Dear Friends,
This week’s instalment explores the misty deep woods and a few of the ideas of Carl Jung on nature and human fulfilment. I was lucky enough to get out into the woods as I wrote it, in perfect light conditions - the sun shining above a layer of cloud which smothered the tops of the trees. It made for some special photographs, which I’ve included here.
If you’re a paid subscriber I hope you enjoyed the mid-week post on the artist Norman Ackroyd, whose work has been a big inspiration to me. Writing it has made me want to buy a small fishing boat and visit the thousand or more islands which surround this country on the wild western edge of Eurasia. Unfortunately I’m still recovering from a one mile crossing to Skomer Island when I had a residency there a few years ago. When I look in the mirror I still detect a faint hint of green . . .
Next week’s mid-week story from the borderland is titled Tree Houses and explores one of those rare places in the UK where the architecture could still be termed vernacular. It’s a village made from trees and stone, containing some of the least symmetrical structures you could find anywhere, and it sits in the wooded hills of the border country perfectly. I spent a few hours in the strange bell tower there and took many pictures of its crazy structure and twilit interior. Those wooden structures are so like the woods they came from and remind us of the time when old trees were everywhere.
In other news I’ve just completed this large painting of a stooping falcon and it’s inspired me to write about a wild moor nearby, which has been the home to a pair of peregrine’s since we moved here. The picture is one of the most dynamic pieces I’ve done so far. The original will be in the gallery this week and prints of it are available on my website in two sizes. Click on the image to take a look.
Hope you enjoy this week’s story,
J
I’ve missed it again! We’re into the dark half of the year. I wish I’d found a way to celebrate the transition, to ritualise it. This is a bad habit of mine, I simply don’t give enough time to the natural cycles.
I’m trying to make up for it now, writing this in a dim room, a tea light burning inside a jar next to me. It’s an almost lightless day out there, cloud so thick it blots out the sun. Rain is tapping on the roof, the jackdaws are clacking, traffic is swishing by on the wet lane. I don’t believe this house was built to be a house, but perhaps a barn or stable for the coach horses that used to stop at the inn next door. In the Victorian era gables and brick surrounds were inserted to make tiny windows, which let in little light at any time of year. The house is also orientated east-west. In the summer months the sun rises above the rooftops in front of us. For three winter months it doesn’t appear at all. That time is approaching. It’s getting dark in here. Outside everything shines and glows as if lit by candles. Slate roofs blend with the sky; the pavements mirror the lights in windows; the lane is quivered with the throw of headlights. It’s only just gone noon and it feels like twilight.
I’ve been reading Carl Jung on nature, written from his self built retreat, Bollingen Tower, on Lake Zurich. He writes about how our deep psyches are connected to the land; about the disconnection that towns and cities, and our up-ramping and rampaging technologies bring. It’s true, I’m certain, but there’s still something connective about this old border town, built in the valley bottom alongside streams and a river. It seems to have grown out of the landscape, tree-like. Oak, stone, clay, leaning chimney stacks, windows of every size. We can work with nature, just as he did, if we find the right scale, the right shapes to fit a place.
“At times I feel as if I am spread out over the landscape and inside things, and am myself in every living tree, in the splashing of the waves, in the clouds and animals that come and go, in the procession of the seasons. There is nothing in the Tower that has not grown into its own form over the decades, nothing with which I am not linked.”
Carl Jung, from Memories, Dreams and Reflections.
This morning I walked in Yeld Wood, just as hours of torrential rain began to slacken, the clouds still heavy on the hills, the whole wood smoking. It’s the best time to see a wood, better even than those few days in May when the leaves are almost transparent, when each tree is a lantern. When the mist is in the woods the world slows down.
Many times in the summer months I’ve seen a single roe deer ahead of me on the path through the wood, browsing the wildflowers and grasses at its edges. This has concerned me because for a long time there were a pair of deer, identical, inseparable. I’d come to the conclusion that one of them had ventured onto the main road and been killed. Then, today, with the mist-light seeming to come out of the underworld, there were two deer again, quietly watching us from the high ground above the beeches. They waited, waited until we were just a little too close, and the dogs saw them. What followed was a Warner Brothers scene: eight dogs’ legs going full pelt on the spot, before they accelerated into the distance. The deer quickly disappeared into the blur. The dogs looked left, looked right, shrugged and went back to sniffing for foxes.
There’s enchantment in the woods when the mist is down, when every leaf sparks with fallen rain, when the deer are running. I think it affects the animals. Shortly after the deer disappeared a grey squirrel came hurtling down the track towards us, as if death itself was on its tail. It saw us and kept coming, kept coming, until the dogs looked at each other again in that “This is too good to be true!” way. Then the squirrel stopped, recollected its survival sensibilities and hurtled in the opposite direction, the dogs taking up the second chase of the morning. What it was running from I’ll never know, a spirit wolf most likely.
It’s so long since I’ve read Jung. I’m a little ashamed of myself for this lack, in the same way as I am about not celebrating the quarter points of the year. Memory, Dreams and Reflections was a foundation book in my life, a place more than a book, a mountain ledge to leap from and fly. His writings on our connection to nature get more potent over time, though they were written before I was born. Last night I read some of his letters from New Mexico and Uganda, his observations on tribal people’s relationship with the earth and their rituals that celebrated its cycles. In one paragraph a Pueblo Indian commented on the madness of Westerners, on our frantic activity, our constant seeking. And on the obvious truth that the sun gives life to all things, that one of the responsibilities of a human life is to help it cross the sky, through ritual and celebration. To live as part of the cycles, the universe experiencing, then assisting itself.
“The ritual acts of man are an answer and reaction to the action of God upon man; and perhaps they are not only that, but are also intended to be activating, a form of magic coercion. That man feels capable of formulating valid replies to the overpowering influence of God, and that he can render back something which is essential . . . Such a man is in the fullest sense of the word in his proper place.”
Carl Jung, from Memories, Dreams and Reflections.
Jung used mist as a metaphor often and urged us to find our authentic selves from the mist of our culture’s subconscious. His recommendation was to follow a vocation, to hear its calling, and submit to its rituals, to walk into the deep woods of a calling even if it brings us ruin. It’s taken me the quarter of a century since I first read his words to realise how important this is.
I’m not sure when the rain stopped, writing this I got lost in the woods of the words. It could have been hours ago. The slates have dulled, the sky has separated from the roofs. The jackdaws are silent, most of them have gone to the woods. Soon the light will start to fall and I’ll follow them, to see if I can find those roe deer. It’s becoming a ritual for me.
Found Things
I only post recommendations occasionally these days as I feel it’s better to wait to share things that really mean something. I listened to this conversation between Ayana Young of For the Wild, and Sophie Strand a few days ago and it really felt important. It will probably help shape some of my own work in the future. I didn’t know Strand’s work at all. Her ideas are about things I’ve long been fascinated in: deep ecology and myth in particular. I love the way she interlaces them in this conversation. She seems to be one of those wonderful people whose deep vulnerability has become a root system for an enchanted life. You probably already know her work, but in case you don’t you can listen to the podcast here:
Sophie Strand also has a Substack. The essay linked to below is a good example of her work.
Thank you for reminding me of Jung, must re-read over Winter. Beautiful photos and writing, so evocative.
Love the images in this piece as well as the writing. And thank you for your found thing:)