Camping and Drumming

Recently I spent a few days camping. I spent one night at Eastnor Deer Park campsite near Ledbury in Herefordshire and then three nights at the Resurgence Readers Camp held at Green and Away, a tented and 'green' conference centre near Worcester. With four days at my disposal I wanted to make sure that I used them wisely. The Resurgence camp was a great opportunity to meet a diverse group of people but, as I had found last year to be so emotionally challenging and inspiring, I decided not to attend any of the talks or activities this year. I talked lots, did quite a bit of washing up and enjoyed just sitting around chatting to people. It was great to spend time with people who shared many of my interests and ideas and I appreciated not feeling quite so isolated.

There were some things that were inspiring to me about my time way and I will just recount them here. I don't want this to be a diary as such so I'm just going to write what comes into my mind and not focus on times, places or people as such.

I had pitched my tent in Eastnor Deer Park on the south-western edge of the Malvern Hills and walked up to the monument on the hill above the campsite. During my tea I had been watched by two doe Roe Deer and five stags then appeared out of the woods to watch me as I left the tent and began to walk up the hill. It was about 9pm and the light was just beginning to fade. The rain laden clouds were giving way to a much clearer sky and there was quite a cool breeze. I took my drum with me and enjoyed a decent time drumming in the approaching darkness. With the air being cold and damp, my drum was distinctly sounding flat but it was wonderful to play it and listen to how it sounded with the breeze in the trees. This was the first night of my holiday and I felt a great release of freedom from the isolation and restriction I had felt at work. I had driven three hours to get to this place and now I was at home in the landscape, the wind and the rain. There was one moment of looking up when I was thinking about light and immediately seeing the only star in a patch of sky that was very moving.

I took my drum on a gloriously warm and sunny morning up onto Midsummer Hill on the southern end of the Malvern Hills. Walking up to the hilltop just after 6am was a wonderful experience and the views were superb - so clear under a cloudless sky. There was a strong breeze, but in the lee of the hilltop and the concrete seat, I enjoyed a great time of drumming. Weaving seemed to be the theme - weaving the sound of the drum through the landscape. I find that small chants can come naturally to me in places like this. I can't always remember them as they come and go with the flow of my drumming and whatever I am thinking or praying about. It is a very "in the moment" sort of experience.

The River Teme runs beside the Green and Away camp and I took my drum down the river bank one morning after breakfast. It was warmish, mostly sunny and no-one else was about. The river was significantly higher than last year and the water a muddy brown with silt from recent rains. The Indian Balsam was in full flower and long-tailed tits fluttered around seemingly unperturbed in the willow trees just beside me as I drummed. I then sat down and spent an hour or so drawing my experience, by which time other campers were out walking and enjoying the river too.

I spent an hour by myself in the yurt 'sitting room' drumming. This is almost one of my most favourite places in which to be. Quite, surrounded by soft cushions, warm in the summer sunshine and very welcoming.

I had a good walk up onto Croft Ambrey and then a few hours drawing in the walled garden at Croft Castle. Between the many rain showers there was lovely sunshine, but it was so intermittently wet that I didn't get as much drawing done as I would have liked.

Driving from Leominster with my mother to our old farm. It was a beautifully warm, clear and sunny evening and the countryside around Tenbury Wells and towards Hanley Child looked stunning.

I'm not used to talking so much and so when faced with so many interesting people who all share many of my different interests it was fun but quite tiring to practice quality communication. I did appreciate that some people sought me out from time to time as I felt I was always giving, always being the one to initiate conversation - and I was trying very hard to be pleasent, chatty, respectful and friendly to all whom I met.

Visting the Knapp and Papermill Nature Reserve. This has to now be one of my favourite places on the planet! I went there twice this year having fallen in love with it last year. The river, the old apple orchard, the woodland, the meadows.... sigh!

Finding time to do some drawing that wasn't rushed was wonderful. I did a couple of pictures at the Resurgence camp that I put up in the yurt and those that saw them and realised I had done them were quite appreciative of them. I felt I had contributed something in a quiet, sort of unseen way to the camp. If i go again next year I might draw upon this and do something a bit more.

Woodland Evening

Against the oak tree I sit, my mind cluttered with flirtaceous thoughts: things dipping in and out of my thinking, teasing and all competing for my attention. The day, past, has devoured my energy and so I have stepped out on a small journey to find settlement and calm from all that clusters around me and space that sits outside my immediate needs.

