“I’ve decided not to get a dog.” I was clear on the matter as I chatted to my friend Lonneke while we glugged our beers. She was now fostering a rescue hound, and looking for a permanent home for him. I clearly appeared dog-needy. “Yes, they are a tie,” she said, eyeing the bottle-lined walls of the artisan alehouse with the kind of gourmet appreciation I reserve for cake shops. Things were already a little odd that Friday night in the city of Gijon. Half the bars were closed, and the other half were spraying so much disinfectant everywhere, I was coughing. It was Friday, the 13th of March. I was resolute at the time. No dogs, nor any other animal for now. I was happy with the robins, wrens, crows, and finches that graced my kitchen door each morning. Having quite literally worked my butt off over the past year, I was ready for a little gallivanting. A little fun and freedom between the bouts of building slog. Dare I say it, I was ready to socialise? Oh life! You have to laugh, eh? As Lonneke* and I ambled down the city streets that night, the residents began anxiously shutting their eateries and stores. Grilles descended with a clank, right and left. The 24-hour supermarket was already sporting a few empty shelves. The next day the prime minister spelled it out: Lockdown. You have to hand it to this virus, it’s got a sense of irony. Thus began our (now fairly global) trip into the twilight zone. Here in Spain, we’re a little ahead of much of the world on our Corona journey. We’ll be almost in week seven of our incarcerations by the time you’re reading this. When you live alone, this means seven weeks without connecting with a human in physical form. Even eye contact, over mask-rims, is a little furtive, as if the virus might be transferred by sight as well. It must have been about week three of our collective curfew, when two things occurred to me simultaneously. First, I wished I had adopted Lonneke’s foster dog, or some other fur-rich animal that I could pet and nurture. I just wanted to feel the warmth of another body and check I wasn’t dreaming I was alive some of the time. Second, the supermarkets weren’t exactly beacons of infallibility in a shifting world. While northern Spain wasn’t witness to the panic hoarding of some places, there were nonetheless always weird gaps on the shelves that reminded you just how fragile the food chain is, and how it could fracture at any time. I would inevitably return from a provisions trip feeling unsettled. The beauty and gift of creating an off-grid world for yourself, no matter how rudimentary, is of course this: Collapses can happen, and you pretty much carry on regardless, empty shelves or not. There was just one thing I felt I was lacking: eggs. It was a grungy morning when I turned on my phone, and saw a Whatsapp message from my nearest neighbour, 2 kilometres up the road. > I’m heading down to the shop. If you need anything let me know. The sky was dripping like a dilapidated roof, and as I waded into my kitchen I saw the flagstones were weeping. Sheltering inside, I began to type. > All I need is chickens and a dog:) There was another ping. > How many chickens are you thinking of getting? > About 3, but I don’t have a coop yet. Have to make one first! > You can have our old one then. Will bring it round tomorrow. And that was that. The next day, I drove to one of the only open agricultural stores. A tooth-sparse little chap in a boilersuit opened up a concrete cupboard in the courtyard. It was windowless and cheerless, and lined with metal cages. “There are only three left,” the fellow grinned, gaps hopping out of his mouth like blackbirds from a hedgerow. “Everybody has bought them up!” He grabbed the poor hens out one by one, and stuffed them squawking in a crate. As carefully as I could, I loaded them in my boot. As I drove back through the empty town, I stared up at my fellow humans in their own crates. Concrete boxes they’d probably paid quite a bit of money for. But that was when they all thought they were free, of course. Some played music on balconies. Some chatted with their neighbours through windows. Where were the children? I hadn't seen a kid in weeks. Soon I was back on my land with a box full of terrified chooks. Brian and Julia turned up in their truck soon after with their old wooden coop poking out of the back. We dragged it up my hill, and I set about erecting it. By evening the three hens were hunched up on their roosts, bracing themselves for whatever calamity had befallen them. Their little yellow bird eyes rolled, scanning me for clues of the impending atrocity that awaited. Change is rarely greeted with optimism in the animal kingdom, I find. For three days my hens refused to leave their coop. They sat there in collective terror, hardly daring to peer out of the door. I could only imagine the types of chicken thoughts that might be running through their walnut brains. “That’s it. Terminado.” “She’s going to eat us!” “If only we could go back to our cold, concrete, lightless cupboard! We were safe at least. Woe is us!” While they cowered, I built a small run for them out of the chicken wire and posts I had left lying around. My hens would be free range most of the time, but only on clear days. Because when the mist descends and dusk loiters on the edges of my land, the beasts of prey come out of their lairs. The run would serve as a type of balcony, or garden, a safe place for my chickens to see sunlight. Eventually they ventured into it, pecking dubiously at the dirt. After studying them, fascinated, for a few days, I named them: Gertie (the pecky boss one), Frida (the adventurous, productive one) and Hilde (the quirky underdog). Death and Danger A part of me was as terrified as my hens, and I wondered whether I should ever let them run free. This is, without a shadow of a doubt, the badlands for a chicken. There’s a badger set at the bottom of my land, countless birds of prey overhead including eagles, wolves, foxes, stoats... you name it, it’s there in all its clawed and razor-toothed splendour. Death. Everywhere. And after all, my birds seemed reasonably happy in the run. They had food. Water. Daylight. I threw in grass cuttings and other goodies. Wasn’t that enough? It was Frida who reminded me, that’s not what life is