It was just one of so many dreary sodden days in early July. I turned the kitchen tap. It made a hissing sound like air rushing out of a balloon. The PVC pipe strained a little. And then nothing. My heart sank, along with many other internal organs. “Here we go again,” I muttered. I had a bowl full of coriander and spinach to wash. So I picked up my bucket and ambled down the nettle-ravaged path to my spiffy new rainwater catchers. This is what they were installed for. This very moment. I must connect that upper tank to the main pipeline, I thought. Then I’ll just switch over and have water in the taps. A month later I’d still be thinking that, because though I didn’t know it at the time, I was at the beginning of the great mystery of the disappearing water. The days in July flowed by. But the water didn’t. The taps remained as dry as my dad’s sense of humour. Where does my water come from? All the fields in this area are connected to the local spring via a haphazard network of pipes probably first laid back in Franco’s day. It’s a recipe for mishap and fiasco; a free-for-all of sprawling pipelines “maintained” by a gang of makeshift plumbers like myself. Add a hundred or so free range cows onto the scene, gambling calves and charging bulls among them, and hey presto! It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out what’s going to happen next. Every year pipe connections burst open, water troughs are tipped over, or some berk leaves a tap on. This is why I have three one tonne water tanks: One at the top of the land which at some indeterminate point in the future will feed into the main pipework and supply all the barns, plus two rainwater catchers which at some similar indeterminate point will feed that upper tank via a pump. The stalling point is the pump, namely because I have an aversion to what I’ve experienced as the most inefficient product of engineering to be inflicted upon the world of non-mechanics. Over-sensitive thingummywhatsits always itching to malfunction, needing continuous fiddling with, filters cleaning, non-return valves checking, this and that. That we are sending numbskulls into space but still haven’t mastered something as fundamental as the water pump is testimony to everything that’s wrong with our world. Water stealers Anyway, each day I ambled down to my rainwater catchers, and filled buckets à la middle ages. Every day I trotted down into the dappled shade of the gulch, gave thanks to my spring, and filled my drinking water bottles too. I rather liked it to be honest. Every now and again I’d see Farmer Quilo driving up the slope in his Peugeot to the mother tank. It's a big concrete cistern that collects all the local spring water and feeds most of the fields in my area. I knew Quilo was either closing or opening the taps. Sometimes I’d get a dribble out of mine. Usually nothing. One day when I spied my farmer neighbour passing by, I flagged him down. He drew to a halt, wound down his window and grinned. “Hey, what’s going on with the water Quilo? I haven’t had any for weeks!” Quilo's rosy apple face turned from his familiar pink Honeycrisp to full on deep Red Delicious. His ever present grin subsided. “The tank keeps emptying,” He blurted. “We don’t know why. There’s no water!” He shut off his engine and leaned his elbow on the window frame, readying himself for a rant. “It’s those people down in Acebal with the backup tanks. They steal it all before we get any. Or maybe it’s that guy who’s rented that cabin over there. He’s nicking it and pumping it up to that massive deposito on the hill. Hmph!” “But don’t you think it could be a leak somewhere? Maybe the cows...” “No! It’s not a leak. Someone’s taking it! The weekenders with their summer cabañas. So I’m turning off the taps until the mother tank fills up again.” A part of me was irritated. I wondered if a teeny tiny corner of Farmer Quilo might have been shutting off the water to spite the summer weekenders. But the majority of me found the whole thing hilarious. Every rural place I’ve ever lived, no matter the country, has some Jean de Florette thing going on. Jean de Florette For those who haven’t read or watched it, Jean de Florette is a novel set in provincial France at the beginning of the 19th century. In the story, a naive, hardworking city chap named Jean moves to the country, taking his family with him. He has a dream of living the good life and turning the place into a farm (sound familiar?) But the wily villagers block his water spring, and thus the woe ensues. What always strikes me about that novel is how ubiquitous it is through space and time: The romantic clueless city-dweller moving to the country, the never-ending water issues, and the inevitable village politics, it’s all there. Let me tell you, if you’re moving to the sticks it will be there for you too. That’s why you want water on your property. That’s why you want some political savvy when dealing with your neighbours too. The days pushed on, wet in the sky, dry in the pipes. Farmer Quilo drove up and down the hill, and each time we had the same conversation at my gate. As we did, I secretly rolled my eyes and thanked the Ladies of the Wells that I’d installed those rainwater tanks. I thanked the land I had a spring in my gulch too. For me this water thing was but a small inconvenience. Before too long I was bored of even asking about the water supply. I had enough of my own. The other good news was, it hadn’t stopped raining or misting or doing whatever that liquid fog thing is that the locals call orbayu, since June. My two vegetable gardens were thriving as a result. If you’re embarking on an off-grid homestead, it pays to know 80% of your water usage will go on growing food. This is why, despite the consternation of all those who look at my photos and say, “ooh chilly”, I chose the damp, cloud swathed rim of northern Spain. Plenty of water. I fear the vast majority are never going to comprehend just how fundamental H2O is until they too turn the tap on and find nothing coming out. Being practical It pains me sometimes to see how impractical people are. If you want to be free, you have to get back to basics. Reality check: There are three things you actually need: water, sunlight, and earth. If you haven’t got those then you are always at the beck and call of some administrative twit and to those who vote for them. But if you do have access to these three things, it doesn’t matter what the government says, or if you live in a chicken coop, or if they claim you need this or that paper to do this or that thing. You. Are. Free. And that, let me tell you, is a good feeling. “Hey Quilo, where’s the water president gone to?” I asked one day as I passed him on the road while I drove to the town. “What’s he doing?” Quilo stuck his head out of his own car window. “I dunno,” he shrugged. “He can’t find the leak... or the person who’s stealing the water,” he added, eyes flashing. That there was a president of our tiny, malfunctioning water network is an indication of the level of bureaucratic hilarity that is Spain. I knew about this because last year we’d been in exactly the same waterless boat and a meeting had been called in the village. I’d enjoyed every minute of it; the medley of tractors littering the entrance, the farmers umming and ahhing, the president and the treasurer waving their stamped and signed forms that we all had to sign too. Luis of the Hillock Like almost every other man in the village, the president of our water was