​Does anyone remember back in the 20th century when people used to worry about the meaning of life? It seems a long way off now from our rather more poignant 21st-century standpoint, a point in human space-time all too brimming with significance. Will we or won’t we wipe ourselves out? Will we lose ourselves to AI, or a pandemic? Will we cut all our forests down and lose all our fellow animals? Or will we instead evolve into beautiful planet guardians? Will we or won’t we make it?
 
We used to feel like we were motes of random dust with little impact on anything. Now we are gods and we know it. The unbearable lightness of being has mutated into an unbearable responsibility.

The meaning of life
Ever since we became ‘civilised’ the quest for meaning has been an obsession for humans. It has provoked centuries of philosophical debate, and lifetimes of avoidance strategies, not to mention the reams and reams of literary masturbation on the matter. Attempting to give our earthly existences meaning has driven the most preposterous and destructive projects. It’s brought us inadvertently to where we are now.
 
It dawned on me as the gates of lockdown opened here in Spain, and human civilisation with all its clamour for distraction began to flood through them once again, that without touching on the matter of meaning, few are those who will step off the consumer conveyor belt and into Eden. Because freedom weighs heavily on many. What’s the point, after all? We are born, we engage in some stuff, and then we die.
 
The beautiful pointlessness of a mud hut
Five months later than I expected, as the steam evaporated from the hilltops and a surprisingly gutsy  April sun strode over the Atlantic skies, I added (the last?) rock to my mud and stone bathroom wall. Yes, I have a bathroom. A sink. A composting toilet. A place for my toothbrush, too. Only hot water evades me now, but its days are numbered. I’m closing in.
 
I’ve been up here a full year now, roosting with each season. I watched the ash trees turn brown, and the rocks push their heads out of the undergrowth as winter yanked the grass asunder. I heard the wolves howl and felt the snow on my face while the stars moved across the night sky. The world disappeared into a pandemic, but my planet kept on turning. Wrens, thrushes, blue tits, and robins filled the hazel copses. Nests were built. Three darling chickens joined the team.
 
First the air warmed, then the ground. New buds sprouted on my fruit trees, while vultures swirled in thermals overhead. Lo and behold, I came full circle. A whole year is now under my belt. As I scan my creation I see I’ve built a kitchen, a bedroom, and a bathroom. I’ve created a juicy vegetable garden, too. A universe has been born up here. It’s still a toddler, but it’s definitely up and walking. Before long I will start on my larger cabaña, and turn that into a new mud and stone realm too.

​“But why? Why put all that effort into making this bedroom and bathroom when you’re going to do it again in the big one? It’s so much work|!” A couple of people have asked me this question about what I’ve done so far. What’s the point, right? I mean I’m just going to move on.
 
And we’re always moving on, of course. I moved on from Mud Mountain in Turkey and lots of people thought that was a tragedy, which was rather confusing for me because I didn’t.
 
So many human issues could be solved with one small shift in perspective: that meaning isn’t an endpoint to be reached. That process doesn’t have to be irksome travail. That creating Eden is not about hacking through the sedge of minutes to reach a conclusion. It’s been said a thousand times already of course; it’s the journey, not the destination. But somehow it doesn’t seem to have sunk in to the human collective consciousness.
 
Whether I’m beginning, continuing, or completing a project, it is all too meaningful. And I know when I move from one phase of this creation to the next, that with each gain, something else is lost (and vice-versa). When I first built my composting toilet, I was at once relieved not to have to effort to look for a pee place, but equally saddened not to watch the stars anymore. The more my veggies grow, the less I forage. Even a hot shower will mean I give up the invigorating cold one. None of this is bad or good, it’s simply a progression, a process, a moving through seasons. And I love each one differently. I’ve always said with mud building, the whole thing is a game for me. Yet it’s a pointed game, both as whimsical as pixies and as deep as a hickory taproot. It’s a game with decent footings.
 
The footings of the game
My frivolous game stands firmly on two feet: being and loving. It’s not about what I create, it’s about loving who I am. It’s not about where I’m going, it’s about being and loving where I am.
 
Someone said, if you love your job, you’ll never work a day in your life. I don’t just love it, I’m in love with it, just as I’m in love with the skies here, and the wolves and the rolling green slopes and the rocky outcrops. I’m in love with the minutes as they pass (usually - though I'll freely admit, I was severely challenged by the roof tiles). When has a lover ever needed a reason? Lovers don’t ask about the meaning of life, not because they’re distracted, but because they already have it.

Missing the point
From Heidegger to Sartre to Kundera, the point has been missed. Completely. And stunningly. The meaning of life has been yanked out of the very soil it germinated within and stuck in some pot on a dusty shelf in a dead man’s office. Meaning isn’t ontological Meccano. It’s not something you stick in a computer to find the answer. It’s not ‘out there’ beyond us, or something to be ‘worked out’ or reached.
 
If you are in the right place (here), at the right time (now), you have meaning. Meaning is felt, not thought. The depth of the here and now is awesome. It goes on forever and ever. To even posit that being could be inconsequential, meaningless, or ‘light’ is a good example of not actually being at all, but thinking instead.

As the sky pulls its magic out of the Atlantic, and cloud worlds bubble atop the distant summits of the sierra, I watch my three little hens go about their business, scratching at the ground with their four-toed feet, pecking this, rolling in that. Striding out or hunkering down. Being. Chickens. And I can sense it in each fibre of my own being that life is most meaningful for them when they are allowed to be exactly who they are, when they are deeply and completely chicken.
 
I follow their lead and wander to my ash tree. As I rest my back on its trunk and watch the grass stalks sway in the wind, I start remembering who and what I am too. With each pause, more and more pieces of me come rushing in, the earth and the sky meet, and I feel my roots plunging into the essence of it all. Things open and deepen in the most amazing ways and I realise I can embody it all. I’m in the perfect place at the perfect time. Here and now. And I know, that this is the point.

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“I’ve decided not to get a dog.” I was clear on the matter as I chatted to my friend Lonneke while we glugged our beers. She was now fostering a rescue hound, and looking for a permanent home for him. I clearly appeared dog-needy.
 
“Yes, they are a tie,” she said, eyeing the bottle-lined walls of the artisan alehouse with the kind of gourmet appreciation I reserve for cake shops. Things were already a little odd that Friday night in the city of Gijon. Half the bars were closed, and the other half were spraying so much disinfectant everywhere, I was coughing. It was Friday, the 13th of March.
 
I was resolute at the time. No dogs, nor any other animal for now. I was happy with the robins, wrens, crows, and finches that graced my kitchen door each morning. Having quite literally worked my butt off over the past year, I was ready for a little gallivanting. A little fun and freedom between the bouts of building slog. Dare I say it, I was ready to socialise?
 
Oh life! You have to laugh, eh? As Lonneke* and I ambled down the city streets that night, the residents began anxiously shutting their eateries and stores. Grilles descended with a clank, right and left. The 24-hour supermarket was already sporting a few empty shelves. The next day the prime minister spelled it out: Lockdown. You have to hand it to this virus, it’s got a sense of irony.

Thus began our (now fairly global) trip into the twilight zone. Here in Spain, we’re a little ahead of much of the world on our Corona journey. We’ll be almost in week seven of our incarcerations by the time you’re reading this. When you live alone, this means seven weeks without connecting with a human in physical form. Even eye contact, over mask-rims, is a little furtive, as if the virus might be transferred by sight as well.
 
It must have been about week three of our collective curfew, when two things occurred to me simultaneously. First, I wished I had adopted Lonneke’s foster dog, or some other fur-rich animal that I could pet and nurture. I just wanted to feel the warmth of another body and check I wasn’t dreaming I was alive some of the time. Second, the supermarkets weren’t exactly beacons of infallibility in a shifting world. While northern Spain wasn’t witness to the panic hoarding of some places, there were nonetheless always weird gaps on the shelves that reminded you just how fragile the food chain is, and how it could fracture at any time. I would inevitably return from a provisions trip feeling unsettled.
 
The beauty and gift of creating an off-grid world for yourself, no matter how rudimentary, is of course this: Collapses can happen, and you pretty much carry on regardless, empty shelves or not. There was just one thing I felt I was lacking: eggs.

It was a grungy morning when I turned on my phone, and saw a Whatsapp message from my nearest neighbour, 2 kilometres up the road.

> I’m heading down to the shop. If you need anything let me know.

The sky was dripping like a dilapidated roof, and as I waded into my kitchen I saw the flagstones were weeping. Sheltering inside, I began to type.

> All I need is chickens and a dog:)

There was another ping.

> How many chickens are you thinking of getting?

> About 3, but I don’t have a coop yet. Have to make one first!

> You can have our old one then. Will bring it round tomorrow.

And that was that. The next day, I drove to one of the only open agricultural stores. A tooth-sparse little chap in a boilersuit opened up a concrete cupboard in the courtyard. It was windowless and cheerless, and lined with metal cages. “There are only three left,” the fellow grinned, gaps hopping out of his mouth like blackbirds from a hedgerow. “Everybody has bought them up!” He grabbed the poor hens out one by one, and stuffed them squawking in a crate. As carefully as I could, I loaded them in my boot.

As I drove back through the empty town, I stared up at my fellow humans in their own crates. Concrete boxes they’d probably paid quite a bit of money for. But that was when they all thought they were free, of course. Some played music on balconies. Some chatted with their neighbours through windows. Where were the children? I hadn't seen a kid in weeks.

Soon I was back on my land with a box full of terrified chooks. Brian and Julia turned up in their truck soon after with their old wooden coop poking out of the back. We dragged it up my hill, and I set about erecting it. By evening the three hens were hunched up on their roosts, bracing themselves for whatever calamity had befallen them. Their little yellow bird eyes rolled, scanning me for clues of the impending atrocity that awaited. Change is rarely greeted with optimism in the animal kingdom, I find.

For three days my hens refused to leave their coop. They sat there in collective terror, hardly daring to peer out of the door. I could only imagine the types of chicken thoughts that might be running through their walnut brains. “That’s it. Terminado.” “She’s going to eat us!” “If only we could go back to our cold, concrete, lightless cupboard! We were safe at least. Woe is us!”
 
While they cowered, I built a small run for them out of the chicken wire and posts I had left lying around. My hens would be free range most of the time, but only on clear days. Because when the mist descends and dusk loiters on the edges of my land, the beasts of prey come out of their lairs. The run would serve as a type of balcony, or garden, a safe place for my chickens to see sunlight.
 
Eventually they ventured into it, pecking dubiously at the dirt. After studying them, fascinated, for a few days, I named them: Gertie (the pecky boss one), Frida (the adventurous, productive one) and Hilde (the quirky underdog).
 
