She was the only one to make it. The only one to hatch. Back on a grungy day last June with the mist clinging to the slopes like hag snot, the tiny being that is Priscilla bashed her way out of an egg and into the world.
 
She was a spirited little fluffball back then, high on energy, low on circumspection, and careered around the chicken run in the way of a downy ball-bearing. Her surrogate mother Frida was patient and doting, showing her this and that and sharing her food. Slowly the fluffball began to grow.

I’d assumed a hen took about three or four months to mature. I was wrong. At least I was wrong with this one. Priscilla swelled from the size of a fist to the size of a bantam, and then to the size of the other hens. Yet while Hilde, Frida and Gertie were russet hybrids, the newcomer was clearly different. As I have no cockerel here, and no intention of getting one thanks very much, when Frida turned broody I’d acquired some eggs from a friend. But I’d no idea who was the progenitor of these eggs. For all I knew a goose would pop out.
 
Priscilla didn’t seem to be a goose. But she wasn’t an ordinary hen either. She was as white as a swan, with a tiny crimson crown and a fabulous boa of black feathers around her neck. Once I was sure she was female I called her Priscilla. Priscilla, Queen of the Picos.
 
But Priscilla was an odd’un. After her feisty start, she turned nervous and flappy, a trait that wasn’t assisted by Gertie the wicked stepmother, who pecked and harassed her at every opportunity. I won’t lie, when Gertie died, Priscilla fairly danced on her grave. I wondered on the fateful day that the ill-disposed Gertie left our world, who would take over in the pecking order. Would Frida or Hilde change temperament overnight?

​The Order of Pecking
Ah the famed pecking order. Yeees. Humans are obsessed with hierarchies, forever desperate to label and discriminate, certain if they push someone or something beneath them, they will have gained something.
 
The more I observe animals, the more convinced I become that the man-made concept of hierarchy has little to do with the way roles are distributed in the wild and woolly world of nature. Whether it’s dogs, cows, or chickens, I see a far more complex organisation at play that functions more like a flock of birds in flight than some static power pyramid. Birds in flight are in constant rotation. The leader bird at the tip of the flight arrow bears the brunt of the air resistance, while the rest of the flock benefit from the slipstream created by the arrow formation. But the leader isn’t permanent, and nor does she want to be. The birds rotate. When one leader is tired, she drops to the rear of the arrow tip and the next takes the helm.
 
Animals aren't at sea in a separation narrative so they don't cling to rigid role models and images and stereotypes. Flock structures are in a constant state of flow and flux. Sometimes it’s the toughest who 'rules' the roost, sometimes the smartest, and more often than is ever mentioned in the literature, it's the cutest. Not to mention this other mysterious phenomenon common to animal and human alike: mindset and the ability to dream, to invite a new reality into the present.

Hen-ocracy
So Gertie the tyrant was dead and buried. Who was going to take over as domination-hungry pecker in the coop now? The answer turned out to be no one. No despot. Perhaps my other hens don’t possess the authoritarian gene, perhaps they worked out in some mysterious archosaur way that life is more interesting as a team, perhaps they’re enlightened beings. The upshot is though, they live in some hen-style democratic utopia where everyone manages to be both free and connected, the food either rains down from above or wriggles out of the dirt, and a magnanimous giant biped mammal builds them luxurious mud hen estates, closes the door at night, and keeps the danger at bay. They are warm, safe, well-nourished, and yet simultaneously free to roam and squawk and roll in the dust. And most of it, from their perspective at least, happened as if by magic.

I often wonder when I watch my birds off on some hen adventure eking out slug eggs, rummaging through the compost heap, perching on rocks and surveying their terrain, did they dream of such a life once upon a time? Back at the sorry beginning of their lives when I found them squashed in a lightless metal cage, had they in the foggy depths of their chicken spirits sensed a better world was out there for them? The intelligence of the planet courses through everything after all, always reaching ahead for fresh experiences. The past flows within it too. Running deep in my chicken's genetic code is the memory of freedom and the wild. It's a gift from their ancestors. And that is why after two days of arriving here they instinctively knew how to forage and scratch and hide.

Yeees. We humans need to raise the bar of our expectations a little if you ask me. As my hens attest, no one has to choose between freedom and safety, or liberty and care. Not in nature at least. That nasty choice is a human game, a way of coercing people to relinquish their sovereignty. It's an idea. Just an idea. And when we let it go, it suddenly loses all power and the world is ours once more.
 
But what about Priscilla?
Summer slid into autumn and autumn became winter. Priscilla kept on growing. And growing. And growing. Her feet were laden with feathers, and her butt was the fluffiest thing this side of Sesame Street. She towered over the others. At night she would stand while Hilde and Frida crawled beneath her, and I don’t blame them, it looked snug! But Priscilla was nonetheless rather clueless, and still didn’t lay an egg. I began to wonder why. Was there something wrong with her? Was she even a chicken?

January saw the skies scraped clean of cloud, leaving the nights deep with stars and the morning grass coated in Gaia’s icing sugar. One such day with the silver fingers of frost receding from the bank, I pulled out my phone and began investigating hen-kind to uncover the mystery of Priscilla. Oh what an array of resplendent birds fill the ranks of the chicken world! I saw Silkies, Orpingtons, Easter Eggers, Golden Comets, New Hampshire Reds, and Frizzles, but none of these birds looked like Priscilla. Was she a Japanese bantam? No, too big. A Cochin? No, wrong feathers.
 
At that moment Priscilla wandered over to the kitchen door and eyed me. If you’ve never looked into the eyes of a chicken you won’t understand, and the moment you do, you’re finished. The eyes are the window to the soul, they say. And it’s as true for animals as it is for humans. Hens might be half-dinosaur, they might have unsettling feet, questionable bathroom habits, and spend half the day with their beaks in rotting compost, but when they look into your eyes you feel it. Boom! Connection. Consciousness. Gaian life. On that fundamental level we are all most definitely one.
 
So I bent down, and picked up the plush white pillow-bird that is Priscilla hen. Holding her in my arms, I buried my head in her feathers, marveling at her soft warmth. Her hen eye rolled up to meet mine again. She stared and stared, deep and long. Was she wondering who I was too?

