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.

The floor of the clearing is strewn with bilberry bushes, ferns and moss-covered rocks, and alive with a thronging complex of organisms living into and through each other in unimaginable numbers.

In summer, the air is rich with scents and filled with birdcalls and the buzzing of insects, all riding on the lively burbling of the two streams tumbling over mossy rocks, while the sun’s light filtering through the lush leafy canopy is washed warm green.

In winter, the place feels like an abandoned palace, the bony, leafless architecture standing stark and mostly empty save for a few remaining inhabitants, furtive in the often dank, drab quietude.

But year-round, beneath it all, there’s a powerful pulse of life running through everything, and always a hint of elves whispering somewhere just out of sight.

At night, drenched in bright moonlight, or inky black and sparkling with distant stars, with the owls hooting and the stream singing silver songs into the hushed spaces under the branching canopy, the clearing is as magical as it gets.

And in the middle, sitting there under the sun and moon through the changing seasons like a little earthy koan, is my woodland home. 

Its little chimney puffs a wisp of woodsmoke into the breeze above a conical roof covered in moss, honeysuckle, ivy, ferns, brambles and many other woodland plants.

At the eaves, the ivy and honeysuckle trail over the edge towards their friends climbing up from the woodland floor.

Beneath its green roof and leafy fringe, the hut smiles, muddy-toothed, into the surrounding woods — tiny, circular, cute in a sort of furry way, almost more like a curled-up dormouse than a house.

Upon seeing it for the first time, the child of a friend asked, quite seriously, “am I dreaming?” and began counting his fingers and toes to establish whether he was awake or not.

It’s like something from a fairy tale, appearing to have sprouted organically from the earth itself or from some woodland nymph’s mycelial imagination.

If you’d stumbled upon it by chance, you’d be forgiven for wondering what species of mythical being might live in such a peculiar dwelling.

In many ways it does belong to the otherworld.

But, at the same time, it’s the most earthy little residence you could conceive, constructed almost entirely from the raw materials of the land in a way that seeks to limit its impact on the living systems that surround it as much as possible.

There’s not a straight line in sight, only organic contours flowing playfully along with the mood of the woods.

Its wall is the same colour and texture and in fact substance as the forest floor.

Its roundness reflects the roundness of the horizon, the roundness of our eyes, the sun and moon, as well as so much else in nature.

The windows are round or curvy too, and partly screened by the overhanging plants spilling off the roof.

The rafters are small trees, bark still on, and the overhang outside is held up with twisty trunks.

The whole hut blends almost entirely into its surroundings, barely to be seen from more than a few dozen feet away in any direction.

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.

The door frame is yoni-shaped, shaped from two beautiful bowed pieces of bone oak. The door itself is overlapping wool-felt blankets, soft and thick and warm, which are anyway almost always strung open to let in the season and the music of the stream.

There’s no place where the woods end and the hut begins.

They roll right up through the door and the walls and the handmade furniture, tumbling inside in bosky scents, sounds, shapes and textures.

And so, stepping inside doesn’t feel like stepping out of the woods—merely into a more fully sheltered part of them.

Inside, one is held in a way that feels like being hugged by someone who knows how to do it really well.

At the same time, one is always also turned outwards towards the life of the living earth, held in lively communion with the thrumming web, the turning year, and the vastness of the celestial vault.

Here, a body can relax and be at rest while remaining fully connected to the deep sources of its aliveness.

Yes, this is a place of shelter but not separation, an expression of primitive luxury, deeply rooted in the land and awake to the beauty of the stars – just as you and I can still choose to be.