Death and Danger
A part of me was as terrified as my hens, and I wondered whether I should ever let them run free. This is, without a shadow of a doubt, the badlands for a chicken. There’s a badger set at the bottom of my land, countless birds of prey overhead including eagles, wolves, foxes, stoats... you name it, it’s there in all its clawed and razor-toothed splendour. Death. Everywhere. And after all, my birds seemed reasonably happy in the run. They had food. Water. Daylight. I threw in grass cuttings and other goodies. Wasn’t that enough?
 
It was Frida who reminded me, that’s not what life is about. One day she flew onto the top of the run fence, and peered at me from her swaying wire perch, goading me with her little bead eyes. I sighed. Thus it was, I opened up the run, and let my precious hens out, watching their fluffy butts waddle away into the grass stalks.
 
It was obvious from the first moment. These birds had presumably never seen nature in their lives. Their feet had never scratched the dirt. Yet, as they strutted off into the undergrowth, you could see the fervour wafting off them like heat waves rising from sun-beaten tarmac. They were three feathery little Lara Crofts striking out into the wilderness. It was a joy to behold.
 
From that day forth the eggs they laid grew bigger and bigger. Their rufous bodies fattened. Their feathers shone. They looked extremely happy.

The Wolves
One night I was snuggled up in my stone hut, which ironically (you have to hand it to life) was itself a chicken coop before I renovated it. I was readying myself for sleep. As it happened, I wasn’t going to get much. It was three minutes to midnight when I heard them: the wolves.
 
There is no sound like the howls of a wolf pack. On the one hand it’s an honour, as though you are witnessing a sacred ceremony. At the same time, it’s spine-chillingly eerie, and depending on how close they are, somewhat nerve-wracking. I’d heard the wolves quite a few times this winter here in the picos of Spain, but never this close. The howling and yapping was frenzied, and alarmingly loud, so loud that the noise made me leap out of bed.
 
Grabbing my torch, I opened my door a fraction. I thought of my dear little chickens down there, cowering on their roosts, as silent as the prevailing mist. The howls rose to a cacophony. I tried to pinpoint where the wolves were. I was pretty sure they were loitering in the arroyo beneath my land, or perhaps on the path just above it. Near. Very near.
 
My spine wriggled and shook. My hair turned in its follicles. I flashed my torch at the darkness and yelled, the beam of light hitting the trees one by one. Immediately there was silence. It was as if a hood had descended over the pack. Presumably they fled, sleet-footed, as wolves with any sense are inclined to when they realise a human is around.

Wild Freedom
The next morning, sleep-deprived and bleary-eyed, I staggered down to the chicken coop. As always, the hens greeted me with relieved little clucks. Gertie, Frida, and Hilde were living to see another day, and it was a beautiful day at that. The sun had burned off the mist, leaving my land cloaked in lush green grass and bedecked in colourful petals. Snail shells glistened, and fat bumblebee bottoms poked out of the dead nettle flowers. As I opened the run, my feathered adventurers didn’t miss a beat. They strode off into the long grass, as eager to find grubs and scratch the dirt as ever, wolves or no wolves.
 
Perhaps tomorrow a predator will take them. Perhaps not. But I shan’t be locking my birds up in their run forever, regardless. Ten years safe behind wire? Or ten days in a risky, juicy Eden? I’m looking in their archosaur eyes, and I see what they prefer. I know what I prefer, too. I can’t speak for the rest of my species, because I don’t really understand them. Me? I’m with the chickens. That’s why I live in a hovel on a mountain with the eagles and the vultures.
 
Life isn’t the same as staying alive. It’s not a game of numbers and years, and there are no prizes for survival. Life is danger. It’s uncertain. It’s a mysterious rite of passage into the wild. It’s a quest and a story and a secret mission. It’s a poem, a song, and a caterwaul of howling under the stars. The world may be locked down now, but in truth, was it ever free anyway? Were the chicken runs of shopping malls something we can call living? Was fifty hours a week in an office, plus a couple of hours extra trapped in some transportation cage, a dignified existence for a human being? And these were the ‘lucky’ ones. Then there were the others. The children mining metal, the girls sold into ‘wedded’ slavery, the starving and the war-torn, all also a part of that old chicken run we know so well.
 
Some are feeling sadness and fear that the old way is dying. Sorry, I’m not. I don’t know what’s coming next, or what shenanigans (if any) will unfold. But there’s a profound freedom to be won in an unambiguous lockdown, when no one’s pretending everything is fine any more. Freedom and life both come at a price, that price is the illusion of security. There never was any real security. It was a lie. The future was never going to stick to our plans. We could have died in a car accident, or contracted a terminal disease, or lost our jobs at any time. It was always a game of chance, and no amount of insurance policies, or back-up plans, or being ‘good’ and following the rules was ever going to save us. It was a truth that was easily ignored in the gilded cage.
 
Perhaps now we’re all stuffed back in our coops, we’ll scratch a little deeper and dig up another more essential kind of freedom. Perhaps when they finally open the door, we’ll look up and out instead of down. Perhaps we’ll think twice before swapping our life for some half-arsed promise of security. Planet Earth is an untameable adventure, not a battery farm, and we are free-range Gaians. We can either strike out ruddy-cheeked into the backwoods, or run squawking back inside the mesh of rules. Either way, we won’t be safe. We won’t cheat death. We won’t avoid pain or loss. Either way there’s a price. So we might as well get our money’s worth.

Ah, the mist has lifted. I see the mountain ridges again. It must be time to let the chickens out.

 *For speakers of Dutch, Lonneke Lodder is author of Het leven is te kort om op kantoor te zitten (Life's too  Short to Sit in an Office). You can read all about her (in Dutch) here.  https://lonnekelodder.nl/

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Up here in Hutland in the peaks of northern Spain, all is pretty much as it always has been, except perhaps that I haven’t heard an aeroplane for a while. The clouds bubble and froth over the humped back of the sierra, the trees are budding, and the vole is still eating my root vegetables, no matter where I hide them. The two of us seem to be playing a muddier version of The Crystal Maze. I am the hapless contestant endlessly solving puzzles, and the vole is Richard O’Brien complete with sarcasm (at least I’m pretty sure he is mocking me).
 
If you don’t know much about voles, let me introduce you. The vole is a deceptively cute, long-toothed rodent, like a large hamster. It digs tunnels underground and gnaws (nay destroys) anything with a root on it. It is apparently an endangered species, though how is hard for me to work out. Either my vole is peculiarly genius, or (as I believe) they are in fact all hiding en masse below ground, just waiting for human civilisation to collapse when they’re going to surge out from their burrows, decimate the world’s carrots, and undertake global vole domination.
 
Their time may or may not be now.

Yes. Although my land exists in an alternate reality, I can nonetheless sense something going on down there in the valleys. There’s a stillness I can’t quite put my finger on. A silence. A gap that nature is breathtakingly fast to fill. As you know, I’m living in Spain, one of the COVID-19 epicentres. We are on tight lockdown, and our collective house arrest has been extended to God only knows when.
 
When I’m up in my stone and mud world, exploring the spirit woods, foraging for plantains, and defending myself against parsnip munching rodents, the drama unfolding all feels rather theoretical. Until I venture down to the town, which I have to once a week to buy in supplies.
 
Down there in the asphalt zone, I’m rattled sharply out of my reverie by that other reality. Streets that usually bustle and buzz and grate on my nerves, are deserted. Grilles are down. Doors are closed. It’s a permanent siesta. Pretty much the only people to be seen are the mask-wearing infantry of truly necessary workers. Yes, it’s all become crystal clear now hasn’t it, who we really need and who we don’t: cleaners, waste disposal workers, and food vendors are the only people out on the streets who aren’t scurrying nervously in the direction of a supermarket.
 
As I said a while back, there’s a great levelling going on.

Shelf-stackers are suddenly more respected than premier league footballers. Nurses and doctors are applauded in their apartment blocks when they finally arrive home. Who cares about some makeup-slathered celeb right now? Or a bunch of self-satisfied (and vaguely creepy) film directors at the Oscars? Investment bankers? Stock brokers? Sorry guys, you have been far too irrelevant for far too long, and that’s being generous.
 
As I take in this alien new world, it computes. Something big is happening down here. Oh, the irony though. That an entity so small you need a microscope to see it is causing this much havoc is very appropriate. Note how the virus spreads particularly fast among the world’s elites, apparently more partial to people who fly, and those who shake lots of hands. It’s raging through the wealthiest and most “economically productive” zones with not much indication of stopping.
 
A tiny infectious agent has managed in weeks what no environmental lobby or politician has achieved in my entire lifetime. Flights are grounded the world over. Traffic has all but stopped. And everyone is grounded at home with plenty of time to think about how vulnerable they are in the arms of The System, how from one day to the next food can disappear from shelves, and basic freedoms like walking are snatched away. Through the silence, the birds are singing and the bees are buzzing like never before. Not even the Great Attenborough himself could have achieved such an impact.
 
Finally (thank God!) I’m back in my car, watching the dystopian streets disappear in my rear view mirror. There’s a chill still lingering at the back of my neck though, as I climb the long, steep mountain sides. But with each twist and turn the “normal” world becomes more ethereal, while my world of myth and magic solidifies. I pass through the last village at the top of the hill, the final outpost before the tarmac disintegrates. Everyone is out in the street, music is playing, and the locals are beaming. Spain’s rural folk and villages have long been downtrodden and forgotten in a world which is obsessed with “modernising”. They too are now having their moment. Suddenly the village is the place to be. The town is for ghosts.

Return to the fairy tale
Rumbling on, I press for home. Jolting over the hilltops, I pass the usual rabble of cows wandering nonchalantly around as though they own the place. The great snow-encrusted Picos rise out of the clouds like the Mountains of Lune. A falcon swoops in front of my windshield. Fay primroses twirl along the track. Eminent rock councils push through the grass now, posturing in huddles. In a month or two they will disappear behind the emerald veil, when the verdure unfurls once more.
 
This fairy tale has been my reality for a while now. A reality that has been relegated to the forgotten backrooms of the mainstream human mind for a long, long while. First the religions stamped on it. Then the philosophers. Then the scientists. Until the only place you could slip out from the suffocating throttle of the manufactured modern age was far off into the forests, or high up in the mountains, anywhere where humans and their noise and tech weren’t.
 
Yet we were hungering for it. The popularity of the fantasy genre in the 21st century and the gospels of the new age were indicative of the people’s thirst for magic and wonder in an arrogant, unimaginative, and frankly boring society. A civilisation built on outdated assumptions that are now crumbling faster than icebergs in the Arctic. “We are in control. The economy must always grow. Tech and machines will solve all the problems. The only reality is material reality. If you follow the rules and be good, Father Establishment will take care of you.” How frail and hollow the bragging authorities sound now.
 
