Ears that can listen

Being in a fairly isolated spot here in Conneticut, where nature abounds and there is only the occasional passing car to remind me of a world I have left behind for a while, I have noticed how delightfully filled the silence is. I spend my days with the chattering of birds, my nights with the croak-moaning of bull frogs. And all the while, whenever there is a whisper of a breeze, the tickling of its fingers make the wind chimes sing by the back doorstep. I have taken many a mosey on foot and bicycle with a camera and a little sound recorder in my bag to capture these moments that make my eyes widen with the continual realisation of how much beauty there is to be experienced if you just take the time to acknowledge it. Scattered about this page are some of the sounds that have been filling my ears.

One of the most surprisingly beautiful sounds I found was the night before last, when Aitan made cheese with his goats’ milk for a Jewish festival, Shavout, which starts tonight. As he hung the curds in cheese cloth to drain the whey into a metal bowl, it sounded like a tiny brook trickling into a Tibetan singing bowl.

Shavout celebrates the receiving of the Torah on Mount Sinai and the ‘first fruit’ of the year’s farming. To mark this, there is a buzz in the air this evening as the folks here prepare for staying up all night listening to teachings from a much loved Rabbi, Zalman M. Schachter-Shalomi, who I was priviledged to hear speak last night in an intimate setting. He is an 85 year old with a sparkle in his eye and the wisdom of ages. He speaks in images so it goes straight to the heart, and I certainly felt at no disadvantage being the only non-Jew in the room. He talked of the earth being an organism with each organ, vein, connective tissue being equally important. He is not about trying to convert people , as “not everyone can be a lung”.

Other delights that have filled my ears this week included music and poetry on Shabbat – a day where enforced rest is taken seriously (no driving, no work, no technology…just food, wine, sharing with friends, games, and debate). Although I am not religious, I find this a very wise and healthy practice – to know there is one day you set aside that is very different to all the others. For one thing I have noticed a huge benefit from not being on a computer very much. Of course, more than one day would be a fine thing too but here it is clear that farming waits for no man!

In a wee while we are having a Shavout parade through camp to take the first fruits and the goats from the barnyard to the orchard on the nearby hill. This hill has become a special place for me of late. Yesterday I spent a morning digging weeds and thinning the beetroots in the beds there, as the rain wet grass brushed our legs and the ravens swooped overhead. Further up the hill a few nights ago after a spectacular sunset, as Aitan and I waded home waist high in grasses and dandelion clocks, the fireflies all came out to play. What a sight that was!

I have been blessed to spend awhile living such beauty here, and tomorrow my journey continues to Boulder, Colorado. I shall be sad to leave as I have become part of the community here and enjoyed the feeling of working and walking with the land. For now I shall get some rest as I prepare to partake of some of the ‘night energy’ Rabbi Zalman talked about. I have always found that I am at my most creative and clear of mind in the wee hours of the morning, and apparently there are physiological and psychological reasons why I and many others find this so. So tonight, with an awareness of this, I am going to Listen to what some old wise mouths have to say.

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Waking up somewhere new

There is something rather unsettling but also exciting about arriving in a totally new place in the dark, not seeing quite where you are going, then waking up to see it in all its glory. I was blessed to wake up in a cosy little wooden house in the rolling forest and farmland of New England. After a magical week in Iceland I have made my way over to the USA to see a dear old friend of mine who I met in India ten years ago. We had been talking about this trip for years but things never quite seemed to come together to make it happen. I now realise that was because it was meant to be now.

Aitan has lived and worked on a Jewish organic farm and retreat centre for six years now, and has almost single handedly established a  little goat farm, from whom he milks to make cheese. They are very happy goats who amble around in the forest and come back to the barnyard for home comforts. Chickens cluck around the place too and seem to lay a phenomenal amount of eggs. After a day resting I got to work helping Aitain make improvements to his barnyard, which involved laying a new drain and rewiring some electrics, and a alot of drilling. And of course collecting the eggs. After several hours of physical work in the sun, it was irresistable to jump in the lake for a swim and wash the day off my body.