​Placing Priscilla on the mat, I picked up my phone once more. Again I ran through chicken images: fluffy heads, sleek whites, fat reds, skinny blondes. And then at last I saw her! Another Priscilla! Huge, white, with a black feather collar and tail feathers luscious enough that Ray Charles would shake them. I clicked to find out just what this opulent breed was. The answer? A Brahma hen.
 
Brahma? I know Brahma from Hinduism. Brahma is part of the Trimurti of Gods along with Shiva and Vishnu, and represents the creator power of the universe. In the hen world Brahmas are a bit special too. Brahmas were originally Bengali, and imported to the West from Shanghai in the 19th century. Due to their size and luxurious appearance they are known as the “kings” of the chickens. Ooh, royalty eh?
 
Now, I’m not about to insert some half-baked, tax munching monarchy, constitutional or otherwise, into the precious free community of the hen coop. But I couldn’t help smile at the thought of unconfident, slightly clueless Priscilla being regal. I stepped out of my stone kitchen. Priscilla waddled off to find her red-feathered family, pecking at a bit of chickweed on the way. Chuckling I called out after her. “Priscilla, you’re a Brahma! Ha ha, you really are Queen of the Picos after all.”
 
She stopped and raised her head thoughtfully. “Waaaah!” was her reply.

Her mother, Frida, looked on, her large red comb shimmying in the sunlight. Had she dreamed of hatching a beautiful snow queen when she turned broody last spring? Had she wished to bring forth something incredible? Hmm, good job Frida didn't possess a human mind, or Priscilla could never have happened, because as we all know, red hybrids chickens don't give birth to white Brahmas. That's just impossible.

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If you enjoy my stories and would like a closer look inside my world, consider joining us on Patreon. My world is precious to me and therefore I don’t share it on social media, it’s all on my private Patreon newsfeed. No matter how much you contribute you’ll have access to a video a month, plus thoughts and musings I don’t wish to share publicly. Your support pays for the running of this website, my virtual help, and my sustenance. A big thank you to all The Mud Sustainers, and everyone chipping in and keeping these posts and articles coming.

The time to hear the planet is now. Are you in the right place? Are you moving in the best direction for you? In this unusual exploration I share with you my own experiences and means of hearing the land around me, plus how I follow her nudges. This project is on a tiered funding basis, so you can choose what you pay. Just like all my courses it will be updated and added to as time goes by, so hop on now to get full benefit.

"I feel like my vision just got brighter and more energetic. There's so much mind-blowing stuff. Love love love it!" -Emma Blas, author of Watery Through the Gaps.

The sun pulled apart the clouds and flung them out to sea. There was a rush of gold into my world as the tongues of the mountainsides lapped up new pools of light. Yet despite the vitamin D injection and the stalwart assistance of Jose Manuel, I had reached the end of my tether. Was it fatigue, sheer impatience, or the simple irritation of spending my third winter in a refurbished chicken coop without a hot shower? I don’t know. All I do know is, suddenly I’d had enough.

The danger zone
I stared up at my new windows, but somehow it wasn't enough. I couldn't appreciate how far I'd come because all I could see was the rising ground ahead, and I simply felt clean out of juice. This is the danger zone. You’ve driven the build through storms and snow, but it’s been slow going. You are tired, and worse still you’re starting to feel bored. It’s the time in a project if you are not very very careful, things can slide into a mire of inertia.
 
Many don’t return from this juncture. Things unravel as confidence wanes. You’re still uncomfortable, you’re not living your dream, and the distance between where you are now and where you want to be looms in front of you in terrible clarity. When you see half-finished projects up for sale, this is what’s happened. Everything took four times longer than expected. Money became tight. Enthusiasm and energy was sapped. Suddenly a normal life crammed with labour-saving devices and central heating looks oh so attractive.
 
Realities to face on the builder's path
This I where I am now, and grumpiness has taken a hold of me. So why don't I take a holiday? Because there are some realities on the builders’ path that onlookers often don’t appreciate. Some things have to be done within a certain time frame otherwise the structure itself suffers. You may get away with a building being semi-open for one winter, but not for two. Wood begins to show signs of damp. All manner of wildlife from mice to woodworm to birds to ivy are continually vying for habitation rights. The building is demanding to be lived in. It’s not the time for a vacation no matter how much I may want one.

The Camino
The good thing about age is you have experience to fall back on. I’ve been at this point before, many times and in many places. One was the Camino de Santiago.
 
It was back in 2017 after my dear dog Rotty died that I decided to walk 170km of the Camino in Spain. I didn’t train, because I didn’t care. I was grief-riddled after all. That route was supposed to take eight days for a fit person. I was on day four, somewhere between Sarria and Portomarin, and it was killing me.
 
Everything hurt that day, even my ears. As the sun trudged over the sky, I dragged my legs along the roads like sacks of coal. It was too much. I knew many people gave up around days four and five, and I could quite see why. You reach your body’s threshold, and there are two ways out. Either drop out, or hope by some miracle something else happens...
 
Yes, day four was the rack of the road and I was competing against tortoises and snails for slowest mover.  Then, just to ice the cake of doom, my right hiking boot fell apart at the sole. I hobbled along the bridge which spanned the wide river at Portomarin, and the great medieval gate rose before me. It was then I spotted the talus of steps I had to climb to enter the old town. I don’t know how long it took me to reach the top. At times I was on all fours. When I staggered into the hostel and collapsed on a bunk, it was almost dark.

The next morning I took my time over my croissant and coffee. Day five. I’ll never forget it. The sun pierced the cafe windows and cast the cobbles in gold. And I knew my Camino wasn’t over. As I grabbed my backpack and made for the door, I inhaled deeply before put my best, blister-covered foot first. There was resistance. The broken sole flapped woefully when I lifted up my shoe. Things hurt already, and I hadn’t even begun.
 
Nevertheless I walked. And walked. Out of the small town and onto a track. This is when things bucked the linear trend of my thoughts. The pain didn’t move into more pain, and I didn’t crumble on the roadside in a mewling heap of dilapidation either. No. The pain turned into...well what? Suddenly I sensed I was no longer a small, tired, amateur walker stuck in a cage of skin, but that I was outside too. I noticed the exchange, the life force winding in and out of everything. Power exploded inside me. My legs seemed to throw themselves into a new gear. I had energy, but from where?