The Levelling is here. The Gods have thrown the game pieces aloft, and who knows where they will land? In weeks the system that was so impossible for us to dismantle, is shuddering. The hologram is flickering. Doors have opened all over the fabric of consciousness, and each of us will walk through one of them. The impoverished ghosts who still believe happiness lies in attempting to dominate others will no doubt hold shady doors to shiny new cages ajar. The frightened and addicted will no doubt gamely enter them, wanting to trust – as they always do (sigh) – anyone but themselves. Ultimately it will come down to how much faith we have in ourselves, our planet, and our intuition, as to where we move next and which kind of reality we create. Because that’s what it’s about.

For too long humans have wandered lost around realities as though they were beyond their control. For too long they have believed the scammy insurance brokers of the established order, and sold their real power for a lie. But it’s all up for grabs now, eh? So are we going back into the fold? Or are we treading into the forest? No doubt there’ll be a different reality for each of us. There always is.
 
A message from behind the door of enchantment
Yes the doors are many. This is a message from behind mine. It’s a bit of a rickety old thing, gnarled, handmade, and possibly a little under-engineered, but with plenty of character nonetheless. I invite you to have a look for that door, because it’s the enchanted one. The soul door. The door behind which the currency isn’t banknotes, but energy, vision, and truth. No one is going to promise to save you behind this door, because no one who walks through it needs saving. It’s the gateway of the witches and wizards, the mages and the sorcerers, and it’s out there in the woods, by the sides of streams, in the mountains and the sea caves. Any human can locate this portal and we all hold enough power to walk through it, because this door, and the world behind it are Gaian.
 
Yes the Levelling is here. Now that the smoke of the great industrial engine has dissipated, we have the time and clarity to find our own way to another more enchanted reality, the one we are sovereign of. Better to leave the meaningless tat and false promises of security, and take what’s truly ours. For those of us who suffered under the old ways, whose more imaginative heads have been held under the surface by the boot of materialism, we are blessed to be here and now. It really is our time.

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This was never my Big Dream, huddling alone on some remote hilltop, building shelters out of mud with my butt hanging out of my trousers. No, embodying Bob the Builder didn’t once appear on my bucket list of things to do before I die. If you had told me about fifteen years ago that this is what I’d be doing in the future, I would have rolled my eyes and groaned. Or laughed. Or blinked in bemusement before trotting off to the beach.
 
I did have a Big Dream once though. It was an incense-stick waving, flashy-toothed rapscallion that sauntered between yoga mats like the Second Coming. My dream, you see, was to run a new-age spiritual centre. You know, some mini Turkish version of Findhorn or something. I sort-of made it happen too (not in Findhorn dimensions obviously), only I soon realised my Big Dream was actually a Big Nightmare. I can honestly say, I loathed every single minute of running the hilariously named ‘Shanti’ Garden (it was about as shanti as the Battle of Naseby). Within a couple of months, I was chain-smoking in the kitchen and hoping no one would turn up. By the time I escaped, I had racked up a bevy of debts, a dash of PTSD, and an acute aversion to yoga teachers.
 
So much for Big Dreams.
 
Those who’ve read Dirt Witch know the rest. They know that I didn’t end up blissful on Mud Mountain by design. It was initially an act of desperation. I was burned out. I had no money left. It seemed like a good place to recharge my batteries while I worked out what to do next. Build a house out of mud? Nope. I had never even considered it, certainly not as a potential builder. It just sort of happened in response to a set of circumstances.
 
Life is life. Sometimes we have no idea what would make us happy, or what wouldn’t. Sometimes disasters are the best thing that could happen to us, while Big Dreams are the worst. Whatever decision we make, the force of Gaia weaves her magical threads through it, and turns it into something else.

I write all this because a few things have occurred to me this month. First: I’m absurdly content up here in my chicken coop bedroom, still without a hot shower, fridge, or washing machine. Happier than I ever was in the rather nice flat I rented down in the rather nice coastal town last winter. Second: Not everyone would feel the same way. Third: While I’m so glad my lifestyle inspires people, opens mental doors, and challenges the ‘comfortable’ assumptions of the modern age, I’m aware it can become yet another one of these flashing-lights (albeit LED)-adorned Big Dreams. In my experience Big Dreams can cause a lot of anxiety and strife.
 
“Be cautious. I moved from London to splendid isolation and it was a horrible, lonely, difficult, ‘where is everyone?’ vibe. Sometimes it's a fantasy. It's taken six years to vaguely normalise,” Rob Smith commented about his experience with life off the beaten track. He’s a far from being the only one. I know a few people who definitely didn’t thrive in the sticks.

No one particular lifestyle is for everyone. And if there’s one glob of ludicrousness I see in our faddish, commercialised culture, it’s bandwagonism. Because there is a kind of ecological one-upmanship among certain well-heeled income brackets that the more cynical forces in the market pander to.
 
One of the major issues in sustainability is that we are eight billion people, and when all eight billion do the same freaking thing, massive imbalances occur. Think hemp is great? It won’t be when they start hacking more of the Amazon down for hemp plantations because the latest wave of green consumers have decided that’s the new thing you need to pass through the (sustainably-sourced) pearly gates.
 
No, nothing is a particularly good idea if the whole world does it, and then chucks it out because another eco-fad has come in. That includes lifestyles. I’ve seen way too many people head for the country and then wreck it in pursuit of that Big Off-grid Dream. The rural life works for some (usually more introverted, less social types who find it hard to function in the ‘normal’ world). It works for people whose bodies enjoy plenty of physical work, and who are fairly self-referencing. But for others, for people with partners who are not on board, for people who are very risk-averse, for those with certain health issues, and those who enjoy plenty of social interaction, it might not be for them.

Living the Dream
I love dreaming because for me it’s about reaching beyond the edifice of the known, and sowing the seed for something new. But dreaming isn’t the same as the Big Dream...
 
It’s yet another balmy morning here in northern Spain, with winter not quite sure whether to bother or not this year. I stretch under my ash tree, the sunlight icing the rocks and peaks, while the valleys and towns below still snore under blankets of mist. My mornings are sacred to me, and God help you if you interrupt them. This is my time to hear the planet, hear my trees, and hear myself. It’s my time to step out from the under the grinding pistons in my head, and attempt to open up to something new.
 
Sitting quiet on the grass, I breathe. Through the peace, I hear a plucking below ground. A mole or a vole, no doubt. A finch flutters into the arms of the ash tree, and I spy a lizard scuttling up its rutted trunk. As images and ideas fill my mind, this graceful tree soothes me, and I wonder: Does all this wildlife dream, be it big or small? Do animals have imaginations?
 
Do Animals Dream?
It will sound batty to most, but when I sit very very still and observe the actions great and small of the plethora of creatures on my land, when I hear the first bee busying himself in the first dead nettle flowers, or watch a lone beetle determinedly strike out for the interior of my kitchen, or listen to the mice setting up an elaborate multiplex in my roof, scurrying here and there, gathering this and that, so organised! Or when I hear the owl coo for his lover through the dusky woodland, or the wolves caterwaul eerily into the night preparing for a hunt, it seems highly implausible that they don’t have some kind of game plan.
 
Traditional 20th-century science, from its whitecoat standpoint in the sterile lab, would say all this is not a plan or a vision or an ‘idea’, just instinct. It would say the mole or lizard is simply at the beck and call of genetic programming and nothing more. But most academics don’t spend their lives in the wild simply watching these creatures left to their own devices. They generally imprison them in labs and torture them. If you locked me in a cage and tortured me, I doubt I’d show you my creative genius either.
 
If Gaia were just one big deterministic program, as the voices of old used to say, life wouldn’t be life, it would be death. There would be no creativity. No problem-solving. And no individuality. There would be no adaptation, no opportunism (which nature is Queen at), no evolution at all. The incredible thing about life is that it creates systems and structures that outgrow themselves, that stretch beyond the limits of what they already are.
 
But the question is, can this creativity happen without dreaming? Without a vision? And where do all our dreams and visions come from?

I think dreams come from the pulse of life itself. Its shimmering strands push through this planet and into every living being, nudging them to deepen, heighten, expand, become more sensitive, more complex, bear fruit, create, discover, evolve, and regenerate. Life isn’t just a physical matter phenomenon; if it were we wouldn’t be able to think, or imagine, or envision. Because despite the weird tendency we have to think we are separate from the rest of the planet, we are its expression just as much as a volcano or an eagle. So if we can dream, then dreaming is something the planet either developed or adopted.
 
When I wander the ruts and furrows of my land, I’m sure this place dreamed of me as much as I dreamed of her. And through our dreams, the web of Gaia rippled and rolled, drawing us together. Somewhere deep and wide within and without us all, there is a vast imagination waiting to be explored. But we can only dream within the limits of our mind-systems. Voles don’t dream of trips to Mars (I don’t think…); wolves don’t dream of bathrooms with hot water. In the same way, our human dreams are still like rats forced down the narrow corridors of our minds. They aren’t really free. They exist within a given mental structure.

The mindset we find ourselves within right now is all about categorising and splitting things into polarities. Good/bad, success/failure, right/wrong, me/not me. It’s extremely hard for us to perceive things any other way. But as always with life, we have outgrown ourselves. We are in the process of dreaming ourselves out of that disjointed mindset. The planet, and the force of life running through it, already exist beyond that separation paradigm, and they are dreaming us out of it too.
 
This is why everything in the world looks pear-shaped, from politics to the environment. Our imaginations are stuck in lab cages. Either we’re trying to impose Big Dreams of salvation on the world, or warring against Big Nightmares of perdition. But it isn’t about that.
 
I learned rather painfully back in 2008 that Big Dreams go wrong when they are over-exalted, when we think they will be some sort of Promised Land, or that they will save us, or save the world, or something. Because we are seeing them in the light of success versus failure, good versus bad. Yet life herself doesn’t dichotomise in this way. There’s no right or wrong for Gaia – just lots and lots of ideas, experiments, and exploration.
 
A Small Idea
Someone in our lovely patron group wrote to me this week because the Big Dream wasn’t happening. The land in the country with the house wasn’t to be. So this particular person had decided instead to take a less ostentatious step and just buy an inexpensive non-building plot of land somewhere, a small place to connect with nature and camp sometimes instead.
 
When I heard this, something rang so true within me. It’s such a beautiful idea. For what it’s worth, for me the most important thing isn’t the off-grid home in the mountains at all (though I love it). It’s communion with the land. Because that relationship and that conversation are extremely powerful. Or therapeutic. Or healing. Or transformative. It’s the place we perceive the dreams of life. We don’t have to lunge into some massive off-grid adventure to experience it.
 