about. One day she flew onto the top of the run fence, and peered at me from her swaying wire perch, goading me with her little bead eyes. I sighed. Thus it was, I opened up the run, and let my precious hens out, watching their fluffy butts waddle away into the grass stalks. It was obvious from the first moment. These birds had presumably never seen nature in their lives. Their feet had never scratched the dirt. Yet, as they strutted off into the undergrowth, you could see the fervour wafting off them like heat waves rising from sun-beaten tarmac. They were three feathery little Lara Crofts striking out into the wilderness. It was a joy to behold. From that day forth the eggs they laid grew bigger and bigger. Their rufous bodies fattened. Their feathers shone. They looked extremely happy. The Wolves One night I was snuggled up in my stone hut, which ironically (you have to hand it to life) was itself a chicken coop before I renovated it. I was readying myself for sleep. As it happened, I wasn’t going to get much. It was three minutes to midnight when I heard them: the wolves. There is no sound like the howls of a wolf pack. On the one hand it’s an honour, as though you are witnessing a sacred ceremony. At the same time, it’s spine-chillingly eerie, and depending on how close they are, somewhat nerve-wracking. I’d heard the wolves quite a few times this winter here in the picos of Spain, but never this close. The howling and yapping was frenzied, and alarmingly loud, so loud that the noise made me leap out of bed. Grabbing my torch, I opened my door a fraction. I thought of my dear little chickens down there, cowering on their roosts, as silent as the prevailing mist. The howls rose to a cacophony. I tried to pinpoint where the wolves were. I was pretty sure they were loitering in the arroyo beneath my land, or perhaps on the path just above it. Near. Very near. My spine wriggled and shook. My hair turned in its follicles. I flashed my torch at the darkness and yelled, the beam of light hitting the trees one by one. Immediately there was silence. It was as if a hood had descended over the pack. Presumably they fled, sleet-footed, as wolves with any sense are inclined to when they realise a human is around. Wild Freedom The next morning, sleep-deprived and bleary-eyed, I staggered down to the chicken coop. As always, the hens greeted me with relieved little clucks. Gertie, Frida, and Hilde were living to see another day, and it was a beautiful day at that. The sun had burned off the mist, leaving my land cloaked in lush green grass and bedecked in colourful petals. Snail shells glistened, and fat bumblebee bottoms poked out of the dead nettle flowers. As I opened the run, my feathered adventurers didn’t miss a beat. They strode off into the long grass, as eager to find grubs and scratch the dirt as ever, wolves or no wolves. Perhaps tomorrow a predator will take them. Perhaps not. But I shan’t be locking my birds up in their run forever, regardless. Ten years safe behind wire? Or ten days in a risky, juicy Eden? I’m looking in their archosaur eyes, and I see what they prefer. I know what I prefer, too. I can’t speak for the rest of my species, because I don’t really understand them. Me? I’m with the chickens. That’s why I live in a hovel on a mountain with the eagles and the vultures. Life isn’t the same as staying alive. It’s not a game of numbers and years, and there are no prizes for survival. Life is danger. It’s uncertain. It’s a mysterious rite of passage into the wild. It’s a quest and a story and a secret mission. It’s a poem, a song, and a caterwaul of howling under the stars. The world may be locked down now, but in truth, was it ever free anyway? Were the chicken runs of shopping malls something we can call living? Was fifty hours a week in an office, plus a couple of hours extra trapped in some transportation cage, a dignified existence for a human being? And these were the ‘lucky’ ones. Then there were the others. The children mining metal, the girls sold into ‘wedded’ slavery, the starving and the war-torn, all also a part of that old chicken run we know so well. Some are feeling sadness and fear that the old way is dying. Sorry, I’m not. I don’t know what’s coming next, or what shenanigans (if any) will unfold. But there’s a profound freedom to be won in an unambiguous lockdown, when no one’s pretending everything is fine any more. Freedom and life both come at a price, that price is the illusion of security. There never was any real security. It was a lie. The future was never going to stick to our plans. We could have died in a car accident, or contracted a terminal disease, or lost our jobs at any time. It was always a game of chance, and no amount of insurance policies, or back-up plans, or being ‘good’ and following the rules was ever going to save us. It was a truth that was easily ignored in the gilded cage. Perhaps now we’re all stuffed back in our coops, we’ll scratch a little deeper and dig up another more essential kind of freedom. Perhaps when they finally open the door, we’ll look up and out instead of down. Perhaps we’ll think twice before swapping our life for some half-arsed promise of security. Planet Earth is an untameable adventure, not a battery farm, and we are free-range Gaians. We can either strike out ruddy-cheeked into the backwoods, or run squawking back inside the mesh of rules. Either way, we won’t be safe. We won’t cheat death. We won’t avoid pain or loss. Either way there’s a price. So we might as well get our money’s worth. Ah, the mist has lifted. I see the mountain ridges again. It must be time to let the chickens out. *For speakers of Dutch, Lonneke Lodder is author of Het leven is te kort om op kantoor te zitten (Life's too Short to Sit in an Office). You can read all about her (in Dutch) here. https://lonnekelodder.nl/ Do you enjoy these posts?
Like most authors, I don’t earn enough from my books to sustain me, or even this website! 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. If you enjoy my writing and would like to express that you want it to continue, please consider contributing on Patreon. All our lovely patrons can watch my private land report videos, ask more questions, and get the inside story on this one-woman, off-grid project.