called Luis. Luis of the Hillock no less. He was a salt-and-pepper-haired chap in a shiny tracksuit who owned a hut up in our parts that he kept a number of stray cats in. I would often give Luis of the Hillock my hens’ eggs, and he loved the wild irises that grew all over my land in June. “Can I give you anything in return?” He always asked as I passed him a bouquet. “Oh no, you always sort the water problems out for me,” I’d reply in true village politics style. I knew that I only had to mention his name to Quilo for the speed dial to be engaged. What do you know? The next day I turned the tap and whoosh! Water. A couple of days later there was a rumble and a roll. I spotted Farmer Quilo’s yellow tractor hulking past. Running down my land, I waved at him. The tractor slowed at my rickety rackety gate and the tractor hatch flung open. “Hey! There’s water. It’s a miracle!” I shouted. Quilo leaned out not looking half as happy as I was. “So who was the thief?” I asked, a crease of mischief burrowing into the sides of my mouth. Quilo rolled his eyes knowingly. “Not sure exactly. But Luis of the Hillock turned off the pipe to the guy renting up on the hill and to the Belgians. So it’s one of those two. Told you. It’s their water tanks sucking up all the water.” He whistled with an air of vindication. I suppressed a giggle. It was terribly hard. Since then things have returned to their familiar water-filled normal up here on Mud Pico. And for the hundredth time I praise the inventor of the tap. Unlike the pump, the tap is such a simple, beautiful, functioning creation. So useful. So underrated. So unlikely to go wrong. To wash your hands under a spigot is a blessing few appreciate. Ah...the pleasure of these little things. A few days ago my Danish friend Loke came to visit. The mist came with her. It swamped the mountains, and then the neighbouring fields, and finally even the ash tree succumbed. We sat in my brand new privacy corner which was superfluous because no bugger could even see one metre in front of them, let alone us in my land having a cup of tea. “How are things up your end then?” I asked as I swilled the teapot. Loke reached for her mug and sighed. “Oh my we’ve got a whole political thing going on with the water,” she said. “The mother tank is leaking. Remember that neighbour who kept WhatsApping me, and then turned a bit weird? I think he has shut off my supply.” I winced and chewed my lip. “We’ve got a meeting this Saturday in the village street to discuss what to do,” she said. “That’ll be great fun. Don’t tell me there are two factions,” I chuckled. “Exactly. The newcomers versus the original villagers. But half the originals have left and live God knows where, so I’m in conversations online with people I don’t even know.” “Have you read Jean de Florette?” I asked. Loke shook her head, blonde strands flattening against it in the damp. I plonked my mug on the table, sat back, and grinned. “You should. It’s a great story.” Standing up, I felt the mist condensing further into that fine Asturian drizzle we know so well. “Oh and get a rainwater catcher too. It’ll change your world.” Do you enjoy these posts? If you enjoy my stories and would like to express that you want them to continue, please consider contributing. A big thank you to all The Mud Sustainers, and everyone on Patreon, without whom I would have no time or funds to keep the free material on The Mud Home coming. My new Earth Whispering Exploration is out!
Finding yourself in the right place at the right time isn’t just luck. It comes from being connected to your environment and hearing its cues. My new seven part Earth Whispering project is about truly experiencing (rather than thinking about) your connection to your environment, accessing that Gaian power that runs through everything on this planet, and then making some magic happen. You can try the first audio as a preview without enrolling, so give it a go!
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I’d been dreading the front wall of the barn. So enormous. So cracked. And much of it so high up, the top ridge quite broken and needing to be rebuilt. I’d had enough of ladders and wobbling and flirting with broken legs, which is why Jose Manuel had built me a “scaffold” before he’d left last month. June arrived and the sun pulled overhead, ready to make up for lost time. The mountain peaks basked under an open sky. The days stretched into endless pools of light, all but banishing night from our world. The temperature climbed. And the hens looked for shade. I was out of excuses, it was wall time. My first attempt at climbing the scaffold involved plenty of ungainly grunts and groans as I levered myself upwards onto a ladder which had been thrown horizontally across two struts as a walkway. This was level one of the scaffold. Over the course of the first day I foraged for rocks, split them, and faced them where necessary. Then I lifted them from level one, up to level two and finally up onto the top of the wall. That evening, my biceps and thighs let me know I had indeed used them. Even so, a bit of gumption had been released. The next morning I stared hard at that wall and vowed to complete it before the month ended, come rain, shine, or June’s usual disappointing offering of clinging, minging mist. So I mortared the rocks at the top in place and rebuilt the stone columns supporting the roof. Lest you forget, I don’t have a cement mixer. Every bucket of mortar is churned by hand. Finally I stood at the front of the barn, craned my neck back and crossed my arms in satisfaction. The worst bit was over. Just the repointing to do. Just. Repointing I knew nothing about repointing before I reached Europe. And there’s a lot of it going on in these parts. Most European countries boast stacks of ancient stone buildings and people who like repairing them. I remember travelling in my van through the UK, France, Portugal and Spain, admiring the stone and mortar work at each stop, some of it even using lime. I expect I’ll ruffle some feathers now, but of all the stonework I’ve seen so far, the dry stone and mortar work in Spain (at least northern Spain) tops them all, at least in terms of aesthetic. It’s artwork. Which is why right back at the beginning of this adventure, I went and studied any local repointers I could see. I watched them mortaring and copied. I remember my first attempts in what is now my kitchen. What a mess! But I kept at it, experimenting with different sands, and different trowels and guns, until finally I got it. So the day arrived. I stood before the front wall, hammer and chisel in hand. The weather gathered steam behind me, the thermometer mercury climbing to the fabulous late twenties. Perfect mortaring weather. Hoisting myself up to the top level of the scaffold, I remarked how it no longer scared the hell out of me. Then I sat down and set about digging out years of badly applied concrete. There is something incredibly satisfying about digging out old mortar. The positioning of the chisel. The tap of the hammer. And the plop as another bit of crud hits the ground. It’s like cleaning fingernails or plucking eyebrows (if yer know what I mean). Even the barn itself seemed to revel in the process as I hacked the debris out of its epidermis. How to Dislodge Old Mortar There’s an art to digging out concrete. Here’s the thing: You can’t attack it front-on. Well, you can but it’s hard work and you waste a massive amount of effort because the mortar resists. To