To stand in a small area of dirt that you are sovereign in is priceless. A space you can protect. That you can nurture and not poison. That you can grow things on, play in, camp in, sit in, meditate in, make art in, connect with spirits and animals in. And when I gaze at my ash tree, I feel her nod. Because each square metre of this rocky wonderland we call Earth, is a world in itself. It’s precious. It matters. The relationship matters. Not the Big Dream. Not the heroics. Not the happily-ever-after delusion. Only the living, breathing interconnection can move us beyond what we already are.

I discuss a lot about sovereignty, sensitivity and the object/subject paradigm with Amisha Ghadiali in the Future is Beautiful Podcast. Feel free to listen to the conversation.

Thank you so much to our wonderful community of sustainers and supporters funding The Mud Home and the Earth Whispering Blog on Patreon. You are so appreciated, and I very much value each contribution. Your support has enabled me to buy a new inverter and battery pack so I can now charge my computer at home, which is a massive relief.

Become a More Intimate Part of The Mud Home
It costs a lot to run The Mud Home, and it takes up many hours a week. If you enjoy these posts and would like to express that you want them to continue, please consider contributing to the running costs. All our lovely patrons can watch my private land report videos, ask more questions, and get the inside story on this one-woman, off-grid build.

​The wolf of the wind howls around my cabaña, and the ash trees shake like rattles. Constellations come and go as the sky races over them. It’s wild up here. It’s another world, a planet where human rules no longer apply. This is the real world that still waits for us beyond the lacklustre veil we threw over it so long ago. Why did we do that, I wonder. Did we think it would be easier? If so, we were wrong, because this planet entertains neither cowards nor the lazy, and in every gutless lane we choose to walk down, predators of the worst kind lurk. All these life roads are energy conduits, you see. Which trail are we following?

I’m supping a cup of tea, snug on my bed with the stove roaring like a flaming lion. Gusts hammer at my door. And of course, it is in the midst of this storm that I decide I’d rather fancy a snack.
 
So I pull on my hat and my head torch and open the hut door. Lo and behold, night and his snarling hounds of cold, rain, and gales pour in. Lord! It’s rough out there. I blink through the pitch. That this tiny rock dwelling feels so secure in this weather surprises me. And then of course I ponder, as I often do, just how much I really want a handful of peanuts.
 
Nonetheless, I head out into the open mouth of winter. All for a few nuts. Because in truth there’s a lot more to it than that. In truth I’m going because I love to rip up that dreary man-made security blanket and feel the planet on my skin and in my hair. I know when I step up to meet Gaia, she will infuse me with something every advertiser tries to con me into buying but that no corporation can provide. It’s why I’m happier on a tempestuous mountain hiking to my kitchen, than I am pushing buttons in a town flat. Or God forbid a suburb.

Stumbling along the ridge, gusts whip my hair. It’s so darn windy I have to dip my head and round my shoulders, pushing my way into it. Pausing before the kitchen hut, I stare out at the twinkling lights of the villages below. The woodland swings and whirls in the arms of the weather as though resuscitated, and I can sense the land’s energy reviving me, too. The ancient Dirt Woman within me opens an eye and growls.
 
There and then, I’m alive. So I take the opportunity to pee right there on the slope like some cruddy queen of the Picos, because hey, I still don’t have a bathroom. But really, is there anything quite so glorious as peeing outside, anyway? Stars and clouds blustering overhead, rocks and dirt all around, trees rattling and roaring, and little old me crouching in the middle of it all, fertilising the grass and nettles.
 
I know at that moment I have chosen the right energy road, because that energy is inside me and out, reverberating.
 
Energetic Roads and Turkish Soul
 
The English language is rich when discussing exterior concepts like botany or mechanics, but surprisingly inadequate when we turn inside. Inadequate compared to Turkish, for example, which has an emotional and energetic lexicon that makes even the most academic of modern Turks sound like sages. Take the English word ‘soul’, for instance. Turkish comprises an entire rainbow of words that could be used in its place*, some of which have Sufi origins, some shamanic, so when I’m writing in English about such concepts I find myself extraordinarily thwarted by my mother tongue.
 
One of my favourite Turkish soul words is ‘can’ (pronounced ‘Jan’). Can is life pulse, the part of the soul that carries the life force of any living entity. It’s literally the bit of you that is alive, that is life herself, that is energetic and dynamic. When you die, you don’t take can with you.
 
Okay, so what’s this got to do with the wild life, energy roads, and a stormy night on a windswept Spanish mountain?

​As I stand on the hill feeling the can of the land rush into me, I sense this part of me that can best be described (in English) as ‘energetic’. And it doesn’t end at our fingertips. As the trees thrash and the air rolls down the mountainsides like cannonballs, it seems obvious because I can feel it everywhere. The surge of life. It’s amazing, and it’s Gaian.
 
Solar Power
The next morning when I step out in my pyjamas, another world is waiting for me. The sun is stroking the arms of the ashes, and the rocks are warming themselves like tourists on a grassy beach. Tiny birds twitter and flutter and rustle in branches. It’s the same land, and yet so completely different I’m a little awestruck.
 
As I walk along my ridge to heat a kettle of water for a wash, sunlight washes over my face. And I remember: solar power.  As soon as I enter the kitchen cabin, I pull out my little solar panel. It’s a small unit I bought back in 2017 when I first hit the road in a campervan. And do you know what? It’s done me proud. It powers a light and my phone, which has sort of kept me going. I hoist it onto the kitchen roof and attach the battery/inverter to it. The sun hits the panel and power is sent into the battery. Some technological voodoo occurs in that device that turns the battery power pulse (12V) into a voltage my phone can cope with (5V).
 
It’s all power. The sun, the power stored in the battery, the power that runs along the USB cable and charges my phone battery. But without an inverter, solar power doesn’t charge phones, or cars, or fridges. The voltage is different. They are different bandwidths of the same electrical energy.
 
In the same way, the energetic life pulse within us is not only available at one voltage either. Just as light can be split into a spectrum of colour, life energy comes in different qualities and potentials. But the truly exciting thing is that we seem to be inverters, and batteries, and panels too. We are energetic systems. We can increase the power stored in our systems, change the pulse rate and refine the flow so as to power more incredible realities, or we can limit what we embody and dumb the pulse right down to a couple of sluggish volts, and then wonder why we can’t run a washing machine or a brand new vision. It’s all about energy, and the line we choose to follow. It’s all about our can.
 
No matter how we like to portray ourselves, it is actually via our can that we are usually perceived and via the same can that we make shit happen in the physical world. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the Turkish word can is written the same way as the English word ‘can’.
 
Can is the reason dogs and horses know we’re bullshitting when we pretend to like them and we don’t. It’s why some people are instantly likeable, and others just irritate the heck out of us, or drain us, or bore us. Often we simply can't put our finger on why. It's the root of charisma, for better or worse, and those who've worked out how to amplify it can potentially manipulate.

It ain’t what you do, it’s how you do it:
As you may have sensed, having taken a big leap of faith and jumping into a new reality, I have found happiness. And yes, I listened to the Earth and my gut to get here. But something happened long before I let go of my mud home in Turkey, something I didn’t really mention in the Mud Mountain Blog, because in those days I was more worried about what people thought. I remember meditating for days until my soul energy (for want of a better word in English) was pulsing in a very different way, and began pushing, just like a tree branch, in a very different direction. I smelt an invitation for a new life on a new energy road and I wanted to explore it. Because if we’re not exploring or creating or loving, then quite frankly what in hell are we doing here anyway? What’s the point?
 
Yes. It’s not just about jumping. It’s not just about risk taking or leaving the system or throwing yourself into a forest in tent. If the energy with which we do these things is based on fear or anger or loneliness or desperation, watch out. That energy line will follow you just as you follow it, and bite you in the butt wherever you are.
 
It’s not about plastic, or the economy, or old white men, either. Get rid of any of them and I guarantee not much will change. There are a million other corrupted entities to fill their places, because the energy source from whence they came is the same, and we’re all still riding it.
 
Does this mean I support the status quo and deny reality, or think sitting about in the lotus position all day is the answer? No. I believe in respect and honour for all beings (not just humans), and I see clearly that we don’t have enough of them. Yes, we must take steps in a better direction. But for me at least, most of the ways I see people trying to manifest these things fail desperately to inspire me. Righteousness, demonisation and sanctimoniousness have never created anything beautiful. If we really want to solve the problem, connect people and raise us all up (rather than strip us all down), then we need to embody a higher potential, and start following a more transformative energy line. Because the energy with which we act is far more important than the action itself. It’s something my Power Ash has been banging on about all month. It’s something Grandmother Olive used to whisper about too, in another way.
 
Tree Wisdom
The solar panel is up and the battery inverter charging. It’s now I turn to stare at the great ash behind me. Her branches twist and coil, illustrating quite clearly the lines of energy they follow and the direction their life force is pushing in. Each branch is a road to a different reality. Some hold leaves, some are withered and dying, some bear fruit and seeds and keys, which in turn fly off on the back of a wind to settle and create a brand new ash tree reality somewhere else.
 
As it goes with trees, so it goes with us. It’s the line of can we’re following, and the frequency of power we are embodying that matters. I think this is perhaps one of the most important life tools trees have taught me. They, for all intents and purposes, seem to do very little at all. But sit under them and feel their power. Feel how they transform you and the world around!
 
Upgrading my Power System
With any luck, by the time you are reading this I will have upgraded my solar system so that I can charge my laptop and my power tools too. With any luck the inverter will be throwing out a hefty 240V instead of 5V. I’ll be using the larger panels my neighbour gave me so that I can absorb more of the sun’s power, and have larger batteries so that I can now hold more of it for longer. The entire current(amps) in the system will increase and the resistance in the system will decrease. I’ll have massively upped my power potential and my ability to get shit done.

In the same way though, I wish to upgrade my other, more fundamental energy system; that of my can or my soul. Because it’s the key to making anything good happen. And while I chose a beautiful energy road for my land and community, I notice other areas where I’ve had less integrity. I haven’t always spoken kindly, for example, and impatience has sometimes got the better of me. I can be very resistant about letting people in, and hold onto past transgressions in a most ungracious manner.

But the times are special and the past is falling away at great speed. We can up our game now, choose new energy roads and start changing the how rather than the what, the means rather than the end. Because as one of my protagonists Harpagos wisely noted back in 500 BC: The end never comes. Never. We never reach the Promised Land. All we are ever left with is the means. The energy road. The can.

* other Turkish words for soul (or soul elements) include: ruh, tin, can, öz, nefes, gönül.

Extra Note:
Over the past three years in Europe, I have privately thanked Turkey many times for so many things. One day I’ll write them all down. Here I just want to say that I am indebted to the Turkish language and culture for sharing its extensive and nuanced understanding of emotions and energy concepts with me. The concept of can is a Turkish concept. The energy roads were whispered to me by my ash trees.
 