I am so happy about how much I am learning here, and it really fits with where I am in my life right now. I love the sense of community here – how everyone has certain skills and they are happy to have help and so you learn through participating. Today I spent the day in the field planting cucumbers, which will be pickled and sold to support the farm. Sinking my feet and fingers into the soil and having the sun on my back, knowing that this thing I was doing would become something that would feed someone…that is rewarding work. I know how good these pickles are, and a myriad other goodies they produce, as the fridge is full of it. It is invigorating to eat food that has grown only metres away.

And of course at the end of the day we jumped in the river at the bottom of the field to cool off, and I was happy to have spend my hours this way and made new friends. As today is Friday, Shabbat in the Jewish community, where people scrub up and have a meal together and sing and meditate on the week passed and the week to come, we did a mikvah which is a kind of reflection on yourself before plunging three times into the water – the first part of the cleansing. It was a good moment to be able to share my thoughts and feelings about what I am learning whilst standing naked in a river with new friends!

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Feeding souls and stomachs

I have always loved my food, and this week has been a treat both in terms of food gifts and delightful outdoor dining. On our next jaunt we headed towards Thingvellir – a natural amphitheatre in a stunning valley right on the mid atlantic ridge that was the site of the birthplace of democracy in Iceland. It has been a gathering place for citizens and law speakers from 930AD. On the way there we stopped in a beautiful hollow in the mountains to have an evening picnic of a leg of lamb raised and gifted by Orri’s uncle, that we had roasted before leaving. Orri also has friends who are fishermen so squid and various fish are not uncommon gifts.

We continued on from Thingvellir to find a spot to do more home building, and, as seems to have become a shared passion of ours, stumbled upon an opportunity for some foraging. In Iceland, ‘recycling’ is a funny old game, and is different in different areas. In Orri’s hometown up in the Westfjords, rubbish is separated into ‘burnable’ and ‘non burnable’, and the burnable is put in an incinerator and the heat generated heats the houses, as there is less geothermal activity in that region. Often there are big skips with perfectly good furniture, cookware and all manner of useful things. On this occasion we fouund a treasure trove of useful items and kitted ourselves out with an outdoor kitchen (cooking pot, roasting pot, and two barbeque grills), a bag of screws and a big length of copper wire. It bemuses me why such things are just thrown away, but it is lucky for folks like us who can find what we need along the way.

After a hard day’s aventuring, foraging and home building, tired and happy we found a place to spend our first night in the van, which, despite the lack of bed, was an exciting moment indeed.

The following day we were blessed by our fifth consecutive day of sunny weather (a rarity in Iceland) and were able to breakfast outside then drive the rest of the circumference of the beautiful Thingvatn (Lake of the Althing = the first parliament). It was an intense blue and is extraordinarily clear and clean, as it is glacial water that comes up directly from the ground, filtered to its purest form. We saw villages and summerhouses and beautiful little churches perched on hilltops. A farmer told us that in the graveyard of one church a Viking ring had recently been found. I bet that’s quite a piece.

As the day got hotter we stopped at one of the oldest swimming pools in Iceland for a dip, then got some food and drove towards the sea, scanning the horizon for bits of wood so that we could go and make a fire. Wood is not naturally common in Iceland – there being very few trees – but it is surprising how there is always some if you need it, be it an old fence post or indeed a log that has washed over from Canada. We succeeded in finding, wood and edible seaweed and a beautiful calm spot by the water’s edge to while away the evening whilst our baked potatoes cooked on the fire. It was hard to imagine that in twenty four hours I would be on a different continent.

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And North Again

After fond farewells and some tears I continued my journey northward to the first stop – Iceland – a place that has called me back over and over since the first time I went there a year ago, where a happy and serendipitous series of events landed me where I am now: gladly united with my man Orri (who is Icelandic), and about to spend the summer with him running a little shop on a converted old American schoolbus in the otherwordly myriad coloured mountains of the central highlands. And after and before that we are going to travel the country in our newly acquired little red campervan Mariubjalla (ladybird in Icelandic).