I began striding. The Camino wound into woodland and out again. It slithered along the edges of fields and flirted with byroads. By afternoon I was pounding up hills, simply eating up the kilometres. And what do you know? By 5pm I’d covered 26 kilometres and had reached my next hostel. 26 kilometres. The most I’d managed to walk until that day was 19 kilometres.
 
From there on in, the Camino walked itself. I was ravenous for road, chewing it up like dried mango pieces. Through cobbled villages, over brooks, crossing medieval stone bridges and 21st century highways, passing shrines and churches and cafes, the Camino de Santiago was now a breeze. To the utter disbelief of my friends, I finished the 170 kilometres in seven days, not eight. No training. No clue.

Solstice
It’s always at the very point we want to give up that we are on the edge of turning a corner. The sun knows this, which is why he keeps moving this time of year. Good job. Imagine if he reached the 21st of December and lost faith. I mean, he could after all, seeing the days becoming shorter and shorter and shorter like that.
 
Yes. There’s one thing we can’t forget as the days shrink back into themselves, and the nights seem poised to take over all Earth. At that darkest hour in particular, we have to keep walking. We have to keep showing up. We have to simply march or hobble or whatever through the pain barrier, even though we no longer know exactly where our road is going, or how we can possibly do it. We have to nurture the idea that there are greater, more powerful things in and beyond our reality matrix that we don’t even know about. We have to understand that life and the planet has our back. That things on planet Earth move in circles and loops and spirals, not straight lines. Because it doesn’t matter if it’s a house, or a body, or a new society, things simply do not manifest according to linear logic, or the way we were taught at school.
 
Most of the limits we think exist have been taught us, and the older I get the more suspicious I become of them, because they so rarely prove correct. They rest on the sketchiest of premises, such as we are all separate beings shut in skin, that only the material exists, that it’s all about money, that we have to prove our worth, that humans are innately “bad” and need training to be “good”, and so on and so forth. If I’d listened to what I was taught at school, and followed the advice of the good old majority, I’d still be losing my mind in secondary education, popping anti-depressants, burning out, and watching Netflix to drown out the misery. I doubt I’d even own my home outright, because I’d be mortgaged up to the age of 60 or more. I’d be frightened of losing my job, beholden to the economy, eating shop bought plastic food, losing my health and strength, and looking forward to retiring at 70. Lurvely.
 
As it stands, I quit that hamster wheel at the ripe old age of 27. Against all the advice of my colleagues in London, I moved to Turkey, and have lived all sorts of adventures since then. I have worked in shitty day jobs a grand total of four years of my entire life, and yet somehow I still own my own home and a hectare of beautiful land. Clearly, the standard protocol for surthrival is missing some significant data-based evidence.
 
However, it’s not all skipping through meadows of daisies. There is one thing the nature-based free world asks of us. We have to walk our talk, put our money where our mouth is, and be pushed beyond what we think we’re capable of. Because unless we stretch past what we assume to be the limit of possibility, how can the impossible ever appear? We will never have given it a chance.

The solstice is behind us now. A warm wind has rolled in from the south, flattening the grass and inverting the climate. The highlands are now ten degrees warmer than the valleys, and the ash trees rattle like the clapping sticks of the aborigines.
 
I wander down to look at my barn. The front windows are in, framed by old oak timbers we’ve painstakingly sanded and oiled. The sun falls onto the stones, highlighting the inlaid mirrors and beads. It’s still a barn, and yet it’s not, as though it exists in two dimensions simultaneously, one foot in its old self, the other in the new. As I stand there, neck craned back, I sense the land around me and the sky pushing overhead. The juice of life pours into me once more. I have come a long way. The finish is still a distant speck, and I’m so tired I can’t cut one more bit of wood.
 
But it’s okay. Tomorrow I’ll put my best foot forward again. It’s going to happen. I don’t know how exactly. But it will. I just have to keep on walking. Keep on mixing the mortar. And whispering with the Earth.
 
                                                                         ***
 
Want to support and see the land report videos?
If you enjoy my stories and would like a closer look inside my world, consider joining us on Patreon. My world is precious to me and therefore I don’t share it on social media; it’s all on my private Patreon newsfeed. No matter how much you contribute you’ll have access to a video a month, plus thoughts and musings I don’t wish to share publicly. Your support pays for the running of this website, my virtual help, and my sustenance. A big thank you to all The Mud Sustainers, and everyone chipping in and keeping these posts and articles coming.

The time to hear the planet is now. Are you in the right place? Are you moving in the best direction for you? In this unusual exploration I share with you my own experiences and means of hearing the land around me, plus how I follow her nudges.  This project is on a tiered funding basis so you can choose what you pay. Just like all my courses it will be updated and added to as time goes by, so hop on now to get full benefit.

"I feel like my vision just got brighter and more energetic. There's so much mind-blowing stuff. Love love love it!"  -Emma Blas, author of Watery Through the Gaps.

“Why is this one too short?” I pulled the offending joist across what will be my new bed platform and wrinkled my nose at the gap that glared up at me.
 
“Ah, that one just came out like that,” said Jose Manuel, as coolly as if I’d asked him why his hair was grey.
 
“What do you mean it just ‘came out’ like that?” I crumpled in laughter. “It didn’t cut itself, did it?”
 
A smile snuck deftly across Jose Manuel’s face as it is often wont to. There’s a quiet confidence to the guy, which is fortunate because I’m a right old piss-taker at times, prone to shatter more fragile egos without even realising. There’s nothing fragile about Jose Manuel though, neither in stature nor in personality. He’s a man-mountain, and frankly at this juncture in my build a man-mountain is exactly what I need.
 
“We need to move this,” he said, pointing at the massive new solar panel waiting to be hooked up. It took three of us average-sized humans to position it in the barn. But before I could hurdle the wood pile and get a hand on the thing, my new right hand man had picked it up like it was a briefcase. I must admit, I stared a little awed.
 
“It must be amazing to be big enough to do that!” I said.
 
“Sometimes good, sometimes bad,” Jose Manuel replied, a philosophical line creeping across his brow.
 
“Yeah, plane journeys. They have to be hell.” I imagined him trying to squeeze on EasyJet.
 