Thank you, thank you, thank you to our lovely community of sustainers and supporters funding The Mud Home and the Earth Whispering Blog on Patreon. You are so appreciated, and I very much value each contribution. Your support has enabled me to buy a new inverter and battery pack so I can now charge my computer at home. Yippee!

Become a More Intimate Part of The Mud Home
It costs a lot to run this site, and it takes up many hours a week. If you enjoy these posts and would like them to continue, please consider chipping in $2 a month, and becoming part of our Mud Club. If you want to see more photos, watch my private land report videos, ask more questions, and get the inside story on this one-woman off-grid build, pledge as much as you like to support The Mud Home on Patreon.

It’s only when you leave that you understand you are attached. Some invisible hook has lodged itself beneath the eiderdown of your day-to-day thoughts; A spine? A thorn? A burr? It wasn’t there before. It didn’t exist. But now it does. It was swept in on a gust from the landscape, and before you knew it you were hooked.
 
This is what we do, we humans. Without even being aware of it, we pull twigs and stalks and feathers from our environment, and use them to line our psyches. The strands of what was once alien turf are soon woven into a fresh nest of familiarity. It’s only when we leave that the scales are lifted from our eyes. We leave and return. And we feel it. We are attached. 

In the past month, I’ve left and returned three times, mainly to escape what has been a pretty harsh beginning to winter (Asturias endured 29 days of rain in November). Today I’m back, and unabashedly attached. I inhale my view (mine, yes mine) and feel my psychological muscles relax. Each ridge on the horizon has become a piece of me. The limestone creases rest in my memory, viewable from the catalogue of my mind even while lounging in an English living room.
 
Then there are the trees: The ashes and hazels and holly and chestnuts. None of these were my world before, yet today they all are. We are related now. For I’m quite certain the land is as used to me, as I am to it. Robin redbreast flutters by for breakfast, nodding at me to drop him a morsel or two. He does this every day. It’s now an expectation on both our parts. Here on Mud Pico, even the sunlight is personal. I sense the slightest change in tone, and can easily tell the time by it.
 
The weather has also become part of me, physically and mentally. There are shattering sunsets and science-fiction cloudscapes. There is snow and rain, too. My body has long adapted to a cooler climate, my very blood has thickened because of it. I am no longer who I was. That’s what connection does. It’s a two-way highway that will alter you forever.
 
Attachment is a concentric affair. Fanning out from the hub of my land, other links have formed, fronds that have stretched and intertwined below the surface of the visible to create a sustaining network. I am now part of a new culture and language, both utterly foreign to me two years ago, but now so familiar. Spanish has encroached upon large quadrants of my brain territory, lighting up synapses and forging circuits that weren’t there before. Tectonic plates in my subconscious have shifted, and I realise one day when I speak to a Turkish friend that I’m saying no instead of hayır, and that no pasa nada has replaced birşey olmaz.
 
There are human connections too: One day a burr lodged itself in my eye. Neighbours I had no idea existed a short while back, drove me to the doctor. Others bring me wood. Then there are all my new haunts: The nearest town. The cafes with wi-fi where I grab a coffee. My favourite eateries, where the waiters know my order by heart and bring it without even asking. When I think of these things, such a warmth fills my chest. I belong. This is my hood. My patch. 

Sometimes I have to pinch myself. Am I even the same person I was? And who was that Turkish woman anyway, because as with every one of my past selves, the me of yesterday has become but a ghost haunting the corridors of my memories. It’s a kind of sorcery that we can weave new realities and soulscapes in this way! How did this all happen?
 
It happened via attachment.
 
Now, many philosophies harbour an aversion to attachment. Anicca (nothing is permanent) is the mantra of Vipassana after all. Because of course nothing lasts forever, all will crumble and die at some point, and the less attached you are, the less you suffer…
 
Or so they say.
 
Certainly when my dog died in 2017, I would have agreed wholeheartedly that I had been too attached. That I shouldn’t have loved her so deeply because dogs don’t last long and all that. But after two years on the road in a campervan, wandering free and unfettered, things soon looked different. To float aimlessly without bonding, without attaching, without caring (because that’s sort of what it amounts to unless you’re an enlightened being with sunbeams bursting from every orifice) is a lame kind of malediction. It’s the cowardly curse of hyper-intellectualism, and a reason for much of the malaise of the modern world. Without attachment, you have no belonging. You are endlessly free and endlessly lost, swimming wide but shallow waters where nothing really matters. And yet it does matter. A lot. We matter. The land matters.

Culture Shock
Having moved about plenty in my life, I’m familiar with the typical undulations of cultural and geographical adaptions. The vague nausea you sense when dropped from a great height into a strange new world. The discombobulation. The faint agoraphobia, followed by the gradual familiarising of the environment. Whenever you relocate from one home to another, from one life to another, there are stages of assimilation. It doesn’t matter if you shift to a rural off-grid life from a conventional urban setting, or emigrate, there is always a series of culture shocks, and a process of adaptation. Because belonging isn’t some fateful feature of our lives that just happens when destiny shunts us into the right place. We create it, every minute of our lives.
 
But here’s the thing no one talks about regarding attachment. We don’t always attach, do we? Not everywhere becomes our home, just as not everyone becomes our lover. And no one really has the answer to why that is. For if everything is simply our projection, then what does it matter if we live in Manhattan or the Gobi Desert? Wouldn’t we weave nests of attachment regardless of the location? Both the Buddhists and the existentialists would say yes, the whole thing is an illusion, but I’m sorry, on at least one level they are wrong. Maybe it takes a witch or an indigenous person to point it out.
 
The Call of the Land
Sometimes the land calls. Sometimes she doesn’t. And that’s because the planet herself has a trajectory in which every human plays a part. Sometimes Earth missions are short, sometimes they last decades, and sometimes we are simply not in the right place at the right time.
 
I remember far, far away from here, living in the east Asian island of Taiwan. It was a short commitment for me. I worked there for nearly two years, and if you’re reading anything on this website, it’s thanks to hi-tech, fast-paced Taiwan. But while we shared a short and at times quite magical connection, it was never home. I sensed very early on that we were in a temporary relationship, and I missed my homeland Turkey throughout.
 
Then there’s England. What happened between me and England I have no idea, but we simply do not get on, and we never have, not since the day I was born. There is no obvious external reason for my lack of affinity. My parents were decent British people. I enjoyed an excellent free state education and was offered many chances there. Yet England (and it’s specifically England, because by contrast Scotland’s west coast beguiles me) has never been my homeland. The first time I travelled abroad as a teenager, I felt as though I’d been released from some miserable dank jail.  A lifetime of nausea lifted. Why?
 
It’s because the loamy skin of this incredible planet is alive and sentient. It absorbs us as we absorb it. It has memories etched deep into its rocky hide, and yearns for certain souls while spitting others out. Sometimes the terrain calls us hither, sometimes it pushes us away. Sometimes it’s wholly ambivalent. A communication occurs above and beyond the physical, a contract between the land and ourselves. And this is the real reason we become attached. That sense of belonging is a pledge between the planet and our souls. It’s a sign we are in the right place at the right time.

So many people are forging new paths right now. Indeed humanity itself is forging one, too. We’re inhabiting a drastically different landscape than we were ten years ago, and there’s a new culture and language to learn. But even if we are unaware of it, or buttress ourselves against it, our souls are gathering this and that from the present world around us, braiding them into a new homeland.
 
Yet the question of whether we will belong in this new world, whether we will love it and be loved by it, whether it will hold meaning and joy for us, and whether we will fulfil our soul missions upon it, actually comes down not only to us but the Earth herself. Will she spit us out? Or draw us closer? And who? And where? Because while we exist as a species, we also exist as cultures, neighbourhoods, and individuals. And what I’ve come to understand is this: the land speaks to us on all levels. Whether we are aware of it or not, a contract is being written between every soul and every location, every single minute.
 
No one has the power (or the right) to change the mind of an entire species, nor do they need to. Even countries are not the point. The nation-state is a fiction that is fragmenting, and you’d be best not to waste your energy on it. Our power and our covenants exist between us, our land and our communities, some of which occupy digital as well as physical space. It is this Homeland that counts.
 
So the question has to be this: Are you attached? Are you home? Do you belong? If so, good for you! Don’t let other people’s panic and drama regarding their perception of “the human story” distract you from your beautiful, vital, and very personal relationship with your space. You have work to do, and only you know what it is.
 
If, on the other hand, attachment and belonging are missing, then maybe the Earth and your soul are speaking to you. Maybe it’s time to listen, and to create a real Homeland of your own.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, to our lovely community of sustainers and supporters funding The Mud Home and the Earth Whispering Blog on Patreon. You are so appreciated, and I very much value each contribution.

Become a More Intimate Part of The Mud Home
It costs a lot to run this site, and it takes up many hours a week. If you enjoy these posts and would like them to continue, please consider chipping in $2 a month, and becoming part of our Mud Club. If you want to see more photos, watch my private land report videos, ask more questions, and get the inside story on this one-woman off-grid build, pledge as much as you like to support The Mud Home on Patreon. 

​It all began with a drumming of rain on my skylight, a skylight I’m rather proud of because I made it all by myself to watch the stars and moon out of. My bedroom may be a two-by-two hutch, but it’s amazing what you can do with four square metres if you try. When darkness steals the horizon, and the great undulate vale I belong to vanishes into the pitchy mouth of night, my stone hut begins to pulse. It beats like a rocky heart. What used to be an abandoned, poop-filled chicken coop is now a warm, vibrant world with earth-plastered walls, wooden floor, clay paint and mirrors.
 
My hut is not entirely finished though. Why? Because back in October, the more sensible half of me bossed the dreamer into line (when you go it alone, these internal wrangles become a way of life). And, it is true I can get rather distracted by whimsical aesthetic details like mud trees. With winter approaching, the bathroom looked more of a priority.
 
“You’re not allowed to do any more useless pretty things until that bathroom is finished!” My inner disciplinarian tongue-lashed me, so sure she knew what she was talking about. So there are still mosaics, shelves, a window, and a chair to make. Looking back on it, I could have done with that window. I could have done with that chair.

Yes...I said it all began with a drumming of rain on my skylight. Too bad it didn’t end there. Because November decided to throw convention to the wind and become mid-January instead. Day after day the clouds ganged up. They swelled into battalions of sodden desolation, upon which they hurled their cold wet misery at the earth. The temperature plunged into single figures, and low ones at that.
 