clear it out, you have to find the weak spot first. And the weak spot is the edges. This is where the elements have attacked it, and if the mortar is concrete this will be where it’s pulling a little from the wall. So, one places the chisel under one of those edges, taps it with a hammer, and slowly works one’s way in, chimbling away at it. *** The days went by. And the weather decided to change tack. Storms drove in from the south like the four horsemen, kicking up dark clouds and throwing down lightning bolts. Then came the rain and the cold. They sat on our world until we lit fires. But I wasn’t in the mood to be put off. So I donned my wellies and raincoat, and set about that mortar. I tapped and chipped and dug away, raising a middle finger at the driving rain. In the moments when the precipitation receded, I refilled the gaps with a lovely new lime mortar. The barn seemed to gleam, the beauty of the old rocks now visible once more. It was at this point I just couldn’t help myself: Out came the sparkle. Thus I added a glass beads and shells and pretty stones too. Perhaps it was me. Probably it was, projecting my own pride onto my barn. Yet it seemed to stand a little higher now, a little grander. The old forgotten outhouse, ignored for so many years, was being reborn as royalty. Another Brick in the Wall Walls are often used as metaphors for oppression. Pink Floyd made a whole film on the subject, which looks as appropriate now as it was when it was first released. The Wall has become sleeker of course, tech-powered and glossy. It’s guarded by AI, controlling what we see and literally hacking our brains, mining us for data gold. But as a friend of mine said: “There’s no point attacking it head-on. You have to be like water. You have to squeeze through the cracks.” How true this is. And by squeezing through them you widen them, gnawing away at that suffocating concrete mortar until it cracks and is pushed out for good. This has been my approach for the past ten years, simply ignoring The Wall and its ridiculous, ecocidal, and inhumane dictates, slipping through the gaps, weaving my way like a cord of spring water. But what if the wall starts closing in on you? What if it threatens to encroach on your very life force, and all that you hold sacred? Isn’t that time to find the sledgehammer? Naaaa… Don’t fall into The Wall’s favourite trap. The rules of nature govern this planet despite what most humans think. The Wall is banking on sledgehammers. They’re so easy to deal with and make an example of. Call them terrorists or conspiracy theorists, discredit the few with integrity who question anything at all*, ruin their careers, threaten their families, set up fake Twitter accounts, and away you go. The protester unwittingly just becomes another brick in The Wall, nay even a buttress, because The Wall supports itself by using opposing forces and polarity. I’ve been a wall-soldier, remember? I was a teacher with dark sarcasm, light sarcasm, and British sarcasm to boot. I know exactly how it works. Competition and peer pressure are the most powerful tools any tyrant has. No, you don’t want a sledgehammer to most effectively deal with a wall. You waste too much energy attacking the parts of the structure that are most resistant. What you need is a chisel instead. Chisels Those that for any given reason can’t buckle, those on the fringes, those who simply can’t fit into that wall no matter how hard they try, and yet have retained enough of their spirit not to hate themselves for it, these are the chisels because they have to be. They chip chip chip away at the edges of society, digging out niches for their freedom. They’re doing it now whether the centres of society are aware of it or not, whether they are called quacks or hippies or weirdos or not, whether they are visible or not. Whether ‘respectable’ people roll their eyes at them or not. It’s going on. Whole new sub-societies are being born all over the net and the planet, flourishing in the myriad cracks. And there’s nothing The Wall can do about it. You may think The Wall is holding up just fine right now, but from here in nicheland it’s like the Emperors’ clothes, only existing because enough people believe in it. There’s mortar falling out all over the place, and the seismographs are getting excited. Looks like we’re about to see where the actual integrity lies. How can I be so sure The Wall won’t last? Because it’s unsustainable. It's in the very word itself. The Wall can't sustain itself in its present form at its present rate into the future, because it's out of balance. This is one of nature's most fundamental laws. You know it. I know it. But apparently a lot of people like living in a kind of desperate denial instead of staring the truth in the eye and coming up with a game plan. Walls of the Future Walls are not always there to control. They are important parts of structure which protect, delineate, and filter. Cell membranes, river banks, and hedgerows are a few examples of how nature goes about walls. They are permeable, allow growth and change, and live in balance with their surroundings. The offer shelter rather than a prison. From here in my magical, self-chiselled nook on a Pico half-in half-out of reality, I prefer to spend my time dreaming of new structures than rage endlessly against the ones so obviously already crumbling. When I close my eyes, The Wall has lost its concrete mortar and has become a breathing structure instead. Vines and moss climb all over it, creating new life upon and within it. Then from out of the crevices, new humans emerge who see wider and further than those that went before. Humans who can access Earth’s power and forge miracles from it. They take the old wall rocks and clean them until they shine in their original natural glory. Then drinking the sunlight and whispering with the divine, they form those stones into kinder, more inspiring structures that support the many instead of the few. And the mortar to hold it all together? Ah that would be love and beauty, because what have you got without those? It’s how you understand whether a structure is of the future or the past, for without love it’s just a replica of the old. That new mortar will be covered in shells and beads and colourful jewels that sparkle and spangle and refract light over and over again. It will be whimsical, capricious, and joyful, and make people feel glad to be alive. But as you know when it comes to building, that’s kind of the way I roll:) Of course, many will say it's impossible, and that such things can't exist, that you can't build from love or mud or sparkle. Yeah yeah, whatever. I've heard all that so many times before. Never once did transpire to be true. *People often make assumptions about my political beliefs, on both sides of the divide. It ought to be clear to anyone who has followed me for a while that I have no interest in a political system that offers two shoddy, corrupt candidates and asks me to give my mandate to one them. I don't. My work is about empowering people to live freely if they want to, and to respect nature. So just for the record: the press conference I linked to above has nothing to do with some sort of moronic political allegiance, and I daresay the politician who created it is as self-serving as the rest of them. It is about freedom of information and speech, which I already lost in Turkey once thanks very much, and which the majority of the West has voluntarily given away in front of my very eyes.
