You could not take our bridge could not leave our portal way. You were caught, hung suspended held between the worlds not quite to your threshold, brave rabbit brave, brave rabbit trusting one would come setting you free to make your way to keep your path eastwards along the running stream toward the sea. Are you the one who introducing has another errand still along the way? Another soul to gather to go and journey with you? One who does not know or knows too deeply for the telling the crossing awaits her in the night stealing swiftly claiming and in the lifting out frees hearts and longings to their promised life? Are you the sign? Did you come and die and leave to let me know? To warn me? Whether or not, you are freed. You go, Bright Ears, jump scamper hop into your glory, the wonder of your splendorous self.
Portal
Road Kill Speaks to Me
Yesterday, we went on a rare venturing forth to the Willow and Wetlands Centre no too far from us to get a couple of baskets. On the way, driving across the Somerset Levels we passed two creatures who had met their ends in road accidents. They were both young animals in their first, and sadly, last year.
We came across the badger first, in the middle of the road. The energy/spirit of this poor creature was still hovering around the carcass. As we came towards it, she gave me her name. This often happens and, when it does, I know that there is a service that I can perform. Using her name, I gathered her energy/spirit and together we went to the portal for badgers entering the Summerlands. Once there I made my request known, to open the way for her to cross through. The portal opened and arrayed before us were numerous Badgercestors who called to the young one and welcomed her to the badgercestral sett. I nodded my thanks and I returned to the car where I had been sitting and which had moved on.
Not long after we came upon a squirrel. This one was harder as his energy/spirit was resentful and angry, his energy was running around his mangled body chittering and scolding as his tail swayed in the wind on the roadbed. This one I called to me and quietly told him it was time to move on. That’s when a terrible grief and sadness came upon me. He stopped being angry and became still. Then his sadness broke like a storm. He lamented that he never got to live his first autumn, never got to build his own drey, never got to cache acorns, never got to plant a tree.
It was so terribly sad to hear all this regret wrapped in such small quivering bundle of energy/spirit. Using the name he gave me I finally scooped up his energy/spirit and carried it to the squirrel portal to the Summerlands. Following the same procedure as with the badger, I called to the Squirrelcestors who bid him forth to them with gentle calling. They assured him he had a place in the squirrelcestoral drey and the that there would be tress to plant in the Summerlands, for that is what squirrels do there.
As I removed myself from these experiences, I offered thanks that I am able to offer this small service to the little furred and feathered ones who lose their lives on the roads, thanks I am granted to know their names and use them to help them move on. I record all of these names and at Samhain remember them.
Epona’s Daughter
I did not get to spend
Epona’s day in quiet contemplation,
though I held the early dawn
honouring Her gifts
with my waking intentions.
In honouring Her, however,
I honour too my Spirit Horse,
a faithful companion
for many years
on many journeys
through many struggles.
She appears to me
a dappled gray mare,
with charcoal mane and tail
and a gentle disposition,
patient and brave,
inspiring confidence
and sharing her courage
as we travel through
portal door gate
into Otherworld
together.
Are you Epona’s foal,
the gray daughter
of the white mother,
and the dark father
of deepest night?
She possesses the wisdom,
knowing and certainty
to take me between worlds,
in her company
I willingly move from
the familiar here to there
engage the mystery
seek the answers
acknowledge the powers
beyond the strictly
mortal experience.
Today I honour Epona,
and in so doing
honour she on whose
back I travel beyond
my body and safe return.
Ride Far
Ride far.
Soar high.
Dive deep.
Follow when I lead.
The time is now
of great necessity,
you must range
beyond what you know,
but which I can show you.
Thus it is needful to be prepared,
dust off the shoes of your soul,
pack the scrip of your mind,
hold the vision of your heart close.
Ride far.
Soar high.
Dive deep.
Follow when I lead.
The night is long,
the day longer
each enough and no more,
frightening the denial,
fearful the waiting,
fretful the preparation,
I come for you now this moment.
Hear my song
echo in the darkness of your restraint.
Sense my presence
beside in the shadow of your reluctance.
Know my demand
felt in the gloom of your reticence.
Ride far.
Soar high.
Dive deep.
Follow when I lead.
Unlatch the door,
open the gate,
expose the portal,
make safe the space,
engage the energy
claim the place,
for the time has come,
you are no longer
able or allowed
to hide to dither to evade,
I require that you do
what you know you must.
Ride far.
Soar high.
Dive deep.
Follow when I lead.
You will not be alone,
you know you never had been.
You are well companioned.
You can go where
I take you for I and others
will be ever by your side
surrounding and upholding you.
Come.
Go.
Leave.
Return.
Ride far.
Soar high.
Dive deep.