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Up here in Hutland in the peaks of northern Spain, all is pretty much as it always has been, except perhaps that I haven’t heard an aeroplane for a while. The clouds bubble and froth over the humped back of the sierra, the trees are budding, and the vole is still eating my root vegetables, no matter where I hide them. The two of us seem to be playing a muddier version of The Crystal Maze. I am the hapless contestant endlessly solving puzzles, and the vole is Richard O’Brien complete with sarcasm (at least I’m pretty sure he is mocking me). If you don’t know much about voles, let me introduce you. The vole is a deceptively cute, long-toothed rodent, like a large hamster. It digs tunnels underground and gnaws (nay destroys) anything with a root on it. It is apparently an endangered species, though how is hard for me to work out. Either my vole is peculiarly genius, or (as I believe) they are in fact all hiding en masse below ground, just waiting for human civilisation to collapse when they’re going to surge out from their burrows, decimate the world’s carrots, and undertake global vole domination. Their time may or may not be now. Yes. Although my land exists in an alternate reality, I can nonetheless sense something going on down there in the valleys. There’s a stillness I can’t quite put my finger on. A silence. A gap that nature is breathtakingly fast to fill. As you know, I’m living in Spain, one of the COVID-19 epicentres. We are on tight lockdown, and our collective house arrest has been extended to God only knows when. When I’m up in my stone and mud world, exploring the spirit woods, foraging for plantains, and defending myself against parsnip munching rodents, the drama unfolding all feels rather theoretical. Until I venture down to the town, which I have to once a week to buy in supplies. Down there in the asphalt zone, I’m rattled sharply out of my reverie by that other reality. Streets that usually bustle and buzz and grate on my nerves, are deserted. Grilles are down. Doors are closed. It’s a permanent siesta. Pretty much the only people to be seen are the mask-wearing infantry of truly necessary workers. Yes, it’s all become crystal clear now hasn’t it, who we really need and who we don’t: cleaners, waste disposal workers, and food vendors are the only people out on the streets who aren’t scurrying nervously in the direction of a supermarket. As I said a while back, there’s a great levelling going on. Shelf-stackers are suddenly more respected than premier league footballers. Nurses and doctors are applauded in their apartment blocks when they finally arrive home. Who cares about some makeup-slathered celeb right now? Or a bunch of self-satisfied (and vaguely creepy) film directors at the Oscars? Investment bankers? Stock brokers? Sorry guys, you have been far too irrelevant for far too long, and that’s being generous. As I take in this alien new world, it computes. Something big is happening down here. Oh, the irony though. That an entity so small you need a microscope to see it is causing this much havoc is very appropriate. Note how the virus spreads particularly fast among the world’s elites, apparently more partial to people who fly, and those who shake lots of hands. It’s raging through the wealthiest and most “economically productive” zones with not much indication of stopping. A tiny infectious agent has managed in weeks what no environmental lobby or politician has achieved in my entire lifetime. Flights are grounded the world over. Traffic has all but stopped. And everyone is grounded at home with plenty of time to think about how vulnerable they are in the arms of The System, how from one day to the next food can disappear from shelves, and basic freedoms like walking are snatched away. Through the silence, the birds are singing and the bees are buzzing like never before. Not even the Great Attenborough himself could have achieved such an impact. Finally (thank God!) I’m back in my car, watching the dystopian streets disappear in my rear view mirror. There’s a chill still lingering at the back of my neck though, as I climb the long, steep mountain sides. But with each twist and turn the “normal” world becomes more ethereal, while my world of myth and magic solidifies. I pass through the last village at the top of the hill, the final outpost before the tarmac disintegrates. Everyone is out in the street, music is playing, and the locals are beaming. Spain’s rural folk and villages have long been downtrodden and forgotten in a world which is obsessed with “modernising”. They too are now having their moment. Suddenly the village is the place to be. The town is for ghosts. Return to the fairy tale Rumbling on, I press for home. Jolting over the hilltops, I pass the usual rabble of cows wandering nonchalantly around as though they own the place. The great snow-encrusted Picos rise out of the clouds like the Mountains of Lune. A falcon swoops in front of my windshield. Fay primroses twirl along the track. Eminent rock councils push through the grass now, posturing in huddles. In a month or two they will disappear behind the emerald veil, when the verdure unfurls once more. This fairy tale has been my reality for a while now. A reality that has been relegated to the forgotten backrooms of the mainstream human mind for a long, long while. First the religions stamped on it. Then the philosophers. Then the scientists. Until the only place you could slip out from the suffocating throttle of the manufactured modern age was far off into the forests, or high up in the mountains, anywhere where humans and their noise and tech weren’t. Yet we were hungering for it. The popularity of the fantasy genre in the 21st century and the gospels of the new age were indicative of the people’s thirst for magic and wonder in an arrogant, unimaginative, and frankly boring society. A civilisation built on outdated assumptions that are now crumbling faster than icebergs in the Arctic. “We are in control. The economy must always grow. Tech and machines will solve all the problems. The only reality is material reality. If you follow the rules and be good, Father Establishment will take care of you.” How frail and hollow the bragging authorities sound now. The Levelling is here. The Gods have thrown the game pieces aloft, and who knows where they will land? In weeks the system that was so impossible for us to dismantle, is shuddering. The hologram is flickering. Doors have opened all over the fabric of consciousness, and each of us will walk through one of them. The impoverished ghosts who still believe happiness lies in attempting to dominate others will no doubt hold shady doors to shiny new cages ajar. The frightened and addicted will no doubt gamely enter them, wanting to trust – as they always do (sigh) – anyone but themselves. Ultimately it will come down to how much faith we have in ourselves, our planet, and our intuition, as to where we move next and which kind of reality we create. Because that’s what it’s about. For too long humans have wandered lost around realities as though they were beyond their control. For too long they have believed the scammy insurance brokers of the established order, and sold their real power for a lie. But it’s all up for grabs now, eh? So are we going back into the fold? Or are we treading into the forest? No doubt there’ll be a different reality for each of us. There always is. A message from behind the door of enchantment Yes the doors are many. This is a message from behind mine. It’s a bit of a rickety old thing, gnarled, handmade, and possibly a little under-engineered, but with plenty of character nonetheless. I invite you to have a look for that door, because it’s the enchanted one. The soul door. The door behind which the currency isn’t banknotes, but energy, vision, and truth. No one is going to promise to save you behind this door, because no one who walks through it needs saving. It’s the gateway of the witches and wizards, the mages and the sorcerers, and it’s out there in the woods, by the sides of streams, in the mountains and the sea caves. Any human can locate this portal and we all hold enough power to walk through it, because this door, and the world behind it are Gaian. Yes the Levelling is here. Now that the smoke of the great industrial engine has dissipated, we have the time and clarity to find our own way to another more enchanted reality, the one we are sovereign of. Better to leave the meaningless tat and false promises of security, and take what’s truly ours. For those of us who suffered under the old ways, whose more imaginative heads have been held under the surface by the boot of materialism, we are blessed to be here and now. It really is our time. Become a More Intimate Part of The Mud Home Thank you so much to our wonderful community of sustainers and supporters funding The Mud Home and the Earth Whispering Blog on Patreon. You are so appreciated, and I very much value each contribution. It’s now time for me to support you back. Over the next few weeks for all Mud Patrons I’ll be sharing some special whisperings and ideas to support and encourage in these unusual times. The current Covid-19 situation is actually an extraordinary opportunity. I hope everyone takes it. It costs a lot to run The Mud Home, and it takes up many hours a week. If you enjoy these posts and would like to express that you want them to continue, please consider contributing to the running costs. All our lovely patrons can watch my private land report videos, ask more questions, and get the inside story on this one-woman, off-grid build.