“Plane journeys...” Jose Manuel’s eyes moved upwards as he pondered.

Help
Now I’ve said many times, all too often in this mud game help is not that helpful. It’s either too talkative or too hungry, or both. But as almost all self-builders and homesteaders will attest, every now and again an angel floats in and saves your sorry arse. Jose Manuel is my new angel. Halle-flipping-lujah!
 
Stonemason turned failed bar entrepreneur, Jose Manuel helped me out in the spring with a beautiful new dry stone wall. Later he came by for my floor joists. To my chagrin, at the end of June he found restaurant work, so I’ve been building alone ever since. I’m proud of what I’ve done in that time; the entire barn exterior has been re-mortared by hand and I’ve handmade two doors. Winter is coming though, and the front window and roof area were looming before me. I need a chimney too. Picking up the phone, I prayed Jose Manuel had quit his job, or been fired for lateness (not entirely out of the question, ahem).

​The good news was, Jose Manuel had left the restaurant. The bad news was, the weather in November took off her kid gloves and socked us one. The skies turned from cyan to pewter in the time it took me to type this sentence, while rain hurtled across my land in sodden horizontal waves. The temperature dropped like a plumb line down a wall, and I took a solemn vow that this would be the last winter I spent without hot water.
 
“We’ll have to work on the inside,” I said to Jose Manuel as he pushed through my gate one chilly morning, brolly held aloft. He peered out over the vista, the hills appearing and disappearing as the rain clouds rose and sank.
 
“We’ll do the staircase first then,” he shrugged, Mandi the great German Shepherd trotting behind him, tongue lolling. I noted how my guardian angels always have a big dog.

​The Staircase
We entered my old barn, ducking through my new bejewelled door, and approached the designated spot for the stairs. Ah, the staircase, and all the measuring it involved. For the tape measure and T square were about to see a lot of action. Whether any of it was meaningful action I’ll leave you to decide.
 
“Aguanta lo.” Jose Manuel shoved a plank in my hand, and I went into peon mode. A peon is an apprentice in Spanish, though I’ll wholly admit I’m an argumentative lackey with plenty to say about the process. This has driven other builders quite mad. Water off a duck’s back for Jose Manuel though. He basically just ignores me.
 
“Why are you drawing all these lines?” I piped up some time later when the two staircase joists were in. Because Jose Manuel had been fart-arsing around with the T square for a fair old while and didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.
 
“This is something to do with stairs,” he replied enigmatically, shoving the pencil behind his ear. But as he stepped back I knew the numbers and lines weren’t adding up. Running the length of the plank were two or three zig zags. It looked like a viper on a rack.
 
“Can I say something?” I peered at the defaced sides of my potential staircase.
 
Jose Manuel inhaled and proffered me a look which said “no.” Nonetheless, his mouth formed the more magnanimous “what?” instead.
 
“Why are you drawing all these lines? It’s a right mess.”
 
“It’s where the stairs go. But there’s something wrong with the measurements and I can’t work out what. When I get to the bottom of the steps, we’re out on one side.”
 
“Well we know how long the staircase is, so why don’t we divide the length by the number of steps?” I jabbed the staircase joist with my index finger, feeling impatient for so many reasons. To be honest, if it had been down to me I wouldn’t even have cared if each step was equidistant. I love that kind of quirk.
 
“I did that! 18 centimetres a step is the standard. We’ll go to 19 to fit all the steps in.”
 
“Okay so if it were me I’d start at the top or bottom, stick the first step in, make sure it was level, and move to the next one. Why all this drawing zig zags?” I fully admit this kind of comment is right up there on Annoying Level 10, and if I’d been Jose Manuel I may well have handed me the tape measure and told me to get on with it. But the man has lived through Franco, so he knows how to deal with an interfering bossy boots.
 
“Vale. We can try your way if you like,” he said. I was slightly taken aback by the generosity and sheer lack of ego.
 
Thus we tried it my way. We began at the bottom, which was lucky. I’d chosen some gorgeous old chestnut planks that had come off the original barn roof, Jose Manuel had chainsawed them to size, and I’d sanded and oiled them. They were things of beauty, the dark wood rippling like muscle tendons in a bicep. Jose Manuel stuck the first chestnut step in at the bottom of the two stair sides, and I balanced the spirit level on it, not that I needed to. For me it was as clear as the water in my spring; it wasn’t level.
 
I took a step back and squinted, Jose Manuel pushed the side joist down a little, and suddenly the fog lifted or both of us. The two side staircase joists weren’t parallel.
 
“But I measured them!” Said Jose Manuel, eyes narrowing perplexed.
 
“Pah, measurements, numbers. Worse than useless half the time. I trust my eyes more than some ruler any day.”  As I said it, I felt the irritation bloom inside me. Not with my builder angel, but with the widespread worship of numbers and measurements which so often tend to miss some massively important underlying factor that everything hinges on.
 
“Okay, let’s use your eyes then,” said Jose Manuel, who’s been privy to the terrifying perfectionism of my vision a few times already. He unscrewed one of the staircase joists. I stood a couple of metres further back.
 
“I’ll push it down. You say when.” Jose Manuel tapped it with the hammer.
 
I squinted. “Okay. Down a bit. Down. A bit more. One centimetre more. That’s not one centimetre, that’s two! Okay un poco arriba. Bien bien!”
 
Next we stuck the bottom step in place. What do you know? It was exactly level.

The fingers of the rain god began drumming on my roof as though someone upstairs was losing patience. We were exhaling clouds of condensation every time we spoke. But we stuck with it. One by one we attached the chestnut steps until they flowed from top to bottom like a treacle-filled brook.
 
I stood back and clapped. A smile slid into the corners of Jose Manuel’s mouth. Ha ha, he was chuffed with it too.
 
“What about the bottom? It’s got to curve round here.” My builder guardian pointed at the end of the staircase, which was still a metre off the ground.
 
“What do you think? What are the options?”
 
“We can make it out of wood, or out of stone. Whichever you like.”
 
“And it makes no difference to you?”
 
Jose Manuel shook his head.
 
“Stone then. I’d love that.”