On my second day in Iceland, we had an initial hiccup in the form of me being surprised by the behaviour of gravel roads – something I’ve never driven on before – resulting in a little unintended ‘off roading’ , but thankfully we got her fixed with the kind help of a mechanic friend, and in the process got to know her workings a little better. We then had a great week taking her on travels to beautiful places where we park ed up and started working on making her into a home. The only thing that still doesn’t work that some may consider a problem is the speedometer, but considering we only seem to move between bimbling and bambling it seems a fitting  malfunction.

Our first adventure was a spontaneous jaunt one Friday afternoon to a beautiful lake in a geothermal area about an hour outside Reykjavik. The great thing about Iceland at this time of the year is even if you don’t get around to leaving before 5pm you’ve still got a day’s worth of light left to play in. We visited bubbling puddles of many coloured mud, collected black clay for sculpting, and ate pastries and drank coffee and stunned a small group of visitors by pretending to be elves. Orri is a bit of a dab hand at sculpting and while I disappeared off over a headland to take pictures, he had got to work on a piece of stone he picked up and made a rather beautiful face for me.

Having trawled a most excellent home goods type charity warehouse…not even charity shop…imagine me in that!!!… we got cracking on making some curtains and installing a woolen raggy rugged ceiling for insulation, as the weather can be very changeable. I breathed a sigh of deep contentment as we worked quietly together, tongues in corners of mouths, sewing and screwing screws with the gentle lapping of the lake in the evening.

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The Journey Northwards

On the auspicious date of May 1st my chattels and I were ferried away from London by my good friend James towards  Yorkshire, from whence he comes, for a trip we had talked of doing for months. The sun was shining and as we left London the proportion of green to grey became much more to my liking, with fields full of flowers heralding the Springtime. As evening drew in we stopped to treat ourselves at the wonderfully restored Harrogate Spa, which remains in its Turkish- style Victorian splendour. The water there is rich in iron, sulphour and salt, and the sick used to come there to heal themselves.

I think that quality of water and natural treatments such as this should not be relagted to ‘luxury’ status but should be part of our everyday. I have been priveleged to experience this in places such as Croatia and Morocco, and most importantly, they function not only as a place for well being, but for spending time with friends and neighbours – something which I find lacking in England these days. My journey northwards takes me to a place that has got hot pure water down to a tee – the gasp inciting Iceland, but more on that later.

James and I spent a lovely couple of days walking in the Yorkshire Dales and spending evenings by the fireside with his mum and grandad, a most inspiring 90 year old gem of a man who still helps to run their B&B, and insists that the key to a happy life is simplicity: (“I don’t even put butter on my bread”) and regular catnaps. I have taken the latter on board.

Next stop was Lancaster, where I still call home, to catch up with loved ones and to gather my belongings that have sat in friends’ lofts. The countryside around Lancaster is magical all year round but especially so in Spring, where the forests and meadows offer an abundance of life to enjoy. As is a happy habit of ours, I went on a trip with my friend Col in his converted fire engine to our favourite woods, and we picked wild garlic and made a delicious soup. Foraging, for plants and all manner of things, is one of my most favourite things to do, and outdoor cooking…well, you don’t get better than that. I hope to be doing a lot of both.

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This New Chapter

We are all ever changing, but this year seems to have brought me more changes than I’m used to. And I have embraced them gladly. For a start, my Job came to an end, and I have decided that, at this moment, Jobs do not suit me. Work is good, especially when with your hands, mind and heart. But something that keeps you inside when you should be out, or makes you tired but you cannot sleep, cannot be what we were made for.

The second significant change was deciding to be nomadic again. I have always had roaming feet, much thanks to my parents who took us to Kenya when I was a child and they have still not returned. My life there exposed me to sights, sounds and smells and a sense of spontaneity that has become an integral part of who I am. Having family thousands of miles away also teaches you to be resourceful and stand on your own two feet, and to need to find somewhere to be in the school holidays, which happily led to my love of hitting the road.

Now older, hopefully wiser, and having experienced for the first time what comes with having ‘Responsibilites’ (job and house in city and therefore very little time), I have felt very strongly what I consider to be my real Responsibilities at this unique time on our planet, and so have packed my bags with only a plan to Learn: to be more self sufficient and to tread my path lightly, wherever it takes me.

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