This was never my Big Dream, huddling alone on some remote hilltop, building shelters out of mud with my butt hanging out of my trousers. No, embodying Bob the Builder didn’t once appear on my bucket list of things to do before I die. If you had told me about fifteen years ago that this is what I’d be doing in the future, I would have rolled my eyes and groaned. Or laughed. Or blinked in bemusement before trotting off to the beach. I did have a Big Dream once though. It was an incense-stick waving, flashy-toothed rapscallion that sauntered between yoga mats like the Second Coming. My dream, you see, was to run a new-age spiritual centre. You know, some mini Turkish version of Findhorn or something. I sort-of made it happen too (not in Findhorn dimensions obviously), only I soon realised my Big Dream was actually a Big Nightmare. I can honestly say, I loathed every single minute of running the hilariously named ‘Shanti’ Garden (it was about as shanti as the Battle of Naseby). Within a couple of months, I was chain-smoking in the kitchen and hoping no one would turn up. By the time I escaped, I had racked up a bevy of debts, a dash of PTSD, and an acute aversion to yoga teachers. So much for Big Dreams. Those who’ve read Dirt Witch know the rest. They know that I didn’t end up blissful on Mud Mountain by design. It was initially an act of desperation. I was burned out. I had no money left. It seemed like a good place to recharge my batteries while I worked out what to do next. Build a house out of mud? Nope. I had never even considered it, certainly not as a potential builder. It just sort of happened in response to a set of circumstances. Life is life. Sometimes we have no idea what would make us happy, or what wouldn’t. Sometimes disasters are the best thing that could happen to us, while Big Dreams are the worst. Whatever decision we make, the force of Gaia weaves her magical threads through it, and turns it into something else. I write all this because a few things have occurred to me this month. First: I’m absurdly content up here in my chicken coop bedroom, still without a hot shower, fridge, or washing machine. Happier than I ever was in the rather nice flat I rented down in the rather nice coastal town last winter. Second: Not everyone would feel the same way. Third: While I’m so glad my lifestyle inspires people, opens mental doors, and challenges the ‘comfortable’ assumptions of the modern age, I’m aware it can become yet another one of these flashing-lights (albeit LED)-adorned Big Dreams. In my experience Big Dreams can cause a lot of anxiety and strife. “Be cautious. I moved from London to splendid isolation and it was a horrible, lonely, difficult, ‘where is everyone?’ vibe. Sometimes it's a fantasy. It's taken six years to vaguely normalise,” Rob Smith commented about his experience with life off the beaten track. He’s a far from being the only one. I know a few people who definitely didn’t thrive in the sticks. No one particular lifestyle is for everyone. And if there’s one glob of ludicrousness I see in our faddish, commercialised culture, it’s bandwagonism. Because there is a kind of ecological one-upmanship among certain well-heeled income brackets that the more cynical forces in the market pander to. One of the major issues in sustainability is that we are eight billion people, and when all eight billion do the same freaking thing, massive imbalances occur. Think hemp is great? It won’t be when they start hacking more of the Amazon down for hemp plantations because the latest wave of green consumers have decided that’s the new thing you need to pass through the (sustainably-sourced) pearly gates. No, nothing is a particularly good idea if the whole world does it, and then chucks it out because another eco-fad has come in. That includes lifestyles. I’ve seen way too many people head for the country and then wreck it in pursuit of that Big Off-grid Dream. The rural life works for some (usually more introverted, less social types who find it hard to function in the ‘normal’ world). It works for people whose bodies enjoy plenty of physical work, and who are fairly self-referencing. But for others, for people with partners who are not on board, for people who are very risk-averse, for those with certain health issues, and those who enjoy plenty of social interaction, it might not be for them. Living the Dream I love dreaming because for me it’s about reaching beyond the edifice of the known, and sowing the seed for something new. But dreaming isn’t the same as the Big Dream... It’s yet another balmy morning here in northern Spain, with winter not quite sure whether to bother or not this year. I stretch under my ash tree, the sunlight icing the rocks and peaks, while the valleys and towns below still snore under blankets of mist. My mornings are sacred to me, and God help you if you interrupt them. This is my time to hear the planet, hear my trees, and hear myself. It’s my time to step out from the under the grinding pistons in my head, and attempt to open up to something new. Sitting quiet on the grass, I breathe. Through the peace, I hear a plucking below ground. A mole or a vole, no doubt. A finch flutters into the arms of the ash tree, and I spy a lizard scuttling up its rutted trunk. As images and ideas fill my mind, this graceful tree soothes me, and I wonder: Does all this wildlife dream, be it big or small? Do animals have imaginations? Do Animals Dream? It will sound batty to most, but when I sit very very still and observe the actions great and small of the plethora of creatures on my land, when I hear the first bee busying himself in the first dead nettle flowers, or watch a lone beetle determinedly strike out for the interior of my kitchen, or listen to the mice setting up an elaborate multiplex in my roof, scurrying here and there, gathering this and that, so organised! Or when I hear the owl coo for his lover through the dusky woodland, or the wolves caterwaul eerily into the night preparing for a hunt, it seems highly implausible that they don’t have some kind of game plan. Traditional 20th-century science, from its whitecoat standpoint in the sterile lab, would say all this is not a plan or a vision or an ‘idea’, just instinct. It would say the mole or lizard is simply at the beck and call of genetic programming and nothing more. But most academics don’t spend their lives in the wild simply watching these creatures left to their own devices. They generally imprison them in labs and torture them. If you locked me in a cage and tortured me, I doubt I’d show you my creative genius either. If Gaia were just one big deterministic program, as the voices of old used to say, life wouldn’t be life, it would be death. There would be no creativity. No problem-solving. And no individuality. There would be no adaptation, no opportunism (which nature is Queen at), no evolution at all. The incredible thing about life is that it creates systems and structures that outgrow themselves, that stretch beyond the limits of what they already