The full version of that press conference, featuring other doctors and some pretty shocking information on the suppression of alternative therapies is (of course) nowhere to be found on mainstream channels. You can watch it here. https://www.bitchute.com/video/yI1hrC2kX2uS/ Do you enjoy these posts? If you enjoy my stories and would like to express that you want them to continue, please consider contributing. A big thank you to all The Mud Sustainers, and everyone on Patreon, without whom I would have no time or funds to keep the free material on The Mud Home coming. Want to see the video of the barn progress so far? Plus horses and a chick? Have a closer look inside my world: For the price of a newspaper, all mud patrons can watch my private land report videos, ask more questions, and get the inside story on my lone woman off-grid mud and stone world in Spain. Crack! I felt my knees smack the pavement. There was a shudder and then pain. It shot through me so intensely I was at a loss at how to respond. A youngish man stopped and asked if I needed help. I shook my head, wincing. He bent down and asked again. I just wished he’d disappear. He did. The pain didn’t. It blew up my kneecaps and dragged tears to my eyes. I still managed to stand up and walk on down the street though. But all I could think about was how long it would take me to recover. I have so many things to do, after all! That I managed an accident while walking along an urban high street is ironic. It didn’t happen hanging off a ladder, or lobbing rocks around, or chainsaw in hand. It happened down there on a pedestrian crossing, in the land of concrete and curbs. Smack. Bang. Ouch! That evening I rubbed castor oil gently into my knees for the bruising. As I reclined on my bed, I raised my legs up and hoped for the best. In two days I was back on my feet, which isn’t so surprising I suppose. I’ve never broken a bone in my life, not that it’s for the want of trying. For those who’ve seen the movie Unbreakable, that’s a little how I am too. I’ve been hit by cars, and have literally bounced off the bumper, before standing up and walking away. I crashed a motorbike at 90kph in the middle of a Turkish town once too. I remember sliding with it a small way, before pulling myself out from under it. Feeling terribly stupid, I sprang to my feet, and shooed off the bystanders rushing to scrape me off the tarmac. I remember a policeman staring at me in disbelief. “Are you sure you’re all right, hanımefendi?” I saw myself in his Ray-Bans. All I had was a graze, and a red face from embarrassment. Reality is what it is though. This is 2021 and I’m no spring chicken any more, he he. My knees healed fast, but soon after everything else started to ache. My hips and back groaned and tightened. Then the fatigue set in. The weather didn’t help. It has been cold up here, the nights keen and starlit, the days edged with an inclement chilliness. One morning as I yanked myself from my bed, the exhaustion dragged at my bones like the claws of the dead. Extreme tiredness often has the ring of mortality to it. How annoying to be reminded I’m not superhuman after all. I stepped out of my chicken coop one brisk morning, the sunlight illuminating the freshly opening ash leaves. They looked like stained glass windows. My kitchen was a chapel. As I tiptoed toward it in my pyjamas, I sensed I was heading to some kind of confession. On the left the barn stared guiltily up at me, the “corner of woe” was trying to hide but failing. This part of the barn is built into (and from) the rock of the land. It’s all but submerged, which means it needed a fair bit of “work”. Pausing, I gawked at the mess. I’d managed a bit of mortaring, and a bit of landscaping, but there were rocks all over the place. Rainwater tanks had to be installed, a new wall built, guttering, and a roof extension... A hawkish breeze ran over my arms. I shivered. Every one of these jobs was uninspiring. They were uncreative functional necessities. Looking for a place to start, a number one on my to-do list, my motivation froze over so completely you could have ice-skated on it. This always happens at a certain point in builds or big endeavours, and is often termed the kitchen sink of the project. From where I was stood, shivering in my PJs on the upper bank of my land, this particular kitchen sink had distended into some scum-filled nightmare from a student flat-share. It was a monstrosity crammed full of cornflake-encrusted crockery and extinguished cigarette butts. Many stumble and fall at this juncture. Hey, I already had! The wind picked up. I heard it rumble in from the east. It rolled over the hills and into my land where it turned the ash branches into percussion instruments. The trees were speaking. I closed my eyes and listened. “Just get help in,” they chuckled. “There’s plenty of it around.” I realised in that moment the Lone Ranger was going to have to get off her rather high horse. That evening I called Jose Manuel. “Buenas!” A voice called through the gate, followed by the tap of a walking stick. And then a portly man with a brimmed hat and a rucksack pushed the gate open. Jose Manuel was the stonemason. I’d already worked with him on my stone wall (or rather been the stooge). He’d said I could call him back any time I needed help. So I had. Dropping his rucksack on the dirt, he pulled up a chair. It was far too small for him, he’s a big guy after all, and he perched on it awkwardly trying to maintain his balance. “Quieres un cafe?” I held the