The next day the air was cold and the sky mostly grumpy. But it was just about dry enough. I watched as Jose Manuel surveyed the landscape for rocks and slowly, steadily dragged each one into the barn. With the mallet as his wand, he tapped and chipped and cast some limestone spells. It’s magic, what he does with those rocks, and the tape measure doesn’t get a look in.
 
The aesthetic of the result, the oiled chestnut steps set against the lime mortared stone wall with the stone curve of the staircase at the bottom, was so pleasing to my eye I felt I could look at it for a week. And that’s probably what I did.
 
The boulder of the day rolled to a close, and the cave of our world started to darken. Jose Manuel stooped under my doorway. Outside the sky had turned sooty, and the mountains were smoking. We shivered in our coats and hats.
 
“Your homework is to mortar those stone stairs in place before Monday,” said Jose Manuel as he ambled up the hill to the gate, Mandi the dog panting happily behind him.
 
I stood to attention and saluted. “It will be done!”
 
As the gate swung closed I inhaled the dusk. It was a potion the sky produced each night, a veil that blurred the line between logic and magic. I walked through the dewy grass, my wellington boots turning shiny from the wet. It’s so easy to feel the enchantment up here, and so hard to hear the trouble of the other world. The rocks squat on the hillside like lithic beasts, deer flit between the hazel bushes, and the weather is always nudging you, always reminding you who or what creates the real world order. Wandering down to my power ash, I saw the last leaves clinging to her claws. I could hear the arroyo bubbling below too. It was a special moment with the moon fattening on the blackening ridge.
 
I stared at my hand through the gloom; the branch-like splaying of my digits, the concentric rings on my fingertips, the lines on my barky skin. Then I looked up at the ash tree, at her branches bifurcating like blood vessels, the fibrous ligaments of the wood. My boot hit a root. It was as thick as an arm and wound down below the earth to who knew where? Down there it mingled with fungal pathways, microscopic organisms, elements, and worms, communicating, sharing, and drawing nutrients.
 
I felt the aura of the tree fall over me, and as I stared up into her ligneous arms I saw how close a relative she really was. How tree-like I was. How we are brother and sister right down to the DNA. As moonlight flooded my land, the grid lines of measurements and reductionism that have been cast over our planet flickered, and I sensed nature herself rising, expanding, refusing to be cowed or controlled or confined to numbers, or barcodes, or standard measurements. I saw how little we understand about how she manifests our world. How we think we can bully everything in nature to fit into our plan, how we think we can wipe out uncertainty and mystery and all inconvenience, how absolutely everything in modern society from education, to business, to health is about forcing humans to be less and less natural and more and more tamed, robotic, artificial.
 
As night stole up the banks of my land, I stroked the warm trunk of the ash tree. And yes how warm it was! As though blood were pumping through it. There was a flutter of wings as an owl swooped. The rocks growled, the earth rumbled, and the moon just kept on rising. I knew so deeply then. Humanity is going to fail in its mission of control. Nature is going to win that fight, a fight which may well turn ugly. And personally, I’m aligning with the planet. I made that choice a long time ago, when I woke up on a mountain in Turkey, heard the land speak, and sensed the magic stretching way beyond the numbers. When I put away the tape measure, opened my eyes, and noticed just how skewed and out of kilter civilisation really was.

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​It’s always the same, isn’t it? You look at a project. It seems so joshingly easy. Just some planks of wood and a few hinges. Saw a couple of posts, whack them in as a door frame. Boom, you’ll have a door. A day or two max, right?
 
He he he. How I wish! It’s never like that when you build something. You learn it when you’re in or observing a construction. Or maybe like me, you half-learn it, and then conveniently forget as soon as the next enticing vision pops into your head. I was sure I’d have my doors done in a jiffy. I’d even allowed a nice fat cock-up margin, giving myself a generous week per door. Ha! One month later and I’m just about to attach that second door into the frame. Attach the door. So easy right? Just screw it in. He he he.
 
I have years of experience of construction crawl heaped behind me now. It sits there like an unsightly pile of road aggregate the council left on the pavement. Sadly it’s wholly ineffective in preventing me from confidently expounding on the every Land Report video that this or that will be completed by next month. They’re a charitable lot over there on Patreon. They never mention it. But it’s as obvious as a technocratic takeover, the mortar, the windows, floor or the mud plaster, they’ll never be done when I think they will, and I’m talking out of my arse.

The Doors
But let me defend myself a little. How can it take a month to make two doors? Well first: I didn’t hop in the car and buy ’em  ready-made from Bricomart. They wouldn’t have fit, because my barn is a wonky, wiggly old devil and the apertures are just as skewed. The doors, the frames, and the thresholds were all handmade by yours truly. Second: I have no carpentry tools, so I made them using a chainsaw and a jig. Yup, that’s right. Third: You ever tried joining a door that isn’t a rectangle but some other weird shape with only a jig and a chainsaw at your disposal? Let’s just say it’s a challenge. Throw in a few old solid-as-iron-yet-utterly-unstraight chestnut beams, and you’re really having fun.
 
Of course, challenge is my middle name. Even the word itself goads me. It’s a shame really but once you reach a certain age, you realise some parts of you are simply just like that. Thus with a glint in my eye and fire in my belly, I rolled up my lime-spattered sleeves and set about door number one: the main door.

It was a glorious day nestled within a sun-splashed wall of glorious days. October has been beneficent up here, with the skies as open and blue as a leopard’s eye. I stepped into the cavern of my barn, and pulled out a couple of surplus pine floor joists. Then I picked up the chainsaw.
 
What? You chainsawed the door frame? Yeah...I wasn’t sure it would work either, but it did. Let’s just say I’ve learned a thing or two from Jose Manuel, and while I’m not quite Antony Gormley, I can now chainsaw a very straight edge.
 
The machine whirred. The sawdust rose. And the frame posts were cut to size. The day progressed, and the mountain ridge turned from emerald to orange to violet. I screwed the joists together with a bridging plank to form a frame, and duly fixed it into the gap in the barn wall. But, as I mentioned, the frame was wonky. Somehow I now had to make a wonky door to fit it. All in all this seemed like a good time for a swim break and some ice cream to ponder that particular conundrum.
 
Some time later I purchased five tongue-and-groove pine planks from the wood yard, and screwed them together with pieces of sanded and oiled chestnut. Now I was at the door hanging stage.
 