For days on end I peered out of my stone hut aghast. My kitchen now lay in a bog at the end of a slippery ridge, and reaching it was an expedition involving wellies, raincoat, hat, and umbrella. I could see my breath every time I cooked a meal. My toes were forever frozen. And I still didn’t have a bathroom, nor could I make an inch of progress on it.

Escape
Eventually conditions became so hideous, I threw a few clothes in a bag and made a run for my car.  I drove to Sophie and Hakan’s place in Cantabria, enjoyed good food, good conversation, and my first hot shower in weeks, in a bathroom fit for a mud queen.
 
Soon I was on the road back though, because my land was calling. I also wanted to finish that wretched bathroom. Arriving back in the dead of night, I trudged up my hill,  amazed to note that the rain had paused. The clouds were parted like smoky stage curtains, and through them the silky eye of a full moon gazed upon my world. The stillness was palpable. My land seemed to be holding her breath. If ever I had doubted her magic, those strokes of moonlight rekindled it.
 
Reaching the rocky brow of my world, I pushed open the ancient door to my stone hut. Then I pulled off my boots. I was home.
 
My stove came to life. Flames danced and chattered in that primal language that only our bodies understand. Sitting on my bed, I gazed up at the skylight. Indeed it was now truly a light of the sky, the glass rectangle frosted by the milk of the moon. But within hours that skylight was rattling again, as the rain thundered on it once more. It turned colder. It turned wetter. It hailed. And then it peaked with an onslaught of slushy sleet.
 
Finally it dawned on me. The bathroom wasn’t going to happen right now, was it? So I might as well turn my attention to the inside of my hut. Grabbing some of the mud plaster that was supposed to become wattle-and-daub, I found a large mirror and plastered it onto the wall. Then I banged the window frame into shape. I nailed in the shelf supports, and sawed the driftwood for the chair legs. The Disciplinarian was awfully quiet throughout.

Inside
I’ve had four square metres to live in. From six at night until nine in the morning, it has been my world. And when it hasn’t, I’ve been miserable and cold. Yet how grateful I am to that little hut. How happy I am that I insulated it to the hilt. How glad I am that it’s beautiful and cute and warm. This hut has sheltered me through the icy wet caprice of the worst November I’ve known.
 
I’m still a bathroom short of course, and the irony hasn’t been lost on my inner Dreamer, who has been throwing frequent smirks at her disciplinarian antagonist. Somewhere, for some reason, the land decided to push me inwards, and in retrospect, that was long overdue. Foregoing the inner for the outer is the biggest mistake the modern world has made. It is still making it, obsessed as it is with action and busyness, instead of introspection and meditation. 

​Our Cabañas
We all sit in the stone huts of ourselves, and from there we gaze through the skylights of our senses onto our worlds. We are still so sure it is something out there that will cure us of our ills. A friend. A lover. A political ideal. Money. Privilege. Status. Or even perhaps just a bathroom. And so off we go trying to right the exterior wrongs, throwing our entire weight and effort into moving mountains outside of us, many of which aren’t even ours to move.
 
But in truth, without inner warmth, beauty, and inspiration, the outer will continue to disappoint, and we will lose the drive to change it anyway.
 
So, when we close the door, light the fire, and spend some decent time inside the cabaña of our minds and hearts, what do we find there? Is it warm inside, or chilly and mean? Every soul shelter needs maintenance, care and love. Some have structural issues; many were abandoned, undervalued, or misused in the past. But to say that any of these things is a fait accompli is to thwart the magical and healing power of life. Psyches may be damaged. Souls never can be. The question is, are we prepared to put in the effort to do the renovation?

But what is renovation exactly? It's love. It's the realm of the Dreamer, not the Disciplinarian. And it only happens to spaces we care about enough to nurture and enhance. If we never want to stop and spend time inside ourselves, it says a lot about our self value.

And so today, bathroom or not, I will finally fix my window. I may, if I have time, put up the bookshelf too. Who knows, perhaps even the sculpture on the mirror will happen. Because it looks like it could be a long, dark winter out there. In here? Ah well, that’s another story.

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“You can’t get those roof joists in alone. I mean how will you line them up properly?” Farmer Quilo was studying the vacant space in front of my ‘bedroom’ hut, where I was planning to put my bathroom. His cows were chewing nonchalantly below us in my field, oblivious to the plans of builders and mud witches. They had verdure to process after all, and it’s a full-time bovine occupation.

“I think I can,” I replied with none of my old cantankerous I’ll-show-you, because Quilo isn’t a macho moron, and is capable enough that he doesn’t need to put me down to make himself feel better. He wasn’t doubting me because of my gender or my size. He honestly couldn’t see how the job could be done single-handed.
 
“But how will you hold the joists and bang them straight? I mean they all have to be lined up. And the ones poking out of your hut are all crooked.”
 
“Aha...Estoy preparada,” I answered with glee. Bending down, I picked up one of the small joists and showed him where I’d bored three holes. “Now it’s easy to bang the nail in one-handed,” I said. “I’ll bang the middle nail in first, then I can move the joist up and down and adjust it. I’ll do that with all three joists, lay a beam on top of all three, line them up, then whack the other nails in.”
 
Farmer Quilo’s features expanded like the face of the moon, one of those big rosy pumpkins that rise just before sunset, (because he likes a splash of vino tinto, does our Quilo). I think he’s an Asturian fusion of Celal and Dudu, with his dogs and cats and cows and beans. Yes I am lucky he’s my neighbour. But hey, I conversed plenty with the Earth before I found this spot, remember?
 
“Whoa!” Quilo eyed the planks and then me. “I suppose necessity is the mother of all creation,” he said – or something along those lines. Then he stepped along the path, flicking his garden gnome face briefly back. “Well, as I said, if you need help, just ring me.”
 
“I will, I promise,” I said. This time I meant it. I’m tired. It’s cold. I need a frigging bathroom.
 
The next day, for what it was worth, I looked at the weather forecast. It wasn’t inspiring. Rain was coming in shedloads, it said, not to mention the cold. I stared at the empty space where my bathroom should have been. I thought about extending that roof and those awful curvy tiles. Then I trotted down to talk to the ash tree.
 
“See it finished. Feel it finished. It is done,” Ash Tree said. Which is basically what he always says. And I sighed. Thus, with the sunlight dancing over his remaining leaves, I meditated and envisioned the roof extension finished. I felt the relief of it. I saw the beauty of it. After that, I climbed back up to my stone huts and banged in those three joists. They went in fast. They lined up properly. Then the pitter patter of precipitation filled my world.

Two days later my land was a cold boggy mess. It was so dreary that world politics almost glimmered in comparison. Even the cows looked disgusted, and stared at me in grumpy expectation, as if I had some control over the elements. Only the bull remained stalwart, but he is a remarkably easy-going chap. I decided to call Farmer Quilo the next day, and take a chance on the weather.
 
It was unbelievable really. In a week of solid rain, rising rivers, and floods, we had a single dry afternoon, and it happened to be the one that Quilo turned up on. He arrived at midday with a bag-full of tools and a stepladder, puffing a little as he pushed up the hill. But my ruddy-cheeked neighbour set to work like no tradesman I’ve ever hired. That roof was banged together, complete with tejas curvas by five pm. Totalmente. All right, I helped a bit here and there flitting about as materials delivery, but honestly? I can’t take credit for that porch. Lord knows how long I’d have messed about with it. As I threw the last few tiles up to Farmer Quilo, a stubborn-looking drizzle set up camp on my land. It turned to rain, and then to downpour.
 
Over the coming days, the ground transformed from solid to liquid, the air from warm feather to cold slate. Rain gathered in sodden flocks and stampeded down the slopes until it was no longer clear where the sky ended and the earth began.

It’s at such times that a builder must stop and assess. Traditionally December would be the time for such a stock-take, but Gaia has decided to suspend action early. So it is now, with a roof over my head (albeit small) and a stove chugging in the corner (albeit still with wood to cut), that I have momentarily paused for breath. And it is for a moment only, because I’m still a bathroom short, not to mention hot water. Oh hot water, what I wouldn’t do!
 
Did I bite off more than I can chew?
 
Quilo’s porch has highlighted something. It’s the first thing this year that I haven’t built by myself (notwithstanding a little help with the tejas curvas from my friends in July). As I sit in my nobbled kitchen, coffee steam wafting out of the cup, the landscape of the recent past spreads before me. With its peaks and ridges, its declivities and chasms, 2019 has been an odyssey into exertion the likes of which I’ve never known. Bitten off more than I can chew? Hey, I’ve had more on my plate than a shoestring backpacker who suddenly finds himself at an all-inclusive buffet.
 
Roofs have been taken off and put back on, there were battles with tiles, water pipes to connect, skylights to make and install, walls to plaster, floors to lay, holes to bash, plaster to throw, cretes to mix and apply, insulation to insert, beds to build, tables, kitchen cabinets, everything including the kitchen sink. The only two power tools I possess are a jigsaw and a drill. I have almost no electricity. Everything you see was hand-sawed, hand-mixed, hand-hammered. By me. One woman lone builder. Not to mention The Mud Home website to run, articles to write, and emails to answer, all without a proper power system installed, which means I’m starting my car to charge my laptop at times, or I have to run to the nearest cafe. Somehow (I actually have no idea how) I put together a digital lime course over the summer, too. I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard.

Sooo with this dramatic vista of endeavour at my back, should some slack-jawed fool dare to mumble that I’m so lucky, or they wish they could have what I have because blah de flipping moan whine blah, I fear they may find themselves swiftly buried under six feet of my hand-mixed limecrete.
 
Yet here’s the strangest part of all this. You see, I’ve loved every minute of my stone hut endurance caper, even washing in the freezing cow trough when it was ten degrees outside. You couldn’t drag me back to civilisation if you tried (well alright, perhaps for a hot shower now and again). Am I mad? A masochist? Or is this the sheer delight of stretching into wild new realities I had no idea I could reach. I’m astounded at how my body, psyche, and energy have adapted to birth these creations. I wonder where my limits are. Where our limits are. I understand now what I am. I’m a creator of worlds. It’s in my blood and my soul. I thrive on it.

Which brings me back. Lone builder I am, and I love it. But that is because, as I’m always saying, I’m not alone. This doesn’t mean I don’t occasionally feel alone. But whenever I do, I sit with the sensation and check exactly what that feeling is. What I discover when I look inside, is that loneliness has nothing to do with people, or being solitary. It’s about being disconnected. Disconnected from myself, my environment, the voices whispering all about me, the trees and birds, this incredible planet, the force of life in and beyond us all, and the beauty and wonder it opens for us.
 
It’s why I love to live by myself. It’s why I don’t envy couples or nuclear families. Because they are so often lonely, conflict-ridden old shacks. For me at least, enmeshed human relationships drag me away from the very place where I feel supported and connected. They pull me away from the unconditional tenderness and wonder and magic that I find in silence and nature. 

