
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 wild hut sits…
Holy Mountain
My woodland home sat in a deeply wooded valley at the feet of Carn Ingli Mountain on the North Pembrokeshire coast. The Welsh name Carn Ingli translates into English as Mountain of Angels, and the mountain is considered by some to be an ancient place of pilgrimage and sacredness. I would often walk her higher slopes, losing myself in her deep-time presence, letting my senses unravel and expand into wild mystery. This poem attempts to speak some of that experience.