coffee pot up. “Si!” He grinned, then pulled out a tape measure and a mason’s hammer, resting them on the table. Peering over at the two IBC tanks that were now clinging to the slope behind the barn, he nodded. “Hmm. We’re making a place for them, huh?” “I hope so.” “Did you build any walls while I was away? Now that you know how to do it.” He winked a little wickedly. “Not really.” Sheepish, I sank my head into my shoulders. “But I did do a good job repairing the back of the barn. I’ll show you.” Jose Manuel levered himself up and ambled down to have a gander, coffee cup in hand. But then he was an ambling kinda fella. Definitely not a man of haste. Running his spare hand over my stone and mortar work, the mason nodded. “Not bad. I’d probably take you on as apprentice.” “What do you mean, probably!” I drew myself up to reach his shoulder. “Tuh! I think I did very well!” Jose Manuel chortled, and his belly chortled with him. Suddenly I was reminded of someone I’ve missed for a long long while. I used to jest with Celal like this back on Mud Mountain in Turkey. Ah Celal, my right-hand man. Had I found a new helping hand at last? As Jose Manuel moseyed down along the corner of woe to where the tanks were supposed to go, I smiled. You couldn’t imagine two more anatomically diametric men. Celal had been tiny, all sinew and worry lines. Jose Manuel, on the other hand, was a Spanish-speaking Shrek. A gentle, unpanickable giant with a propensity to knock things over quite a lot. Three hours later, under a billowy sky, Jose Manuel laid the last stone. He tapped it into place before standing up to admire his handiwork. I was admiring it too, because we’d achieved more in a morning than I had in a whole month prior. Jose Manuel had built a superb retaining wall while I’d filled the back of it with broken tiles to create a platform for the IBCs. But that wasn’t all. A wonderful curving stone staircase now graced the side of the barn. Jose Manuel had built this as an aside, and it just staggered me that he’d finished it so fast. Hands on hips, I gazed at my new staircase besotted. “It’s a work of art!” I said. The stonemason took a step backwards and promptly stood on his chisel. “It’s not that difficult,” he said, catching his balance. “It’s not art though. It’s just building.” I felt my eyebrows pull together. “It is art, Jose Manuel. Me encanta tanto!” And I ran up and down the steps for about the twentieth time since he’d made them. He shook his head, but his smile hid a bucketful of pride. Celal and Jose Manuel might have been physically disparate, but they did have a couple of other things in common. One was a penchant for coffee. The other was they’d both been dazzled by the lights of the city, seduced from the village into urban life, before finally realising it was a crock of shit. The one and only reason Jose Manuel had time to come and help me out was because he’d just closed down his bar. Ostensibly Covid was the reason, but in truth he was happy to see the back of it. “Started it a good ten years ago. Oof, nothing but stress,” he said as he peeled an egg for lunch. “Yes, it’s the great dream right? Open a bar or a restaurant or some guest house. Then whaddya know, the dream is a nightmare,” I laughed as I picked at my salad. “Been there, done that.” I watched Jose Manuel staring out at the landscape, still wobbling a little on the chair. “It’s nice up here. Really nice. I’ve got land around here too. May be I should build a cabana on it,” he said, dropping bread crumbs for my chickens who'd already decided he was a more generous benefactor than me. Broken dreams. I’m all for them. They are a rite of passage for us humans and the only way we really understand who we are and what we want. Because we’re always being trained out of ourselves and lured onto pathways that aren’t ours. Lost souls that we are, we search for our dream in all the wrong places, continually borrowing other people’s instead. But no one else’s dream is ours. No one else has our answers. They are locked inside us. Waiting. Waiting for us to stop comparing ourselves or seeking approval or listening to other people, and instead to simply be and do what makes us happy. Jose Manuel returned for a few days more, and we attacked the kitchen sink of my build, with or without tea towels. Insanely fast, all those drudge jobs I hadn’t found the drive or power to do myself, completed. The roof was extended over the IBCs. The guttering was installed so it fed into the water tanks. And then it began to rain. Water, the elixir of life itself, plunged from the sky. It ran off the roof, along the guttering and into my tanks, filling them faster than a pump at a petrol station. When the clouds lifted a little and the sky brightened, I wandered out along the corner of woe, and down my beloved new steps. My tanks were now a good two-thirds full, and probably only off-gridders will understand just how fantastic that made me feel. As I turned to the front of the barn, it towered over me. With its gaping crack and all the repair work that front wall entailed, it was the next big job. But as I studied the stonework I smiled, because sometimes all you need is a bit of a jump start to get your inner engines firing. All you need is a bit of a laugh and some help. And let’s be honest, to get it you generally only have to ask. The tide of my motivation had turned. I could feel it lapping at the shore of my muscles. Mortar, I’m ready for you. Stonework, I can sort you. Oh happy day! Do you enjoy these posts?