are. But the question is, can this creativity happen without dreaming? Without a vision? And where do all our dreams and visions come from? I think dreams come from the pulse of life itself. Its shimmering strands push through this planet and into every living being, nudging them to deepen, heighten, expand, become more sensitive, more complex, bear fruit, create, discover, evolve, and regenerate. Life isn’t just a physical matter phenomenon; if it were we wouldn’t be able to think, or imagine, or envision. Because despite the weird tendency we have to think we are separate from the rest of the planet, we are its expression just as much as a volcano or an eagle. So if we can dream, then dreaming is something the planet either developed or adopted. When I wander the ruts and furrows of my land, I’m sure this place dreamed of me as much as I dreamed of her. And through our dreams, the web of Gaia rippled and rolled, drawing us together. Somewhere deep and wide within and without us all, there is a vast imagination waiting to be explored. But we can only dream within the limits of our mind-systems. Voles don’t dream of trips to Mars (I don’t think…); wolves don’t dream of bathrooms with hot water. In the same way, our human dreams are still like rats forced down the narrow corridors of our minds. They aren’t really free. They exist within a given mental structure. The mindset we find ourselves within right now is all about categorising and splitting things into polarities. Good/bad, success/failure, right/wrong, me/not me. It’s extremely hard for us to perceive things any other way. But as always with life, we have outgrown ourselves. We are in the process of dreaming ourselves out of that disjointed mindset. The planet, and the force of life running through it, already exist beyond that separation paradigm, and they are dreaming us out of it too. This is why everything in the world looks pear-shaped, from politics to the environment. Our imaginations are stuck in lab cages. Either we’re trying to impose Big Dreams of salvation on the world, or warring against Big Nightmares of perdition. But it isn’t about that. I learned rather painfully back in 2008 that Big Dreams go wrong when they are over-exalted, when we think they will be some sort of Promised Land, or that they will save us, or save the world, or something. Because we are seeing them in the light of success versus failure, good versus bad. Yet life herself doesn’t dichotomise in this way. There’s no right or wrong for Gaia – just lots and lots of ideas, experiments, and exploration. A Small Idea Someone in our lovely patron group wrote to me this week because the Big Dream wasn’t happening. The land in the country with the house wasn’t to be. So this particular person had decided instead to take a less ostentatious step and just buy an inexpensive non-building plot of land somewhere, a small place to connect with nature and camp sometimes instead. When I heard this, something rang so true within me. It’s such a beautiful idea. For what it’s worth, for me the most important thing isn’t the off-grid home in the mountains at all (though I love it). It’s communion with the land. Because that relationship and that conversation are extremely powerful. Or therapeutic. Or healing. Or transformative. It’s the place we perceive the dreams of life. We don’t have to lunge into some massive off-grid adventure to experience it. To stand in a small area of dirt that you are sovereign in is priceless. A space you can protect. That you can nurture and not poison. That you can grow things on, play in, camp in, sit in, meditate in, make art in, connect with spirits and animals in. And when I gaze at my ash tree, I feel her nod. Because each square metre of this rocky wonderland we call Earth, is a world in itself. It’s precious. It matters. The relationship matters. Not the Big Dream. Not the heroics. Not the happily-ever-after delusion. Only the living, breathing interconnection can move us beyond what we already are. I discuss a lot about sovereignty, sensitivity and the object/subject paradigm with Amisha Ghadiali in the Future is Beautiful Podcast. Feel free to listen to the conversation. Thank you so much to our wonderful community of sustainers and supporters funding The Mud Home and the Earth Whispering Blog on Patreon. You are so appreciated, and I very much value each contribution. Your support has enabled me to buy a new inverter and battery pack so I can now charge my computer at home, which is a massive relief. Become a More Intimate Part of The Mud Home
It costs a lot to run The Mud Home, and it takes up many hours a week. If you enjoy these posts and would like to express that you want them to continue, please consider contributing to the running costs. All our lovely patrons can watch my private land report videos, ask more questions, and get the inside story on this one-woman, off-grid build. The wolf of the wind howls around my cabaña, and the ash trees shake like rattles. Constellations come and go as the sky races over them. It’s wild up here. It’s another world, a planet where human rules no longer apply. This is the real world that still waits for us beyond the lacklustre veil we threw over it so long ago. Why did we do that, I wonder. Did we think it would be easier? If so, we were wrong, because this planet entertains neither cowards nor the lazy, and in every gutless lane we choose to walk down, predators of the worst kind lurk. All these life roads are energy conduits, you see. Which trail are we following? I’m supping a cup of tea, snug on my bed with the stove roaring like a flaming lion. Gusts hammer at my door. And of course, it is in the midst of this storm that I decide I’d rather fancy a snack. So I pull on my hat and my head torch and open the hut door. Lo and behold, night and his snarling hounds of cold, rain, and gales pour in. Lord! It’s rough out there. I blink through the pitch. That this tiny rock dwelling feels so secure in this weather surprises me. And then of course I ponder, as I often do, just how much I really want a handful of peanuts. Nonetheless, I head out into the open mouth of winter. All for a few nuts. Because in truth there’s a lot more to it than that. In truth I’m going because I love to rip up that dreary man-made security blanket and feel the planet on my skin and in my hair. I know when I step up to meet Gaia, she will infuse me with something every advertiser tries to con me into buying but that no corporation can provide. It’s why I’m happier on a tempestuous mountain hiking to my kitchen, than I am pushing buttons in a town flat. Or God forbid a suburb. Stumbling along the ridge, gusts whip my hair. It’s so darn windy I have to dip my head and round my shoulders, pushing my way into it. Pausing before the kitchen hut, I stare out at the twinkling lights of the villages below. The woodland swings and whirls in the arms of the weather as though resuscitated, and I can sense the land’s energy reviving me, too. The ancient Dirt Woman within me opens