The Mead of Litha
An interlude of pilgrimage, poems and photographs.
Mind sneaks glances from behind the door of the room where heart and hope lay sleeping in a tangle. Lists accrue in layers on the desk as chestnut pollen tints the bay window yellow and further warms the (already golden) evening sunlight to a tone not seen since Proserpina’s last return. I have three more days of the very best company before I must make my third Lenten month of the year and work and only work. So, poems, pilgrimage and images are how I can be here with you this week, in one of those occasional interludes. Discursive brain cells rest, knowing they will be needed soon, and so are currently lounging in long grass, chewing stalks. The nettles in the abandoned churchyard are growing longer and shortly will be picked for cordage, as the Schumacher College course is full and I cannot scrimp on twist away, pull towards, twist away, pull towards materials.
The phenomenal world is ever present. We are not lost in thoughts and words do not steal energy from events. What is said is what is already being done. We bow to the day and to each other, to the sun, the Great Mystery and to Providence. In west Dorset, the Milky Way roared above us at 3am. Outdoors for a pee, my old glasses permitted only a blurry Plough and Cassiopeia, but we could still orient ourselves well enough and laughed southwards, sky-clad, ridiculous.
Yesterday, St Wite’s Day, Dorset Day,
and I drove west to Whitchurch Canonicorum and arrived in blessed sunlight at the Cathedral In The Vale. At the door, the vicar greeted us, she said, ‘You’re here for the christening, I presume.’‘No,’ I said, ‘We are pilgrims!’ I wept gently and prayed sincerely by the bones of that Saxon woman who inspires and instructs me in a way I can’t explain. Even the kneelers make me happy. I left requests for healing for loved ones, and took in the deeply soothing atmosphere of the church. There were many hundreds of such petitions for help below the reliquary. Where did we learn this? Not at church, as this is a Protestant church, and such behaviours were banned in the Reformation. Not in the home, as we were not Catholic. Not at school, as all this was seen as superstition. These cards in this place are there because all of us writing them are in need of powers greater than our own, forces stronger than science or our healthcare can provide. We leave these cards not knowing if our prayers will be answered.
I see these cards as acorn caps in the leaf litter below great oak trees of love. They are not the fruit, but they were once holding something precious as it grew, that we hope will one day will reach its greatest potential. This is how it feels to love: to nurture what we know we may one day lose. Acorn caps are fitting chalices for the mead of Litha.
We leave as the families arrive with their children, pass the Portland stone Norman era font with vicar and white towels awaiting, out into the bright sunlight. I plant an acorn in the hedgerow and we walk slowly, widdershins, around the church, past the ancient rounded cross stained glass windows, around the lichen covered rounded cross gravestones and under the spreading yews.
‘I want to live here,’ I say, surprising myself and Liz less than I expect.
In a front garden overlooking St Wite’s hermitage of Golden Cap, we drink tea and eat scones with Liz’s friend and her elfin two year old. Her hair is the colour of a candle flame. I praise her own cowlick golden cap. Her mother speaks of impossibly difficult things which somehow she navigates with grace and fortitude, even with joy. The elf picks us all roses and joins us in eating the delicious ‘keem’. As she waves us goodbye, I feel I am emerging from under the hill, with a good enchantment not an unkind binding. West Dorset pulls at us both as we drive to Dorchester and my train home.
The shape of the hills! The curve of the combes! We are both Dorset women and so we laugh at ourselves and with the landscape, so overabundantly green, frothing with elderflowers edging the chalk-edged fields. There is so much eros in the land we shout ‘Phwoar!’ as we go along, each new headland and beech tree clump too much to pass silently.
I write a lot here of longing and be-longing. But it is because of The Fleet, Golden Cap, Durdle Door, Lulworth Cove and Shell Bay. They longed me long before I be.
Essay and ‘between-essay’ weeks are suspended for now, as I attempt to straighten notes into something approaching sense. To find some way to encourage folk out of the vice-like physical grip of machine-adjacent life. It’s coming along, thank you for your patience. Here are some more pictures from the week, and three poems from since I was back here in my home town and county, on dry land, at the breeding edge of things again.
Below: uncouth words, constellation conversations, and flecks of a sigma male.
Words Want To Be Spoken
Words want to be spoken, not just sit on a page or a screen.
They require action, laughter, repetition, a chance to make friends.