If you enjoy my stories and would like to express that you want them to continue, please consider contributing. A big thank you to all The Mud Sustainers, and everyone on Patreon, without whom I would have no time or funds to keep the free material on The Mud Home coming. Want to see the video of the steps and the barn progress so far? Have a closer look inside my world: For the price of a newspaper, all mud patrons can watch my private land report videos, ask more questions, and get the inside story on my lone woman off-grid mud and stone world in Spain. Five days in retreat and five cows who wrecked the schedule The rain began to fall. Gently. In soft feathery strokes. I’d finally decided to carve a five-day meditation retreat for myself out of my schedule. Schedule? You may ask. Well yes, I’m asking too now you mention it, but more about that in a moment. I stood up and opened the door of my hut. The two great ashes that hold court over my barn were glistening. Their slender fingers held tightly onto buds, buds that were on the brink of bursting. The land absorbed the precipitation hungrily. It was almost silent. Almost. Except for the clank of a cowbell... I started. Cowbell? Walking to the kitchen hut, I peered over the wall. And then I saw them. Three cows were chomping contentedly on my grass as though it was heifer Christmas. Agh! I could have imagined many auspicious beginnings to a retreat. A cow break-in wouldn’t have been one of them. Grabbing a fence rod that happened to be next to me, I held out my arms and proceeded to shoo the marauders out. After a fair bit of coaxing and chasing and running, I managed to hoof them through the gate. Job done! I thought. The rain began to thicken at this point with the nimbus sinking lower, threads of it breaking off and wafting ominously towards the gulch at the bottom of my land. The hazels and birch trees swayed a little. Having worked up an appetite, up I went to my kitchen for a hearty breakfast. I think I was just polishing off my second piece of toast when I heard a cowbell clang again. I took a deep breath. But it wasn’t deep enough, really. Because when I stepped outside this time, I saw five cows were in my land. Oh heck, a bovine invasion! Thus began my rather comedic (if you’re the observer) adventure in cow-herding. I don’t know exactly how many times I ran the circumference of my land, but it was definitely too many. By the time I’d hoofed four of the five heifers into the gulch (they weren’t going near the gate now), I was wheezing and my thighs were starting to burn. And there was still cow number five at large, and my they are large, aren’t they? It’s like chasing a Peugeot Partner with horns. Last month the Earth whispered about bioanarchy. Well, if ever there were a living example of nature not bending to authority, it was embodied in cow number five. She wanted my grass, and she didn’t want the gulch, so she just ran round and round my land, with me chasing her, shouting and swearing and threatening to turn her into a hamburger. It was when she finally cantered up behind my barn, trashed my yoga space and threatened to take my lovely new roof off, that my frustration turned to alarm. I mean these animals can do some serious damage. It’s like a bus without brakes. Sprinting faster than I’m probably designed to, I managed to get to the far side of the barn before the cow galloped any further and wrecked my entire living space. Seeing me, she panicked, turned around, and very fortunately for me decided to run back out. I hurled myself after her, grabbing a broken tree branch and raising it. Arms aloft, tree branch menacing, I managed to push her down down down the land to the rim of the gulch. Finally she descended, and I fell on the wet grass, chest heaving. My thighs were on fire now and my heart was pounding. Good exercise this cow herding lark, I can tell you. Once I’d caught my breath, the truth dawned in crystal clarity. I was going to have to fence off the gulch. The deep winter snow this year had crushed the brambles to such an extent that the pathways were far more open than they usually are. I also know, once animals lose their fear and get used to something, they’ll keep on doing it. We are all creatures of habit on this planet. Happily, Farmer Quilo had left his fencing stakes and electrical string on my land. So I fetched my hammer (up and down the land again), and one by one drove the thirty odd poles into the dirt. Then I connected them with the string. There were so many gaps where the cows could enter, it took me until mid-afternoon to finish it. “There goes day one of my retreat,” I thought. I didn’t realise. Day one was the initiation. As I was winding in and out of the gulch that day, in and out of the trees and rocks, feeling the moss on my fingertips, pulling back vines, and spotting freshly opening snowdrops, I realised what a magical spot that gulch is. And I wondered why I don’t spend more time there. Actually I know why. I’m not in the habit. Just like the cows, I’m following familiar pathways. But are they really paths now? Or are they ruts? It’s a dangerous crossover. I decided to be like the cows and explore the new pathways that lead into the arroyo, to shake up my routine a little. Thus this beautiful shaded gulley became my retreat space. Each day was so incredibly different down there. Some days the sunlight pierced the tree branches, turning the small chasm into a dappled caveland. Other days the mist descended and the moss oozed. Bluebells burst into flower, branches snaked, and the creases in the towering rocks began to speak. Then it rained and rained, and the arroyo was brought to life by the replenished stream. I was brought to life with it. Rejuvenated. Enlivened. The creative fire that had been slightly dampened these past months with the hard work of barn-building, was suddenly reignited. The Lost Fire of Creation Creation is my middle name, as I suppose is obvious. I write. I build. But I also love to sketch and paint. For a couple of years now, I haven’t done either. The will or inspiration just wasn’t there. I wasn’t unduly concerned about it because there are many epochs in our lives, and I was sure once the building was over I’d find my pens and sketchbook again. But after five days of sitting still, meditating and returning to the gulch within, that desire began to flow. I sketched for the first time in a good two years. As the days meandered on – days I had reserved to be without purpose, days that I’d set aside purely for existence and contemplating it – I sensed the joy of life returning. And I realised, as we all do from time to time, that an imbalance had been occurring. I had been driving myself on. Pushing and pushing. There was too much work and not enough play. As the rain drove down on day number four, I sat in my little hut wondering how the heck I’d slipped onto the all-work-and-no-play conveyor belt. As you all know by now, my