an eye and growls. There and then, I’m alive. So I take the opportunity to pee right there on the slope like some cruddy queen of the Picos, because hey, I still don’t have a bathroom. But really, is there anything quite so glorious as peeing outside, anyway? Stars and clouds blustering overhead, rocks and dirt all around, trees rattling and roaring, and little old me crouching in the middle of it all, fertilising the grass and nettles. I know at that moment I have chosen the right energy road, because that energy is inside me and out, reverberating. Energetic Roads and Turkish Soul The English language is rich when discussing exterior concepts like botany or mechanics, but surprisingly inadequate when we turn inside. Inadequate compared to Turkish, for example, which has an emotional and energetic lexicon that makes even the most academic of modern Turks sound like sages. Take the English word ‘soul’, for instance. Turkish comprises an entire rainbow of words that could be used in its place*, some of which have Sufi origins, some shamanic, so when I’m writing in English about such concepts I find myself extraordinarily thwarted by my mother tongue. One of my favourite Turkish soul words is ‘can’ (pronounced ‘Jan’). Can is life pulse, the part of the soul that carries the life force of any living entity. It’s literally the bit of you that is alive, that is life herself, that is energetic and dynamic. When you die, you don’t take can with you. Okay, so what’s this got to do with the wild life, energy roads, and a stormy night on a windswept Spanish mountain? As I stand on the hill feeling the can of the land rush into me, I sense this part of me that can best be described (in English) as ‘energetic’. And it doesn’t end at our fingertips. As the trees thrash and the air rolls down the mountainsides like cannonballs, it seems obvious because I can feel it everywhere. The surge of life. It’s amazing, and it’s Gaian. Solar Power The next morning when I step out in my pyjamas, another world is waiting for me. The sun is stroking the arms of the ashes, and the rocks are warming themselves like tourists on a grassy beach. Tiny birds twitter and flutter and rustle in branches. It’s the same land, and yet so completely different I’m a little awestruck. As I walk along my ridge to heat a kettle of water for a wash, sunlight washes over my face. And I remember: solar power. As soon as I enter the kitchen cabin, I pull out my little solar panel. It’s a small unit I bought back in 2017 when I first hit the road in a campervan. And do you know what? It’s done me proud. It powers a light and my phone, which has sort of kept me going. I hoist it onto the kitchen roof and attach the battery/inverter to it. The sun hits the panel and power is sent into the battery. Some technological voodoo occurs in that device that turns the battery power pulse (12V) into a voltage my phone can cope with (5V). It’s all power. The sun, the power stored in the battery, the power that runs along the USB cable and charges my phone battery. But without an inverter, solar power doesn’t charge phones, or cars, or fridges. The voltage is different. They are different bandwidths of the same electrical energy. In the same way, the energetic life pulse within us is not only available at one voltage either. Just as light can be split into a spectrum of colour, life energy comes in different qualities and potentials. But the truly exciting thing is that we seem to be inverters, and batteries, and panels too. We are energetic systems. We can increase the power stored in our systems, change the pulse rate and refine the flow so as to power more incredible realities, or we can limit what we embody and dumb the pulse right down to a couple of sluggish volts, and then wonder why we can’t run a washing machine or a brand new vision. It’s all about energy, and the line we choose to follow. It’s all about our can. No matter how we like to portray ourselves, it is actually via our can that we are usually perceived and via the same can that we make shit happen in the physical world. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the Turkish word can is written the same way as the English word ‘can’. Can is the reason dogs and horses know we’re bullshitting when we pretend to like them and we don’t. It’s why some people are instantly likeable, and others just irritate the heck out of us, or drain us, or bore us. Often we simply can't put our finger on why. It's the root of charisma, for better or worse, and those who've worked out how to amplify it can potentially manipulate. It ain’t what you do, it’s how you do it: As you may have sensed, having taken a big leap of faith and jumping into a new reality, I have found happiness. And yes, I listened to the Earth and my gut to get here. But something happened long before I let go of my mud home in Turkey, something I didn’t really mention in the Mud Mountain Blog, because in those days I was more worried about what people thought. I remember meditating for days until my soul energy (for want of a better word in English) was pulsing in a very different way, and began pushing, just like a tree branch, in a very different direction. I smelt an invitation for a new life on a new energy road and I wanted to explore it. Because if we’re not exploring or creating or loving, then quite frankly what in hell are we doing here anyway? What’s the point? Yes. It’s not just about jumping. It’s not just about risk taking or leaving the system or throwing yourself into a forest in tent. If the energy with which we do these things is based on fear or anger or loneliness or desperation, watch out. That energy line will follow you just as you follow it, and bite you in the butt wherever you are. It’s not about plastic, or the economy, or old white men, either. Get rid of any of them and I guarantee not much will change. There are a million other corrupted entities to fill their places, because the energy source from whence they came is the same, and we’re all still riding it. Does this mean I support the status quo and deny reality, or think sitting about in the lotus position all day is the answer? No. I believe in respect and honour for all beings (not just humans), and I see clearly that we don’t have enough of them. Yes, we must take steps in a better direction. But for me at least, most of the ways I see people trying to manifest these things fail desperately to inspire me. Righteousness, demonisation and sanctimoniousness have never created anything beautiful. If we really want to solve the problem, connect people and raise us all up (rather than strip us all down), then we need to embody a higher potential, and start following a more transformative energy line. Because the energy with which we act is far more important than the action itself. It’s something my Power Ash has been banging on about all month. It’s something Grandmother Olive used to whisper about too, in another way. Tree Wisdom The solar panel is up and the battery inverter charging. It’s now I