You ever tried single-handedly hanging a door? This isn’t my first lone door fixing experience. I knew it was going to be a pain in the butt, because you need three arms and only possess two. My trick has been to stack wood up under the door frame and rest the door on that while I screw it in. It still takes a lot of jiggling, some dextrous use of your big toe, and a decent lexicon of four letter words.

October rolled on. The leaves were turning russet now and drifting to the ground in  crispy heaps. But the weather was holding firm. Sunshine banked the entire vista from morning until night. The main door was complete, so I mortared between the frame and the existing wall, which is a lot faster to type than to do. Naturally, then I had to decorate it, because why do something easily when you can really complicate it, eh?

The door from hell
Because door one went so swimmingly, I’m afraid not for the first time in my life I got a little ahead of myself. Ahem. Door two is the wood store door, and I decided to try and form it completely from the old chestnut that's laying around from the roof. This meant nothing was straight. In fact, straightness wasn’t even a level glimmer on the horizon of linear possibility. Every plank and post was gnarled and warped and as heavy as a girder.
 
Did that put me off? It should have done, but alas no. First I chainsawed the threshold bar, sanded it, and wedged it into the space in the stone wall. That wasn’t too painful. It was the door frame that drove me chestnuts. At least one side of a door frame has to be straight and smooth so you can hang the darn door on it. And both sides have to be plumb so the door opens and closes and fits relatively flush.
 
One day I set about it. I measured. I sawed. I screwed until I had a frame. It would seem to sort of fit and then I’d notice something out. So I’d adjust it, which made something else not fit. So I’d adjust that, then it wasn’t plumb. So I’d adjust that, and the first thing was out of kilter again. This went on and on, far longer than anyone in their right mind would normally put up with.
 
Beaten
After three days of wrestling in this manner I was ready to chainsaw that effing door frame into stove-sized rectangles. And this was when the frame started to beat me up! I pulled it out for the hundredth time and it whacked me in the face. Rolling my tongue over the painful area, I realised I had a fat lip. Then I bashed my head on a floor joist. My hand tendons began to hurt where I’d over-exerted. It was at the end of day three, with no visible progress made, that I began to feel I was beaten in more ways than one.

Evening arrived with the land languishing in shadow, the sun now hoarding his gold in the peaks. Dusk thickened like cold soup. It was hard to see. I grabbed my head torch and took one last look at the door frame. I wondered if I should give up and just buy in some standard pre-cut pine. But as I looked at that beautiful two-century-old chestnut, the romantic in me wouldn’t have it. I’d sanded that wood so it was as smooth and toned as a cyclist’s leg. Yes, the door frame was a bridge to another reality, one where people cared more about process than results, more about soul than productivity, more about unique beauty than speed. Seeing as that reality is the one I’d rather inhabit, I decided to sleep on it and see what the next day held.
 
In the morning I meditated. As I did all the rules and dictates from the standard building world crumbled under the weight of their own irrelevance. A cool breeze of care fluttered into my world, rustling the leaves and my hair. I heard the tap tap tap of a woodpecker in the gulch as a bent line of sunlight crossed my forehead.
 
Clearheaded now, I visited the door frame again. As I stroked the treacle-coloured wood, I fancied there might be a way to work with the wonk. Taking a hammer, I tapped lightly at one side then another. And what do you know, it sort of aligned. Before something dastardly could usurp this snippet of good fortune, I screwed the frame into place.
 
But what about the door? I was having similar doubts about that, because the chestnut planks possessed not one straight edge among them. So how to fashion them into a door? I then remembered the sidings of larch I’d seen on natural homes in Scotland, and the overlapping of the wood to create ripples. After this, the rest seemed to fit together by magic. I made the door in an afternoon. Each plank was sanded and oiled and screwed into place, and the result made me happier than you’ll ever know.

Assumptions
There are many commentaries regarding renovations, and everyone has their own style. Or do they?  Because so often it seems our “style” is purchased from the shelves of public opinion rather than home-grown. So many assumptions about what is better and what is worse, what is ultimately possible. We drag them into everything we do. It is assumed that straight is “better” but no one knows why. In the same way, it is assumed things have to move fast or be as efficient and convenient as possible. It is assumed new is better than old, and that you need money to make doors, walls, or even to live.

Two doors
Yes, there are two doors, aren’t there? Not just in my barn, but in our new world order. The main one is modern, slick, and oh so convenient, albeit with apps and codes and constant surveillance. But it’s easy. Ping and you’re in, just as long as you are ready to give up your privacy and body autonomy; Next up are fingerprints, DNA, bank account. Never mind though, at least you can still shop at Zara, and work in a fluorescent-lit box your whole life. Lucky you!
 
Then there’s the other door at the back. It’s rather less illustrious. A gnarled unfashionable thing at the end of a poorly lit alley, the kind of place the riff-raff hang out. That door is for the rejects and it creaks on its ancient hinges. You might bang your head, or stub your toe, or be beaten up on the way. You'll most certainly be tutted at. But here’s the thing: you get through with your personal power and sovereignty intact.
 
Obviously the majority will walk through the first door. And obviously from then on there’ll be two worlds, two classes of humanity, as good old Jacinda* openly states here. Some at the main door won't bat an eyelid because they’ve been told the other entrance is full of unsavoury types they’ll be glad to see the back of. Others will realise the true implications when friends and family members are cut off, colleagues leave and they enter the shadowy world of social credit. But pay attention folks, for not all is as it seems. So many assumptions, and we all know where those lead, don’t we?
 
The assumption seems to be that the main door leads to the best life with all the freedom (oh the irony), and that the rest of us marginals can (and will) go to hell, unless of course we consent. Remember that word from somewhere? Yes, me too (pun intended). The dehumanisation is saddening yet hardly a surprise. It's been the language of the system for millennia; foreigners, immigrants, the unemployed, single mothers, and the homeless can all tell you about how underclasses are inevitably found deserving of their treatment. The machine operates by stereotyping, punishing, and separating after all, and never has cared about individual health issues, emotions, spiritual callings, or the millions who for any given reason can’t or won't fit in. It doesn't want wildly different viewpoints either. It thrives on oversimplifying, pitting one group against another and using one lot as a scapegoat, while the elite cream off the wealth. What's new? But let's get real here, we're all complicit. Haven't we all sometimes wished people we disagreed with would just disappear? Haven't we all built walls? Yeees. Most of us have two classes of people in our hearts if we're honest. And this is where it leads. Always. What we reject, hate and try to suppress comes back to haunt us. So it will continue until we get the message.