aversion to The System is as all-encompassing as The System itself. As far as I’m concerned its entire ideology is hogwash, and has been for a long while. Mindless career ladders, the work ethic, competing with your peers, nauseating shopping malls, struggling to have more and more until you’re nothing but a flogged carcass or a drugged-up zombie, rushing around so fast you’re afraid to stop still for a second, the ideology that everything has to keep “growing”, that money is more important than basically everything (if you look at how most people operate it’s pretty obvious that’s the myth they’ve bought into). The System Within But The System is a sneaky bugger. It’s not just “out there”. And that’s why it’s so insidious. As the days of my meditation passed I saw The System inside me. It rose before me like a colossal, pollution-spewing factory, with its bossy supervisors barking at me to hurry up, its rapacious appetite for my energy, its demand for increased output and fixation on deadlines. Day five of my meditation I wandered down to the gulch. The pathway slid between clover banks, it was a gleaming clay basilisk guarding the well-spring. As I trod carefully along the mythical serpent back, a crescendo of birdsong echoed eerily about me. The arroyo was now a roaring stream, the water coursing over the clay in silvery cords. I stopped in wonder, for is there anything on this planet quite as beautiful as water? Hearing a cascade, I turned around. And there before me was the most exquisite waterfall. For a moment I thought I’d tripped into a miniature version of the Amazon. It is experiences like these, so magical, intimate and special, that hold the true meaning of life. And they cost nothing. No one can take them from us. The planet gives them to us for free. As I gazed at the luminous elixir cascading from the rocks, somewhere in the distance I heard the sound of an engine. A flywheel began to turn inside me and a familiar voice piped up. “You can’t stand here all day, there’s work to be done! Look at that barn, you’re getting nowhere! It’s got to be done. It’s got to be done. It’s got to be...” The System within. It was cranking up again. But I remembered the Earth’s message from March. No need to comply. No need to obey these obsolete, lunatic instructions. So I ignored that tired old mechanical voice, and walked further into the arroyo, following the life of the stream down down down into pure mystery. Somewhere far away on the distant rim of my world I could sense many humans going “back to normal”. They were dying to get on planes, itching to rush back to work and earn more money to save for a swimming pool or a holiday or a new tech device to suck out their consciousness. A long way back now, I heard a spluttering and a clang as something fell off a conveyor. But it was nothing do with me. Nothing to do with Gaia either. And definitely nothing to do with being truly, vitally human. These words are a gift, and come to you thanks to my land, the Earth, the generous support of The Mud Sustainers, and everyone on Patreon, without whom I would have no time or funds to keep the free material on The Mud Home coming.
Want to see the video of the arroyo? Have a closer look inside my world: If you enjoy my stories and would like to express that you want them to continue, please consider contributing. For the price of a newspaper, all mud patrons can watch my private land report videos, ask more questions, and get the inside story on my lone woman off-grid mud and stone world in Spain. Every day I close the doorway to my old barn with a line of rickety posts that are supposed to act as a gate. And every frickin’ day my hens find a way in. At some indeterminate point I’ll hear one of them chattering to her feathery compatriots, or the clang of a tool they’ve dislodged, upon which I charge down, huffing and growling and yelling at them, before turfing them out. The hens then run up the hill, bottoms waggling, gossiping amongst themselves like primary school kids caught pilfering from the stock cupboard. My birds know very well the barn is out of bounds. I’m sure of this because a) their eyes roll guiltily when I catch them, and b) I hide and watch. When they think I’m out of sight, they’ll scuttle straight back down to the doorway, study the wooden slats, peering this way and that to find a gap. Then as soon as I show up to throw them a faceload of glower and reprimand, they stop in their tracks and gulp. Grrr. But here’s the thing. In truth while all this bugs the hell out of me, it also makes me grin. Nature is shamelessly non-compliant. It’s a total scallywag, and I love it. The great biorascal It’s not simply the hens that are thoroughly mischief-making. I found a nettle growing into my camper van this week, and an arm of ivy burrowing merrily through my earth plaster. The mouse in the kitchen has just eaten the gas stove warranty, a wren is building nests in my brand new roof, and the vole has gobbled up every one of my broad beans. This onslaught of biospheric anarchy should irritate me. Others would lay traps or poison. But what’s the point? This is nature. And in five minutes there’ll be another mouse or vole to replace this one, because Gaia isn’t compliant and doesn’t bend under authority. Heck, nature doesn’t even recognise authority in the first place. This is why when I pull up a half-gnawed onion, I find myself chuckling. These miscreants inspire me. Too bad humans have lost touch with their wild side. We could do with a bit more natural non-compliance in the human world, if you ask me. Apparently a lot of people like being led, though. They like being told what to think by billionaires, and reneging responsibility for their lives. Rude Nature Nature doesn’t do politeness. She is raw, and often rude. She is the great boat-rocker. Yet she is also fair and holds a deep loyalty to her own. We’re going to see that soon, as some sell out and others don’t. History shows well, social acquiescence and “common courtesy” are often the conduits of abuse and horror. Good little girls have been told to comply when sleazy old men kiss them. If they say they don’t want to be molested or have their body violated they are apparently rude or bad. Good little boys have been told to be tough and emotionless and murder the “enemy”. When they say they don’t want to, they are apparently cowardly villains. But what is this good and bad that society is so sure it has a hold on? Following rules like Nazi officers (and good ol' general public) did back in 1940? Following the letter of the law as many environmental protectors haven’t been doing since the ’80s? Following social norms in a bid to out do our peers, or from fear of becoming outcast? Natural patterns I watch the sunlight grace the thousands of wriggling hazel arms in my copse, each one stretching and winding in its own way and yet respecting all the others in the ecosystem. This wood is now brimming with birds. The