Follow when I lead.
An afternoon at RSPB Swell Wood
First I want to thank my friend who is an administrator for the area RSPB for taking me on this wonderful adventure, since I don’t drive.
When we headed out from my cottage yesterday afternoon, it was a bit mizzly so we went to plan B – Swell Wood, plan A was Ham Wall. That’s for another day. It had nearly stopped when we arrived at the car park where there were only two cars.
From the time we opened the doors, and in spite of the road noise, bird song filled the air. Since the feeders were empty, she filled one of them with sunflower seeds.
Our first stop was the hide for the heronry. With all the leaf cover it took a few minutes to locate the nests. And, I forgot my binoculars so we shared. Saw several nests heard lots of calling from the treetops. Saw an egret nest and egrets flying off as well as heron. There were other little birds in closer as well.
We then walked around the top walk and at one point the road noise vanished. The atmosphere was magical. Once we’d made that circuit we took off for Scarp Trail, lots of up and then lots of down, followed by way more up to get back to the car.
All around there were delicate grasses, yellow archangel and remnants of bluebells, and one lone cuckoo-pint.
Saw Alfred’s cakes and for the first time knew what it was that I’d seen a few times before.
The ivy twisting around the tree trunks looked like Celtic knot work. I have wondered before if it is not where the idea for such patterns originated.
The views across the Levels were amazing. Hard to believe how recently they were under water for weeks and weeks.
I marvelled at the beetles on the green leaves, and what I think are musk beetles, though I didn’t get a photo.
When we got back to the car after filling a second feeder my friend moved the car to the other side of the car park and we waited to see who’d take up the offer of food. It didn’t take long for a pair of Chaffinches to arrive and work the ground for what had fallen from the holes in the feeder right in front of us. Then to the other feeder a Greater Spotted Woodpecker arrived. We heard some hungry noises coming from a hole in a tree before we were back at the car and figure this must be a parent bird.
At the same time a squirrel showed up with the Chaffinches and worked the ground. When the woodpecker moved to the closer feeder another visitor took over the second feeder.
For those brief few hours, I soaked up the tranquillity and the virdiditas. Tall trees reaching up to embrace the sun, which wasn’t much in evidence, linked like the ribs of a vaulted cathedral ceiling. Air slightly moist and smelling sweetly clean. It was an opportunity to relax and allow the spirits of the wood, on the edge of the Levels, to reach out to me as I opened to allow the connection and communion. There was the low strong murmur of tree speech all around me. I felt welcomed. I felt at home. I felt the presence of dryads and woodland sprites. I sensed the dancing energies of trees and of the bird life all about me. Chirrup, song, melody was all around me heard with my inner and outer ears. Vision, vista, beauty were everywhere I looked seen with my inner and outer eyes.
I was walking in Swell Wood and I was walking in The Wood, if that makes sense. I was there and beyond there. The magical nature of this small, magnificent gem of a woodland opened the portal for me to enter a Wood much larger and far more complex. I was moving in two realms, happily nattering away with my friend and at the same time communicating in silent presence with the greater energy of where I was, beyond where I was.
I was very aware of being on the edge of the Somerset Levels, a place of fascination and enticement for me. Although I am not able to get down into them without much travel and expense on buses, I love them. They are a place of particular mystery and wonder. There are connections I’ve not had the opportunity to explore fully, but I feel the pull. I it feel more strongly now. The gods and spirits of the Levels are calling me and I know I need to find ways of entering the openness of this landscape and meet them more fully. Yesterday, as we drove back through the spaces they inhabit I heard whispers and echoes reaching out to me, calling me to engage with them. It is another calling I am not going to be able to pretend I don’t hear for very much longer.
The deep Mystery of Willow is present in the Levels in a way that I sense is unique. Where I live I tiptoe on the edges of it, does this sound familiar? But I have not allowed myself, and also at some profound level of my being not been allowed until now to contemplate such a connection.
I have made deep links with Yew and Beech already, but Willow only by a gentle touch not mutually deep exchanges between self, being and presence. And it’s not only the mystery of the Willow; there is other mystery and magic there for me. There is something about the land itself, even beyond the surface and visible landscape that calls to me. From where I sit now it is ephemeral and insubstantial, but it is surely real, reaching out and pulling me to explore.
All of these experiences are intensifying my practice of Druidry, enriching my spiritual and religious path, as well as my self-understanding as a Druid. They show me I have so much to experience still and only hint at how deeply these realities and experiences will take me into the realms of the gods, the ancestors and spirits of this land who frame, shape and ground my life and being as a Druid, as a person.
All this wonder, enrichment, challenge, awareness from a brief journey to and through an RSPB reserve.
Gray Bear in the Middle 