Back to that assumption. Two doors, two classes, and the marginals who are about to be excluded from the system. Don't pull out the violins just yet, it's just getting interesting.
 
Last word from a long-term marginal
Speaking as someone who’s lived on the margins for a good long while now, despite the chilling tone of the threats from our overlords and ladies, I’m prone to chuckle. Or perhaps I don't know whether to laugh or cry, because the world is so inside out and humans so prone to assumptions. Look, you aren’t going to go to hell or die without that cruddy system my friends! Take it from me, you’re going to live. And it might just be the best life you've known. You’re going to slow down, walk more. You’re going to watch sunrises and sunsets to make your heart burst. You’re going to eat clean home-grown food and feel healthy and vibrant and in your power. You’re going to discover a creativity and ingenuity you didn’t know you possessed. Heck you might even talk to your neighbours:) After that you’re going to hear the planet and see magic that will make you gasp. Your intuition will be heightened and you'll start creating magic too. There are worlds and worlds beyond the status quo, and many of them are heaven by comparison. I don’t deny initially the other door less convenient to pass through, but what in life of any value comes without effort? So for those feeling cornered now, hear it from a stubborn mud hag on a hill without hot water, a fridge, a washing machine, or a pension. This is a beautiful life. One of the best on planet Earth. I wouldn’t, nay couldn’t, live any other.

Don't be so sure that first door is going to the promised land or the other door to hell. No. Don't be so sure.

*Lest someone still thinks this is about left/right politics and all about left-leaning democrats, just pointing out that at the time of writing, Australia is possibly the most segregated place on the planet and it's governed by a right winger, the UK has Britain's answer to Donald Trump bringing in digital passports, and over in Austria which has just locked down a third of its population, we have the good old Christian Democrats.

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If you enjoy my stories and would like a closer look inside my world, consider joining us on Patreon. My world is precious to me and therefore I don’t share it on social media; it’s all on my private Patreon newsfeed. No matter how much you contribute you’ll have access to a video a month, plus thoughts and musings I don’t wish to share publicly. Your support pays for the running of this website, my virtual help, and my sustenance. A big thank you to all The Mud Sustainers, and everyone chipping in and keeping these posts and articles coming.

The time to hear the planet is now. Act with clarity and from your true Gaian power. Create the future you want hand in hand with Earth herself. This exploration is on a tiered funding basis so you can choose what you pay.

"I feel like my vision just got brighter and more energetic. There's so much mind-blowing stuff. Love love love it!" Emma Blas, author of Watery Through the Gaps.

​Gertie hen was the difficult hen. In some ways she was also the unlucky hen. Without opening the can of earthworms that is chicken privilege, I should explain; I’m using the word “unlucky” very liberally here. In the grand scheme of things Gertie was the most fortunate hen in the world: organic food, freedom of clucks, a state of the art mud palace and hen estate. But a bit like Jackie Onassis, despite a luxurious backdrop, there was a tailwind of inauspiciousness that seemed to follow her.
 
Things often went wrong for Gerts. If the door happened to blow shut on a hen, for some reason it was Gertie. If I tripped over a chicken by mistake, it was always Gertie. It was her eggs that didn’t hatch. And it was she that died first.

I’ve been braced for a chicken death since that day deep in darkest Spanish lockdown when I brought my hens up here in the boot of my car. I quite assumed a predator would take them— the badger from the set below the walnut tree, the fox, a boar, a wolf or an eagle. Trouble skulks behind every rock up here. It ghosts behind each cloud of leaves. And my hens are hardly cautious.
 
Except Gertie. She was very cautious. Always preferring to hang out by the coop. Always the nervous one. While Hilde and Frida sat happily in my arms, it took me nine months before I could pick Gertie up without her scratching and flapping in terror.
 
As is often the case with frightened people, Gertie was aggressive. She pecked fat Hilde whenever she could and always vied for supremacy. Ah Gertie...sigh. She’d probably been traumatised by something or someone before she arrived here, and left a little broken. Yet for some reason, despite having fallen into paradise, she couldn’t quite get over it.
 
All this made it difficult for me to like old Gertie quite as much as the others, which of course made her more unlucky. So often character and luck go hand in hand, like two threads of a cord. So often we (at the very least) contribute to our bad luck. Yet we don’t really see that we’re doing it, blind to the magnetism of our negativity. Despite her bullying and pecking Gertie never got what she wanted. And despite her fear and cautiousness, she didn’t avoid trouble, nor ultimately death.
 
Stories
This is of course a story. My story. It’s the story of Gertie hen, who I saw as having a certain personality by taking data points (like pecking and flapping and squawking) and joining the dots into a narrative. The trajectory of our lives follows the narratives we believe in. Stories: they are what we become.
 
People get upset when you say we forge our destinies. We are mired in blame culture, and everyone is just itching to take it on. This isn’t about blame though, or being at fault. It’s about consequence. It’s about nature’s rules. I didn’t make them up. I’m just observing them.
 
Stories are influential things. They become real in some form or another more often than we like to believe, because we are both powerful creators and very open to suggestion. Our present-day reality is a product of a hundred and one fictions from the past. Anyone who’s older than 45 remembers the world before smartphones, and knows that they were created on the back of Star Trek communicators. Credit cards were first imagined by Edward Bellamy in his 1888 novel, Looking Back. Driverless cars first appeared in Minority Report. And the Jetsons have an awful lot to answer for, not least Skype*:) 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451 are old dark stories now trying to materialise. Shame we haven’t learned to tell and believe in a few more inspiring ones.
 
The trouble is, so much of the time, perhaps like Gertie hen, we seem to forget who we are and become characters of other people’s plot lines. All ideological narratives use the this technique to form worlds and manipulate lives. Whenever I hear the terms “leftist” or “extremist”, “far right” or “conspiracy theory”, I know I’m being invited into a story, where selected data points are woven together to form an external narrative. In some ways you could say all words and concepts come loaded with backstories. Take almost any noun and you have a story about what it is and what it's for which is far from the divine all-encompassing truth.