turn to stare at the great ash behind me. Her branches twist and coil, illustrating quite clearly the lines of energy they follow and the direction their life force is pushing in. Each branch is a road to a different reality. Some hold leaves, some are withered and dying, some bear fruit and seeds and keys, which in turn fly off on the back of a wind to settle and create a brand new ash tree reality somewhere else. As it goes with trees, so it goes with us. It’s the line of can we’re following, and the frequency of power we are embodying that matters. I think this is perhaps one of the most important life tools trees have taught me. They, for all intents and purposes, seem to do very little at all. But sit under them and feel their power. Feel how they transform you and the world around! Upgrading my Power System With any luck, by the time you are reading this I will have upgraded my solar system so that I can charge my laptop and my power tools too. With any luck the inverter will be throwing out a hefty 240V instead of 5V. I’ll be using the larger panels my neighbour gave me so that I can absorb more of the sun’s power, and have larger batteries so that I can now hold more of it for longer. The entire current(amps) in the system will increase and the resistance in the system will decrease. I’ll have massively upped my power potential and my ability to get shit done. In the same way though, I wish to upgrade my other, more fundamental energy system; that of my can or my soul. Because it’s the key to making anything good happen. And while I chose a beautiful energy road for my land and community, I notice other areas where I’ve had less integrity. I haven’t always spoken kindly, for example, and impatience has sometimes got the better of me. I can be very resistant about letting people in, and hold onto past transgressions in a most ungracious manner. But the times are special and the past is falling away at great speed. We can up our game now, choose new energy roads and start changing the how rather than the what, the means rather than the end. Because as one of my protagonists Harpagos wisely noted back in 500 BC: The end never comes. Never. We never reach the Promised Land. All we are ever left with is the means. The energy road. The can. * other Turkish words for soul (or soul elements) include: ruh, tin, can, öz, nefes, gönül. Extra Note: Over the past three years in Europe, I have privately thanked Turkey many times for so many things. One day I’ll write them all down. Here I just want to say that I am indebted to the Turkish language and culture for sharing its extensive and nuanced understanding of emotions and energy concepts with me. The concept of can is a Turkish concept. The energy roads were whispered to me by my ash trees. Thank you, thank you, thank you to our lovely community of sustainers and supporters funding The Mud Home and the Earth Whispering Blog on Patreon. You are so appreciated, and I very much value each contribution. Your support has enabled me to buy a new inverter and battery pack so I can now charge my computer at home. Yippee!
Become a More Intimate Part of The Mud Home It costs a lot to run this site, and it takes up many hours a week. If you enjoy these posts and would like them to continue, please consider chipping in $2 a month, and becoming part of our Mud Club. If you want to see more photos, watch my private land report videos, ask more questions, and get the inside story on this one-woman off-grid build, pledge as much as you like to support The Mud Home on Patreon. It’s only when you leave that you understand you are attached. Some invisible hook has lodged itself beneath the eiderdown of your day-to-day thoughts; A spine? A thorn? A burr? It wasn’t there before. It didn’t exist. But now it does. It was swept in on a gust from the landscape, and before you knew it you were hooked. This is what we do, we humans. Without even being aware of it, we pull twigs and stalks and feathers from our environment, and use them to line our psyches. The strands of what was once alien turf are soon woven into a fresh nest of familiarity. It’s only when we leave that the scales are lifted from our eyes. We leave and return. And we feel it. We are attached. In the past month, I’ve left and returned three times, mainly to escape what has been a pretty harsh beginning to winter (Asturias endured 29 days of rain in November). Today I’m back, and unabashedly attached. I inhale my view (mine, yes mine) and feel my psychological muscles relax. Each ridge on the horizon has become a piece of me. The limestone creases rest in my memory, viewable from the catalogue of my mind even while lounging in an English living room. Then there are the trees: The ashes and hazels and holly and chestnuts. None of these were my world before, yet today they all are. We are related now. For I’m quite certain the land is as used to me, as I am to it. Robin redbreast flutters by for breakfast, nodding at me to drop him a morsel or two. He does this every day. It’s now an expectation on both our parts. Here on Mud Pico, even the sunlight is personal. I sense the slightest change in tone, and can easily tell the time by it. The weather has also become part of me, physically and mentally. There are shattering sunsets and science-fiction cloudscapes. There is snow and rain, too. My body has long adapted to a cooler climate, my very blood has thickened because of it. I am no longer who I was. That’s what connection does. It’s a two-way highway that will alter you forever. Attachment is a concentric affair. Fanning out from the hub of my land, other links have formed, fronds that have stretched and intertwined below the surface of the visible to create a sustaining network. I am now part of a new culture and language, both utterly foreign to me two years ago, but now so familiar. Spanish has encroached upon large quadrants of my brain territory, lighting up synapses and forging circuits that weren’t there before. Tectonic plates in my subconscious have shifted, and I realise one day when I speak to a Turkish friend that I’m saying no instead of hayır, and that no pasa nada has replaced birşey olmaz. There are human connections too: One day a burr lodged itself in my eye. Neighbours I had no idea existed a short while back, drove me to the doctor. Others bring me wood. Then there are all my new haunts: The nearest town. The cafes with wi-fi where I grab a coffee. My favourite eateries, where the waiters know my order by heart and bring it without even asking. When I think of these things, such a warmth fills my chest. I belong. This is my hood. My patch. Sometimes I have to pinch myself. Am I even the same person I was? And who was that Turkish woman anyway, because as with every one of my past selves, the me of yesterday has become but a ghost haunting the corridors of my memories. It’s a kind of sorcery that we can weave new realities and soulscapes in this way! How did this all happen? It happened via attachment. Now, many philosophies harbour an