They crave tone of voice, maybe that’s the many years singing.
The sound of spoken language is to the written word as dance is to the body.
Uncouth, embarrassing, slanting, with bells on.
May my live, ungainly word-wrangling annoy literary puritans as much as the prospect of impromptu joining-in with a sweaty dancing folk fest throng appals the middle classes.
October 2022
Sirius Calls
In the corner under my eye
under Orion
under the cover of Dark
It reminds us of a different shape
the shape is mythic
We dream ourselves into the country
and the country dreams itself into the moment
I returned home from festivities
arm in arm with the wolf
Darkness is the cloud
Stars are our undoing
Orion pulled the tight belt tighter
Sirius calls to his brother
Empty and full
constellations and dark matter
I live here with
the beast of love inside me
Above me
over the Solent
the lore is written
in crab, swan, winged horse and eagle
I go to turn out the light so that I may look again
and think between the stars
October 2022
Limited Needs While I was thinking about your words I burned the marmalade unstirred, the bottom of the pan caught as I was looking at my phone, pressing ‘block number’ again thinking of how you said you’re 'anti religion anti hate anti fucking bullshit anti fucking chocolate cake anti fucking flakey bake' that your needs are limited to food, shelter and intimate connection, that everything else is just clown world This batch of Seville orange marmalade has tiny bits of crystallised ginger to add richness and heat the copper coloured jars are cooling in the afternoon light of a day in which we will never meet But when I open one of the jars some future breakfast morning there will be a few black specks of bitterness to pick out and I will think of you again January 2024
This week’s good thing: A crowdfunder for Dark Mountain
It would be very hard to encapsulate just what the Dark Mountain Project has meant and continues to mean to me. After reading DM co-founder Paul Kingsnorth’s The Wake in 2014, I quickly found the project through his work and then started going to events, contributing art and writing to the books and becoming friends and colleagues with other new and long-time folk from the network. Paul asked me to illustrate a version of The Wake (which didn’t come out, but using ancient materials for it set a creative path for me that still continues strongly). We created Wild Twins course and taught it four times, bringing art and writing together with wild nature.
Over the years, Dark Mountain has helped me keep making visual art when I have been unsure whether anyone would want to see it. It has been a place were I could write whole-heartedly long before Substack came along. I am proud to be part of such great literary and artistic company in the books when my work features in them.
Feeling I am part of a worldwide network of people who care deeply about land, life, art, writing, community and spirit is no small thing, and Dark Mountain continues to be at the heart of my creative and social life, even though I am not part of the core team that keeps things running. Currently I have been part of the workshop teaching team, make the monthly newsletter, do a bit of the Instagram and occasionally collaborate with the various members on creative events. I have met hundreds of people from all over the world who have sighed a huge sigh of relief on discovering Dark Mountain, finding that they are not alone in not believing the dominant narrative of ‘progress’. I also met my wonderful life-partner…
So, no, I am not an objective bystander when I tell you about the crowdfunder we have launched this week. Since the sudden death of Mark Watson this spring, the project has had difficult times covering the immense amount of seen and unseen work he did to keep things running. Brexit has made books extremely difficult to send to Europe, and paper and printing prices have exploded. Dark Mountain gets no advertising revenue and relies on subscriptions and donations from occasional crowdfunders like these.
If DM has touched you in any way, you’ve enjoyed the weekly online writing, read the books, come to events or met friends and colleagues, then a donation, however small, would be appreciated to help a small publisher keep making beautiful books in challenging times. You can also subscribe to the books here: dark-mountain.net/subscriptions
You can read more about the campaign here and find the link to donate at he button below.
Also, if you’ve enjoyed my writing on Substack and have wondered how you can give me something, but can’t afford a paid subscription, then feel free to send that cup of coffee amount to this crowdfunder instead. It’s through the encouragement of several ‘Dark Mountain diaspora’ writers that I ever started writing here, anyway. Thanks so much for reading this far and for any donations you make. See you next week.
Thank you so much. I fondly remember Lulworth Cove and Shell Bay from my childhood. If it was possible, my old woman self would cross back over the ocean to live there now.
Thanks again, Caro, for sharing your word-images with us. And for the heads up on the Dark Mountain request for sustenance. I'll keep an eye on that and post it through my Substack next week if it hasn't been fulfilled.