Each morning in my spinster builder life, I walk along my ridge, and the sky tells me a different story. Through the sunrise and the dew, I sense Gaia’s power reaching into my muscle tissue. I hear the trees whisper in my mind, and feel the hands of the planet on my shoulders. I’m certainly not invincible, but I am part of something that is. When I become aware, minute to minute, that I’m not enclosed in a sack of skin, but emanating far beyond it, I finally understand I’m part of a living, breathing masterpiece that actually paints itself.
 
So thank you dear Earth for leading me here to this enchanting place with its bounteous wildlife and benevolent neighbours. Where will you lead me next, I wonder? And what will I create with you when I get there? Who knows? Who knows?

A massive hug and thank you to the crowd of people who’ve joined us on Patreon recently, as well as those loyal supporters who’ve been with us for so much longer. Thank you so much for chipping in to get me some decent batteries and a tougher inverter so that I can keep these posts coming. It would be impossible for me to maintain The Mud Home without your contributions.

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“Gawd! I don’t know how to do this.”
 
I was staring at my stone wall feeling out of my depth. Not that I’m unfamiliar with this sensation. This past year I’ve been scaling learning curves sharp enough to qualify for a place in the Karakoram. The task in hand wasn’t by any means my steepest ascent either. All I had to do was bash a hole in my cute old cabaña wall for a stove pipe. It was altogether more base camp than K2.
 
A crick began to pinch my neck from peering upwards. Which rock? Which one should I try to pull out? I just didn’t know where to start. 

Now, I wasn’t completely without knowledge. My off-grid neighbour, who had bashed a hole or two out of his own cabaña , had already set me up with some beginners’ tips: “Look, if there’s a longish rock at the top, then you know you can pull out the stones below it and the wall will still be supported.” This was good advice, except there wasn’t longish rock where I needed my stove pipe hole.
 
Placing my hand on the wall, I touched one rock after another, paralysed by indecision. Images of the entire thing collapsing sashayed about my mind. I saw a heap of rubble where my wall had been, and shuddered. Autumn is here. I have no time for mess-ups right now.
 
Closing my eyes, I pleaded for a little help. The limestone nobbles and ruts were cool. They were ancient, too. I knew from Farmer Quilo that these huts were well over a hundred years old. Even to move a few of the stones seemed a little sacrilegious.
 
Perhaps the sun dipped behind a cloud at that point because the room darkened, and the shadows started eating into the corners. Then I sensed it. The past. It was still sitting in the stones and the dust, buried but not dead. I felt a connection forged between now and then, like a line of presence stretching directly back to when these cabañas were first built. The area between my shoulder blades prickled. Suddenly I just knew I wasn’t alone.
 
You want the rock above the shelf.
 
I started. The hut was talking. My scalp crawled a little as I considered the idea that perhaps this old cabana, the place I’d chosen to be my bedroom, was haunted. Yet when I felt into it, I realised the voice wasn’t creepy. It was much like when I talk to my ash tree. The words were in my head, but with a tone of their own. The cabaña was friendly, perhaps glad that there was someone finally around.
 
Studying the rock above the shelf, I decided to reply. “But won’t the rock shelf fall down if I take that stone?” Because I’d looked at that stone before, and considered it risky.
 
No no no. The rock shelf is being held by plenty of others. That’s the one. Just dig out the mortar around it. Keep digging. Dig dig dig dig dig.

Ever since I arrived on this land, I’ve been chatting with it and its inhabitants. With the trees, birds, lizards and the Lion Rock. Whenever I’m daunted (which is fairly often), I stop and ask one of the great trees of the land to tell me the next step. I hear that guidance in my head as clear as a bell. Its rightness rings in my body, not my mind. It will be unbelievable to many, but the advice is always bang on. Thus I’m pulled out of the swamp of confusion with its bog pools of pros and cons, and its soggy sedge of what-ifs, onto a dry path of stepping stones. Sometimes I can’t see how stepping stone one is going to get me to stepping stone ten. But inevitably it does.
 
Yes, I’ve been hearing the tree voices. And the rock voices. But this was the first time the cabaña had spoken (or perhaps the first time I’d heard).
 
Brandishing my trusty if unfortunate screwdriver – a tool destined never once to do the job it was designed for – I began gouging out the old lime and mud mortar. It was arduous work, like tunnelling your way out of prison with a teaspoon. I became impatient, tried yanking the rock, tried working on another. At one point it seemed the stone was wedged in by a much bigger one on top of it. I began to think (as I so often do) that the voice I’d heard was mistaken.
 
Dig dig dig dig dig! You just need to keep digging. It will take a while. I put them in good and tight. But once that mortar is out, they’ll start wobbling.
 
There was no doubt about it, whoever the voice belonged to was very sure they were right.
 
“Okay, I’ll do as you say. And we’ll see,” I muttered.
 
Ten minutes later the stone shifted. Before I knew it, it was out. And Mr. Voice-in-the-wall had been correct, because the rock shelf it sat on was still firm, and the wall itself still very much intact.
 
Still, there remained a good half-metre of stone rampart left behind the new hole, and each rock was locked into each other like some giant, inhabitable game of Jenga. I wondered yet again if I’d manage this without the whole lot caving in. Gingerly sticking my hand in the new gap, I began pulling out more rocks. And more...

​Eventually after scratching and scraping at the mortar for what seemed like an age, a spot of daylight appeared. Wahey! I’d made it! So I pushed a piece of string through the chink and ran round into the woods to the outside of the wall. I wanted to see where to start next. But when I reached the rear of the cabaña , I groaned. The string was visible alright, only it was stuck between two massive slabs, neither of which looked too keen on budging.
 
You can take the big one if you want. But why not take the smaller one, which is diagonal. Mr. Voice-in-the-wall was back, and once again devoid of self-doubt.
 
“Isn’t that going to be too high up?” I said.  Then I remembered I wanted the flue tilting up slightly to help the smoke out. Hmm. It was worth a go.
 
Once I’d removed it, and picked out the surrounding stones, I ran back inside to see if there was any way my stove pipe would pass through the gap. It was unlikely. There were rocks in all sorts of annoying and obstructing places, and removing any one of them would bring down plenty of others. Pff.
 
Inside I squinted, waiting for my pupils to dilate. Then I peered into the aperture, and pulled out any remaining bits of rubble. After I’d cleared as much as I could, I stared dubiously at the remaining cavity. If the pipe actually fit in there it would be a miracle, but hey, you can’t know unless you try, can you? So I picked up the metal flue and pushed it gently in. What do you know? Perfect fit.
 
I could almost feel the cabaña grinning. Or was it the cabaña builder? What was it? Who was it? What are these voices, and how do they know all these things?

​There was a time when I thought the trees talked and that I was communicating with their spirits. Then there was a time I thought it was me projecting some wiser, more intuitive part of myself onto the tree. Then I learned that trees emit special biochemical compounds, and I wondered if they affected our brains like magic mushrooms. Then I thought perhaps it was the tree’s beauty that was inspiring some sort of innate intelligence inside me. To this day I do not know what speaks. But now apparently the rocks and cabanas talk, too. They have old, old stories to tell and wisdom to impart.
 
Just like mine, humanity’s learning curve is currently pretty sharp, too. The world is changing so fast; if you blink you’ve missed whole social trends. In the face of such an incline, it’s hard not to fall into self-doubt or to sink paralysed into a mire of confusion. Our minds are continually polluted by melodrama and horror stories, after all. Yet for me, unless we really pause and hear the true voices emanating from the very dirt we walk on and in, it’s going to be tricky to take the appropriate steps towards anything at all. Action without deep, Earth-based wisdom is simply noise and haste rather than creation.
 
To create the life, home, or world we want, there are two fundamental things we need to cultivate: an inspired vision, and a physical road toward it. Because when our will and imagination touch the stones and the dirt, a unique path is drawn. This is the creative magic of Gaia that no one understands. Our vision paths are like arteries or tree roots stretching and branching and feeding our souls. They pulse with the fire of life, and that pulse has a voice that is forever by our side. Can you hear it? Can you feel it?
 
You are not lost; you are walking on the stepping stones of your life. All you have to do is be sure where you want to end up, and then listen...Listen to life and the loam, and hear what your next step is.

If you’re interested in the voices of the land, take a look at my Earth Whispering website which I’m in the process of building up to become a resource for all things Earth-intuitive.
 
Many thanks to the crowd of people chipping in to keep these posts coming. It would be impossible for me to maintain The Mud Home without your support. It currently funds 10GB of off-grid internet, the now vital online help from Melissa, the web hosting and platform, the mighty email list provider and small portion of my time.
 
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 “How do you resist the temptations of capitalism? Get a haircut? Clothes pegs? Pensions and health insurance?” It was a question from one of our Patreon members.
 
The answer is I don’t. The fact that you are reading these words posted onto a website that I pay a number of corporations for, is proof of that. It was a good question, though. A good question provokes thought. It searches beyond the appearance of things and wonders about the underlying structure of it. It provokes a blog post from me:)

Me and Money
Money and I have shared a long, bumpy road together, and at times we’ve not been the happiest of travel partners. Once upon a time back in the noughties in Antalya, Turkey, I was earning a packet and spending more than a packet. Often on nonsense. Next (it shouldn’t be too hard to see why) I bankrupted myself, found myself in debt and out of energy. Thus began the Mud Mountain adventure, where I huddled fairly close to the poverty line and simultaneously felt ecstatically happy. For almost five years I lived from hand to mouth, threw hardly anything away, had no car, no health insurance, no pension. It was the most beautiful, fulfilling, magical time of my life. And it made me understand that there is something far more powerful and profound within us than we realise.
 
So... for a time there, I was of the opinion that money was the root of all evil. That if we obliterated the green scourge, and toppled the capitalist edifice that housed it, everyone would wake up to the beauty of their soul, and all our problems would vanish in a pink puff of idealistic smoke. Hmm.
 
The wonderful thing about being human is that we are not ossified ideologies. We are living, breathing, evolving organisms. Since 2011 when I first moved onto Mud Mountain in a tent, the world has become a completely different place. You and I are completely different people, too. It’s only eight years, but everything has changed. So if our ideas haven’t transformed alongside, we need to worry, because it means they are becoming dogmas.
 
What do I think about capitalism?
People yabber about capitalism a lot, and usually feel rather clever when they do. But when we talk about capitalism, what do we mean? Are we talking about the industrial profit-based economic structure that followed feudalism (which wasn’t too great either) as discussed by Marx back in 1867? Are we talking about globalisation and multinational companies? Are we referring to the monetary system and the banks? Do we mean the market economy*? Do we view buying a home-grown organic tomato from our neighbour as indulging in capitalism in the same way as buying a handbag from Prada, or a Bugatti?
 