aversion to attachment. Anicca (nothing is permanent) is the mantra of Vipassana after all. Because of course nothing lasts forever, all will crumble and die at some point, and the less attached you are, the less you suffer… Or so they say. Certainly when my dog died in 2017, I would have agreed wholeheartedly that I had been too attached. That I shouldn’t have loved her so deeply because dogs don’t last long and all that. But after two years on the road in a campervan, wandering free and unfettered, things soon looked different. To float aimlessly without bonding, without attaching, without caring (because that’s sort of what it amounts to unless you’re an enlightened being with sunbeams bursting from every orifice) is a lame kind of malediction. It’s the cowardly curse of hyper-intellectualism, and a reason for much of the malaise of the modern world. Without attachment, you have no belonging. You are endlessly free and endlessly lost, swimming wide but shallow waters where nothing really matters. And yet it does matter. A lot. We matter. The land matters. Culture Shock Having moved about plenty in my life, I’m familiar with the typical undulations of cultural and geographical adaptions. The vague nausea you sense when dropped from a great height into a strange new world. The discombobulation. The faint agoraphobia, followed by the gradual familiarising of the environment. Whenever you relocate from one home to another, from one life to another, there are stages of assimilation. It doesn’t matter if you shift to a rural off-grid life from a conventional urban setting, or emigrate, there is always a series of culture shocks, and a process of adaptation. Because belonging isn’t some fateful feature of our lives that just happens when destiny shunts us into the right place. We create it, every minute of our lives. But here’s the thing no one talks about regarding attachment. We don’t always attach, do we? Not everywhere becomes our home, just as not everyone becomes our lover. And no one really has the answer to why that is. For if everything is simply our projection, then what does it matter if we live in Manhattan or the Gobi Desert? Wouldn’t we weave nests of attachment regardless of the location? Both the Buddhists and the existentialists would say yes, the whole thing is an illusion, but I’m sorry, on at least one level they are wrong. Maybe it takes a witch or an indigenous person to point it out. The Call of the Land Sometimes the land calls. Sometimes she doesn’t. And that’s because the planet herself has a trajectory in which every human plays a part. Sometimes Earth missions are short, sometimes they last decades, and sometimes we are simply not in the right place at the right time. I remember far, far away from here, living in the east Asian island of Taiwan. It was a short commitment for me. I worked there for nearly two years, and if you’re reading anything on this website, it’s thanks to hi-tech, fast-paced Taiwan. But while we shared a short and at times quite magical connection, it was never home. I sensed very early on that we were in a temporary relationship, and I missed my homeland Turkey throughout. Then there’s England. What happened between me and England I have no idea, but we simply do not get on, and we never have, not since the day I was born. There is no obvious external reason for my lack of affinity. My parents were decent British people. I enjoyed an excellent free state education and was offered many chances there. Yet England (and it’s specifically England, because by contrast Scotland’s west coast beguiles me) has never been my homeland. The first time I travelled abroad as a teenager, I felt as though I’d been released from some miserable dank jail. A lifetime of nausea lifted. Why? It’s because the loamy skin of this incredible planet is alive and sentient. It absorbs us as we absorb it. It has memories etched deep into its rocky hide, and yearns for certain souls while spitting others out. Sometimes the terrain calls us hither, sometimes it pushes us away. Sometimes it’s wholly ambivalent. A communication occurs above and beyond the physical, a contract between the land and ourselves. And this is the real reason we become attached. That sense of belonging is a pledge between the planet and our souls. It’s a sign we are in the right place at the right time. So many people are forging new paths right now. Indeed humanity itself is forging one, too. We’re inhabiting a drastically different landscape than we were ten years ago, and there’s a new culture and language to learn. But even if we are unaware of it, or buttress ourselves against it, our souls are gathering this and that from the present world around us, braiding them into a new homeland. Yet the question of whether we will belong in this new world, whether we will love it and be loved by it, whether it will hold meaning and joy for us, and whether we will fulfil our soul missions upon it, actually comes down not only to us but the Earth herself. Will she spit us out? Or draw us closer? And who? And where? Because while we exist as a species, we also exist as cultures, neighbourhoods, and individuals. And what I’ve come to understand is this: the land speaks to us on all levels. Whether we are aware of it or not, a contract is being written between every soul and every location, every single minute. No one has the power (or the right) to change the mind of an entire species, nor do they need to. Even countries are not the point. The nation-state is a fiction that is fragmenting, and you’d be best not to waste your energy on it. Our power and our covenants exist between us, our land and our communities, some of which occupy digital as well as physical space. It is this Homeland that counts. So the question has to be this: Are you attached? Are you home? Do you belong? If so, good for you! Don’t let other people’s panic and drama regarding their perception of “the human story” distract you from your beautiful, vital, and very personal relationship with your space. You have work to do, and only you know what it is. If, on the other hand, attachment and belonging are missing, then maybe the Earth and your soul are speaking to you. Maybe it’s time to listen, and to create a real Homeland of your own. Thank you, thank you, thank you, to our lovely community of sustainers and supporters funding The Mud Home and the Earth Whispering Blog on Patreon. You are so appreciated, and I very much value each contribution.
Become a More Intimate Part of The Mud Home It costs a lot to run this site, and it takes up many hours a week. If you enjoy these posts and would like them to continue, please consider chipping in $2 a month, and becoming part of our Mud Club. If you want to see more photos, watch my private land report videos, ask more questions, and get the inside story on this one-woman off-grid build, pledge as much as you like to support The Mud Home on Patreon. |
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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