tree tops twitter and squawk and sing with such exuberance, I find myself laughing. Nests have blossomed without even considering a building permit. There is no single authority in that wood. No top-down leadership. No committees making the rules. Despite this, it's a mutually supportive yet striving community, with a balance between the individual and the group. This is because each tree and bird is plugged into the planet’s intelligence, so doesn’t need government press conferences or police officers to tell it where to go. Human rules are different. They’re neither organic nor responsive. They doubt our innate wisdom, assume we are all out for ourselves, and keep us towing a certain uncreative line. Personally I prefer nature’s pathways. I prefer the freedom to be wild and mischievous and alive. We’ve been told mayhem will ensue if there are no laws, but who’s doing the telling here? Could it be those same people who are merrily trashing forests, selling us back our drinking water, and hiding the devastating effects of their pesticides? Thank you Turkey (again) I haven’t been compliant for a long long while. Perhaps in some ways I never was. When a good friend of mine told my dad recently he’d lost a power battle with me, he roared with laughter and said, “oh I lost that when she was about five.” So it was apt that I moved to Turkey, a country full of non-compliants like myself, where you routinely see people heartily puffing on a Marlboro under no-smoking signs, or cars parked brazenly beneath no parking signs. I remember when the government banned ashtrays from restaurant tables in a bid to stop smoking. In the blink of an eye restaurant owners had made ashtrays on legs which stood by the side of the table instead. Ah Turkey. I’m grateful to you for showing me with wit and humour the art of non-compliance. Life on the edge of The System I’ve been hanging on (and sometimes falling off) the edge of the system for years and years. Turkey was mostly unsystemised when I first arrived there back in the late eighties, with well over half the economy “black” and untaxed. I left when that began to change, and I saw it was driving down the same mindless concrete highway that I had run away from. I know where that road leads to. According to the world at large, I’ve been doing everything “wrong” since I was 26 and abandoned my state education career in London. I was told by older colleagues I’d never be able to “catch up” if I left, though no one could really explain what or who I was catching up with, or why that was so important. Within three years, I was working four days a week in the then eyeball-achingly beautiful city of Antalya, calling the shots on my hours, living a stone’s throw from the beach, and earning about three times what I would have done back in the UK education system. Agh! Don’t listen to these fools. They know nothing. To be free, or on the margins of the system, is a beautiful thing. I will never return to that defunct, destructive, soul-and-body-crushing machine whatever they threaten me with, because I know they have no power over me. I know the natural intelligence within me has it covered. The zombie administration is going to have to run to keep up with those of us scampering down the natural paths. I haven’t seen it do much running though since I’ve been back here in Europe. It’s about as nimble as a sauropod in quicksand. Meat Loaf could sprint faster in a wet suit and flippers. What is non-compliance? One thing it took me a long time to understand is that non-compliance isn’t the same as rebellion. It isn’t the same as protest, as dear Maxim in Taiwan showed me about ten years ago now. Non-compliance comes from a very different place. It’s a psychological space where you know the other has no power over you. You know you are in the driving seat, and simply don’t do what they suggest or imply you should. You just don’t comply. It’s not noisy or aggressive or demanding everyone else does the same. Why should anyone be compliant to my non-compliance? They shouldn’t, and they won’t be. I don’t need the rest of the world to be like me to experience my truth. Good job, all things considered. So if you can’t swallow the many uninspiring narratives of the day without a touch of indigestion, and don't feel particularly enthusiastic about everything to go back to ecocidal, slavery-condoning, war-mongering normal (230 000 dead in Yemen alone for example, but may be they don't matter because they're not first world, right?) don’t waste your energy trying to convince the mainstream world to “see”. We are all creating our own realities here. Some people didn’t like that idea for some reason, so decided to let other people create their reality for them. Absolutely their call. But that doesn’t change the fundamentals. We’re Gaia’s children, literally forged from her substance and intelligence, and when we’re aligned with that very non-compliant planetary power, when we hear and act not on the fear created by those with vested interests, or the pressure of the herd, but on the intuitive hunches within our very bodies, we birth our own brand new enchanting worlds. Those two realities are like oil and water. The greasy hand of fear and obedience just can’t get a firm grip on self-belief and intuitive action. It slides straight off into the great machine to lubricate the pistons and cogs of the productivity engine. Meanwhile Gaia’s streams flow where they want to, the grass grows no matter how much it is strimmed, and my hens continue to ferret out new ways into the coveted domain of the barn. Yes it's a beautiful moment to be alive. ***Many thanks to my dear dad for accepting me for the non-compliant creative that I am. I am lucky. Many people are cajoled and coerced by their parents to tow a certain socially acceptable line which is in direct conflict with their mental or physical well being. I was never pushed to do anything other than what I wanted to in this life, and that is a great blessing.*** Like most authors, I don’t earn enough from my books to sustain me. These writings come to you thanks to the generous support of everyone on Patreon, without whom I would have no time or funds to keep the free material on The Mud Home coming. Have a closer look inside my world: If you enjoy my writing and would like to express that you want it to continue, please consider contributing. For the price of a newspaper, all mud patrons can watch my private land report videos, ask more questions, and get the inside story on my off-grid mud and stone world creation in Spain. Are you dreaming of the free life? If so, climb aboard my popular free sustainable off-grid preparation course.
http://www.themudhome.com/off-grid-prep-course.html |
Atulya K Bingham
Author, Lone Off-Gridder, and Natural Builder. Dirt Witch
"Reality meets fantasy, myth, dirt and poetry. I'm hooked!" Jodie Harburt, Multitude of Ones.
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