There are two reasons I am today very ambivalent about the capitalist/anti-capitalist debate. First, most of it is based on the ideologies of a very small number of political and economic thinkers from one particular culture. All were alive a century or more ago (Marx, Engels, Keynes, etc), all were middle class, and frankly it shows. When these chaps were penning their theses, the world was an entirely different entity. There was basically no environmental issue at all other than on a very local level. When the presiding economic theories were born, no one was seriously considering the idea that we could run out of resources. Women had no voice. Indigenous folk and their lifestyles were considered by most ‘intellectuals’ as primitive. There was no internet. No microchips. No plane travel. Dead? My God, these ideologies are fossilised by now, and I can’t quite believe we still buy into them.
 
There is an idea that if we get rid of capitalism, all our environmental worries will be over. I’m sceptical about that, not least because socialist and communist countries in the past have caused as much environmental degradation as capitalist ones. The eco-crimes the Soviet Union committed in areas like Kazakhstan (check out what used to be the Aral Sea, or the nuclear bomb tests in Semipalatinsk) are pretty hard to stomach. Clearly the common denominator for environmental care isn’t, as a good tranche of environmentalists claim, simply market forces. It’s above all about consciousness and Self+Earth awareness.
 
For me, right now, the level of the general enviro-economic debate is exasperating. Come on! We need something new, not half-new. Not 1968. New.

The Root of the Issue
I’ve stayed in many alternative communities in my life, some places where no one even used money, and have learned to my chagrin that you could stick humans in paradise, make every single one a millionaire, give them whatever they wanted, and they’d still moan, backstab, cheat and fight. Take away money. Take away capitalism. I guarantee, humans will still be the same disputatious and miserable bunch of egos they were before. Sorry to say.
 
Why is that? Why? Why can’t we be content and work together? Because, as I learned when I moved onto Mud Mountain back in 2011 and my old mindset was peeled away by the dirt-streaked fingers of nature, the problem isn’t out there.
 
Anyone who is at one with themselves, who is grounded in their soul and has awakened to the sheer joy of who they really are and belong to, no longer needs much at all. They don’t care if people like them or hate them, they don’t see hierarchies, they don’t need to squash or manipulate people to get what they want, they don’t need people to admire their house or their car. They are complete and powerful. Not this lamentable baboon-beats-chest and points an assault weapon in yer face kind of ‘powerful’ (which is not power at all but a sorry state of inadequacy), but the kind of powerful that makes miracles and inspirational wonders arise apparently out of nowhere.
 
Until we are all complete and fulfilled, until we find our true sense of belonging and self-worth, we’ll keep on stealing, fighting, manipulating, objectifying, competing, wasting resources, destroying ecosystems, and feeling scared, or belittled, or inadequate. We’ll also be unable to come up with a better way of organising our socio-political or economic structures. Because we’ll always be coming from a place of utter disempowerment, rather than maturity and wholeness.
 
All of today’s structures are reflections of ourselves, and our psyches. The current expression of capitalism is no different. It feeds on and blooms out of a starved, immature soul. So personally, I’m not too convinced by the cobweb-draped socialist/capitalist thing.
 
That doesn’t mean the structures in and of themselves aren’t damaging, though...

The Structural Impact
It is true, the current economic model of psychotic growth actively strives to suppress any kind of psychological health, democracy, inner depth or environmental care. Commercial marketing aims to create infinite amounts of fear, desire or pain just to sell a product. That’s why I created a Patreon page. I’m fascinated by alternative economic models and income bridges, and thus experiment with a platform model that sustains what I do without pandering to “the market.” I love that it allows me to write all manner of posts, be genuinely helpful, and not consider profit. I also love the community it has generated. But let’s get clear, despite the hours I plough in and its popularity, I am not sustained by crowdfunding alone (and I live very cheaply).
 
The truth is, we are so entrenched in the commercial mindset, we only respond to its clamour. If we can get away with paying nothing, often that’s what we do. We may talk the talk and bemoan The System, but when push comes to shove, where do we throw our cash? Which is why I’m currently operating a two-thirds non-commercial, one-third commercial venture, where I create a massive amount of free material for everyone funded by Patrons, but have a small number of high quality ‘products’ which I live off. Because right now that’s what people are willing to feed me for. And (in answer to the question above) I still don’t have a pension scheme, though I do now have health insurance, thanks to Spanish residency requirements.
 
Now, I could I suppose could dig my heels in, shut down The Mud Home entirely, go back to my mountain and live virtually money-free. After two years on the road, I can see the lifestyle with the smallest environmental footprint is beyond all doubt, the tiny off-grid homesteading one. Nothing else comes close. It is extremely difficult to live sustainably or regeneratively any other way. It’s also absurdly inexpensive.
 
But from my own personal experience, I don’t think moneylessness is the way. My next book Filthy Rich will chart that adventure, and where it ultimately leads.

Bad Money
In short, what I see has happened is this: Pretty much everyone working in any ethical domain perceives money as bad. They think they shouldn’t have any. And the trouble with this philosophy is that if we say only unethical monsters have money (and money is a very useful tool for getting shit done, for raising awareness, for planting forests, investing in alternative energy research, and protecting wildlife), we are creating a self-fulfilling nightmare where ecocidal psychos hold the wealth, and all other people are at their beck and call. It means they have control of the media, the resources, the tech, and the political system. It severely limits our ability to make an impact.
 
So I no longer subscribe to the moneyless reality. Neither should you if you are involved in meaningful ethical work for this planet. Yes, there are fairer exchange systems that don’t involve banks, but they are not functioning yet, so money is what we have. It’s a tool. That’s it.
 
Personally, I’d like the psychos who steal our freedom, burn our forests, and use war to fill their pockets, to be poor and disempowered! I’d prefer light-filled, Earth-protecting humans to own the wealth. This is why I’m quite happy to pay my local eco-vendor for vegetables until I set my own garden up. I want to empower that person. It’s why I don’t mind paying my local hairdresser every six months. The poor woman has a child to feed. How else is she supposed to live? It's also why I love that I'm off-grid and don't give a single cent to an energy company. I want to starve them.

Money in and of itself isn't the issue. It's what we as a species value and aspire to is that needs to change. We also need to clarify collectively that some things are too sacred to enter that exchange system (love, human bodies, rivers, forests, other living creatures). We need to think way bigger than we currently are. We need to consider things like how to base an economy on creation and regeneration rather than destruction and abuse, and whether in fact energy and transport has to exploit natural resources at all. We've put humans in space, we've connected the entire world with a wireless communications web. If you tell me we can't create a regenerative economy, I'm not going to buy it.
 
Stepping Up into a New World
Humanity is facing all manner of issues right now. But whether I look left or right, the discussion is so limited in its outlook, it’s like listening to endless radio static. To solve the questions in front of us, it’s not adequate to hark back to Marx, or some other fossilised old twit. It’s no good leaping on the neo-liberal greed and gravy train either. Because the problem has long, crusty old roots that delve far deeper into our psyches than modern economic theories.
 
The real problem is that Humanity has an abundance issue. All of us; from the richest to the poorest, live in a mindset of lack. We have no faith that the planet can support us. We have no trust that without X amount in the bank we will survive (despite literally millions of examples of people surviving without a dime, and millions of others still dying despite a stack in the bank). Whether we are greedily accumulating in an attempt to ward off some imagined destitution, or hating the rich while secretly coveting their wealth and always wishing we had more, the emotional seed is the same. It’s an old, old survival program, and we need to move beyond it. Because it’s not planted in truth.

How is Life Really Sustained?
When I step away from the internet prattle and really spend time watching the improbable array of life bursting and crawling and flying and twittering and digging and spinning webs in my terrain, I soon feel I’m in some kind of alternate wonderland. In the magical world of Gaia, things manifest in the strangest of ways. Enormous trees grow from things that look like motes of dust. Infinite pools of consciousness co-exist with finite fleshy bodies. Tiny, fragile seedlings that I could break with my index finger somehow crack through tarmac.
 
On this incredible planet, the craziest, most dreamlike of creatures survive and thrive, and God only knows how. Humming birds, elephants, platypus, glass frogs, birds of paradise, sun fish, spider crabs, octopodes, hippopotamus, giraffes. If we pause and really observe them, the very fact these beings even exist ought to bend open the bars in our brain prisons at least a little.
 
Even something, say, as common as a butterfly is mind-blowing. How? How did it turn from a maggot into this colourful, symmetrically-patterned wonder? How could it possibly ingest its entire body and transform into an entirely different creature? Yes, we can call it metamorphosis and think we understand, but we don’t. It’s insane. I tell you, if I went up to the vast majority of economic and socio-political commentators and said, “Look Pete, I’ve come up with an idea for a living entity that starts life as a worm, and then weaves an awesome silken bodysuit around itself, hangs upside down for a month, eats its own body and uses it to build a flying machine, and the wings will be about 100 times bigger than the worm was, and covered in shimmering rainbow dust, and the pattern will be perfectly symmetrical and beautiful,” I guarantee you Pete would give me one of those looks, and send me straight to the Flat Earth end of the internet.
 
This is what we don’t seem to quite have mastered yet. Life on Earth isn’t a 2 + 2 = 4 kind of a place. It’s something far more interesting. Something far more creative and imaginative. And so are we. We can do so much better than tired old polarities and poverty mindsets. We really can. We’re butterflies wriggling around in a mesh of our own making, eating ourselves alive right now. That cocoon has become too tight. It hurts. It burns. But who knows what we’ll be tomorrow? Who knows what we’ll have created?

Alternative Economies
For an argument on how the market economy is not capitalism, see Dave Darby’s super post in Low Impact.
Other interesting ideas regarding alternative economies include:
Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein
Donut Economics by Kate Raworth
Being a contrary sort of a person, I'll never follow one 'Testament', or one solution. For me these are all creative ideas to build upon, expand or digest into something new. Evolution is a path, not an ideology. And one of the main limitations of economic models (that I've seen) is no proper discussion of the crucial difference between physical/material resources (which are finite, therefore risk becoming unsustainable) and non-material services/energy/gifts/ideas (which are potentially infinite). The line between the two is often unclear of course, but I think it is a better understanding of this difference that holds the key to creating a sustainable or regenerative economy.

Do you value these posts? Do you enjoy The Mud Home’s free content? Please consider contributing to the running costs on Patreon and being part of an alternative economic experiment. All patrons have access to a monthly patron-only video where I share my latest, very inexpensive, creations from my land. And the stories that go with them.

Many thanks to The Mud Sustainers and everyone who has had faith in The Mud Home and is supporting these posts on Patreon. ​