Solstice

Halfway through another year.

After the longest day, we get the hottest week - some point in July - and then the skies start to close in again. It is a peak of the opening, blooming, unraveling, this longest day. And after, contraction.

Of course.

I state the obvious.

I wanted, again, I wanted, to mark it. I am halfway through a mini course - 'Plant Dialogues', organised by Dark Mountain. I had to apply.

This is what I wrote:

I am a TV football journalist and English Literature graduate, brought up in Devon, always more at home in the more-than-human world. I’ve always written - stories, poems, blogs, a novel, non-fiction - but never pushed anything apart from my paid work. Imposter syndrome. Despite having done various creative writing courses - OU, Arvon, Oxford Continuing Education.

But, the reason I am applying now is that… well, it’s embarrassing to write this... I have been called by Poplar. Yes, the trees. I didn’t believe it either until I realised, listening to a talk given by Stephen Buhner at Schumacher College, that the tree was calling to me. As a result, I have quit an MSt in Practical Ethics at Oxford to volunteer three days a week for the Wildlife Trust. At a reserve where there are, indeed, some Poplars. They are sterile hybrids coming to the end of their lives; I will be involved in bringing new Poplars to the reserve.

In effect, I realised that I’d had enough of trying to get a more and more detailed map of the more-than-human world and just wanted to engage with the territory. What I seek from the course is a way to be a conduit between reader and territory, not just a better map-maker.

It turns out that I need not have worried about sounding eccentric. Plants regularly communicate with the course leader. I should have known.

But the course, of course, does not run on the 21st itself. The first session was a few days ago - and led to me choosing White Clover for the photo. Charlotte told a story of Olwen, sun goddess, and daughter of the Giant Hawthorn Tree. She was called Lady of the White Tracks and the white tracks refer to the Clover.

I have not done much research on this, but I did find a piece here, which included this quote:

The maiden was clothed in a robe of flame-coloured silk, and about her neck was a collar of ruddy gold, on which were precious emeralds and rubies. More yellow was her head than the flower of the broom, and her skin was whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer were her hands and her fingers than the blossoms of the wood anemone amidst the spray of the meadow fountain. The eye of the trained hawk, the glance of the three-mewed falcon was not brighter than hers. Her bosom was more snowy than the breast of the white swan, her cheek was redder than the reddest roses. Whoso beheld her was filled with her love. Four white trefoils sprung up wherever she trod. And therefore was she called Olwen. – The Mabinogion, Culhwch and Olwen and The Thirteen Treasures of the Island of Britain

I am meant to sit with a flower or flowering tree for twenty minutes, then come home, lie down and think about it for another twenty minutes, when I can write or draw what it told me. Next week, I am to present a three minute poem or dance or piece of art. I am also meant to have a fire and jump over it. Not so sure about that.

So, I plan to drink a glass of wine in the garden, with the, er, wand, and see what there is to see with my mind open and my senses awakened.

I will offer a full report once the course is over.