In this place I am amongst my 'other' friends. The greenery around me seems so distant from the busyness of my work, family, and various preparations for creative experiences. I ask for a touch of the other; the language of the landscape and the poetry of the breeze in the trees around me. Here, with only a slight breath that moves the leaves of bramble and oak I absorb the cool stillness. Stillness like the presence of the silent trees whose sense of time seems to belong in another perspective - their slowness of being shames our competitive spirit.

And the song of the birds carries through the dimming light - not songs of high energy like in the early morning, but songs of passing, patience and subtlety.

How small I am in this place, where tallness draws from the undisturbed earth and which is reflected in my new expressions of artwork. How weak is my ability to exist here unaided. How much I have lost though my ancestors and the desire of the world to take nature away from existence.

One day I will return.

I leave, settled.

I give thanks to this place of blessing.

* * * * *

I see four hares as I leave the wood.

Reflections

I'm sitting in the summerhouse on a cool and overcast July evening. I'm not sure what I am going to write about, I will see where I am lead.

Direction
I've thought a lot about direction over the past few months, mainly in terms of career and personal development, and have found it a bit stressful as I really don't know what to do and so much interests me!

Creative Energy
My focus now seems to have returned to my creative side. Perhaps because I know I ought to make the best use of the warm summer months when being creative is easier. There is more time and space to appreciate all that the earth can show me and I know it will pass by all too quickly. I seem to have found some positive focus for my own personal artwork. For me, things seem to evolve slowly and I seem to be feeling a sense of a more definite connection between various things around me and my creative energy. I won't expand on it here as I don't want to try and spend writing time describing things that are very visual. Through my job designing greetings card I have taken my artistic skills into new territory and I feel things are beginning to merge in my creative side that incorporates nature, spirituality, gardening, imagination, drawing, sculpture and much more.

Blog
Being inspired to write and to keep adding to this blog is not always easy and I could so easily give up! I don't feel as though it has had its time though, I think I have to dig deeper to get material and to keep the mind thinking and the soul nurtured. I am not in a very stimulating environment that keeps the blog-fire burning! Time is also precious.

Prayer
I'll end this note with a sort of prayer. Excuse any vagueness, but I am always cautious about bearing some specific details or mentioning names in public.


There is a stillness in the garden
a stillness that awaits, listens, welcomes and yet
bears strength and growth that is unseen
by the minds that are excited and seek stimulation.
May my spirit dwell in the garden of my soul,
to be calm, to not anger, to not worry, to not grow weary:
may there always be a silent inner strength
to be who I am meant to be, to grow,
to create, to love, to honour and to respect.

To all persons, human and non,
may I give myself freely and yet with wisdom,
understanding and strength.

To my family, J and E
I pray that we will be close and loving
like the creative love that gifts us with this earth.
When tired, sick, angry or frustrated
may peace fall like the raindrops
that have now gently begun to fall
upon the garden around me -
touching, cooling, refreshing, healing:
a presence that absorbs all incongruent energy
giving freely and with the knowledge of
its passing and revealing the new.

I ask for blessings
and the welcome of others
to guide and inspire us
in the dreams of our souls.

July Morning

(I am sitting at the edge of some fields near Lilley)

Morning clouds reveal an increasing blueness from above their grey, rain-laden shrouds that hugged the summer landscape over night.

A warm westerly wind waves the oak branches above me, pushing eastwards to leave a dampened earth that begins to give up its moisture to the warming breath of air.

Grasses and cow parsley, with seed-heads gold and blackening brown, fill the verges and bow to the promising sun.

A slow slug delights on the dampness of a carpet of dying grass.

Wren, skylark, crow, yellowhammer, tits and others give their song to that of the breeze and a distant, high up plane.

Hover flies dart and zigzag around the grasses and black flies buzz their presence in an instant.

The golden barley, with down-turned heads and long fragile awns will soon be food for the growling combine. I hold and smell their presence, soon to dry to golden treasure, or so the farmer hopes.

The hedges, trees and woods are now an almost uniform deep green - like the single colour upon an artist's palette with just the shadows and highlights in separate tones. The greens are merging; the flowering plants are merging into their golds and browns. The highlight of summer is the culmination of the flowering season - diversity becomes one in the processes of post-flowering and seed-setting. Softness of growth becomes hardness of seed and brittle stems. This is a time of preparation and formation, an awaiting of the harvest of fruit and seed.

Purple is all around me in the subtle light that waits the full sunlight that will later bathe the land: blackberry flowers, hogweed seedheads, goosegrass seeds and leaves, thistle flowers and rosebay willowherb.