Gertie’s New Story
Back to Gertie hen, who starts this tale as both a victim and an aggressor. It was spring this year when her story started to change. Jose Manuel the stonemason liked Gertie. He stroked her and gave her treats.
 
“She never lets me touch her,” I said as Gertie approached Jose Manuel’s capacious hand.
 
“Because you don’t like her, and she knows,” he replied, pulling off a crumb of bread for her.
 
This was true of course. I’d tried to hide it and treat her like the others. But deep down I knew I didn’t like her all that much. And so did she.
 
One late spring day with the mist swirling and the grass on the rampage, I decided to change my attitude to Gertie. I decided to love her instead of be irritated by her. I chose to be the change instead of expecting it from her. The difference was arresting. The moment, literally the moment, I spoke to her kindly and generated a feeling of love toward her, she sat on my mat and blinked her blue eyes in gratitude.
 
Soon she let me pick her up and coddle her. How happy she was! She toned down her pecking and made friends with funny Hilde. Every morning, I’d double-take the pair of them prattling away, while Frida the zen hen went broody and sat on a batch of fertilised eggs I’d acquired from a friend. It seemed we’d turned a corner.

But then Frida hatched a chick. It was a curious white thing with feathery feet. This downy newcomer must have shifted Gertie from the rails of her new story back onto her old timeline. She was jealous. So she pecked and harassed the little fluff ball. It was then I started to feel exasperation. Standing by one of my ash trees and hearing the branches rustle, I sank into the Gaian field of all things, to that space beyond and within where there are no borders. I connected with Gertie. I told her she could have her own chicks, and that she was loved. There was no need to be jealous.
 
Gertie heard. The pecking reduced. She sat on my mat alone, preened her auburn feathers and stared at me on and off. But as we tipped over the precipice of summer, I sensed something heaving below the surface, both inside and out.
 
The world was bifurcating. All the narratives were disintegrating, breaking up like feeble row boats in the stormy seas of the times. As humanity bobbed in this churning ocean, some folk were questioning the integrity of the structures they’d seafared in for so long. It was scary and risky because without a story who were they, and what would they become? Others clung to the flotsam, still buying into other agents’ fables, seemingly stuck to them no matter how great the inconsistencies. Because whether it’s the mainstream media storyline, 1984, Nostradamus or any other prophecy, all external narratives are closed vessels. All hold the imprint of the dead.

Gertie’s Choice
It’s not easy to change a narrative. It’s not easy to change full stop. I think Gertie tried to change, but at some point gave up. The chick grew into a stunning blond bombshell of a teenager, with fluffy white and grey plumage and feathery boots. She trotted around like Paris Hilton, and to be fair, if I’d been Gertie I’d probably have found it galling too.
 
One day at the water bowl Gertie attacked the chick violently. So I pulled my hen aside, picked her up and sat with her under the ash tree. She huddled there in my arms, chicken eyes rolling.
 
“Gertie. You have to listen,” I said. “This land is a happy place, a world of peace. I have intended it so. If you want to stay here, you need to step up. You need to choose. Where do you want to be? I want you to be here. You are loved and wanted. But you have to choose.”

Two weeks later I opened the coop to find Gertie looking unwell. The others jumped outside to feast on baby snails, but Gertie didn’t. She perched on the hen balcony clinging to the rim with her scaly feet. I brought her clean water, chopped melon, and feed. For a moment I wondered whether to take her to the vet. So I sat, felt the air and observed. There was a clear, “no, leave me in peace.”
 
As I watched, Gertie blinked her eyes blue at me again and again. It was the look of happiness and gratitude my hens bestow on me when I pet them. She laid an egg soon after. Her last egg. I closed the door.
 
Two hours later I looked in and found Gertie dead, feet stretched stiff and yellow on the floor of the mud coop. She looked more peaceful than she ever had in her life. Dear Gertie. It seemed she’d made her choice.
 
What is the truth?
But this is all just a story. A narrative. It’s my story. Not Gertie’s. Certainly not the whole amazing truth of her, as soon became all too clear. For when I placed her in her grave, the truth that always rises in death bloomed like an amaranth. What was Gertie? Who was she? The land definitely noticed her absence, as did I. Just as I’ve experienced many times before, she seemed so much larger in death than life, her presence inexplicably everywhere. Gertie hen. Who were you? Who am I? What is the truth?
 
One thing is for sure: the truth is not a story. It’s huge. It’s infinite. It’s ever-changing and evolving. And so are we. Our potential is far greater than a novel or a script. We should be commanding narratives, not following them. Why do we think only a certain mostly unchosen few get to write the plotline for planet Earth? They don’t. And they won’t. Unless we buy into their self-aggrandizing fables and cast ourselves as sidekicks or pawns. In the vast ocean of ourselves beyond our story – a story suggested to us from the outside rather than one we have created ourselves – power is something very different. It doesn’t rest on money or control. Power is energy, frequency, and purity of vision.
 
So I thank you dear Gertie for reminding me of that. And wherever you’re going now, I know you lived and died well. You roamed free with love and friends and nature. You saw sunrises and sunsets, winters and summers. You had dignity in both life and death. And a little mud house even I’m jealous of. We both learned from each other, and both of us cared. So go well my feathered friend. Be at peace. And don’t exist as my story or anyone else’s. Be forever the great uncontainable field of yourself that I sensed when you died. Be free.

*Just for fun, if you want to see the eerie extent of how the modern world is shaped by fiction, read this: https://www.factinate.com/things/40-fantastic-facts-science-fiction-became-reality/
 
Want a closer look inside my world?
If you enjoy my stories and would like a closer look inside my world, consider joining us on Patreon. My world is precious to me and therefore I don’t share it on social media, it’s all on my private Patreon newsfeed. No matter how much you contribute you’ll have access to a video a month, plus thoughts and musings I don’t wish to share publicly. Your support pays for the running of this website, my virtual help, and my sustenance. A big thank you to all The Mud Sustainers, and everyone chipping in and keeping these posts and articles coming.

Earth Whispering Exploration
If you’d like to sense the field beyond the story, you might like my Earth Whispering Exploration. The first audio is free to try without enrolling. Just scroll down to the curriculum and click the preview.