Our group of 20 pilgrims are tired after walking nineteen kilometres along day three of Brigid’s Way. As we approach the hill, an unexpected drumbeat calls out, urging us onwards. Our chatter is halted. We fall, as one, into silence - our tired feet keeping time with the beat.

At the bottom of the hill, we are met by five men, bearded and brawny. They meet us with only the drumbeat. Not a word is exchanged. As we arrive, they turn and walk slowly up the hill, beating their drums as they move. We pilgrims follow, curious and re-energised. We are mostly women and have come from different corners of Ireland and the world to walk together along the nine-day pilgrimage of Brigid’s Way from her birthplace in Faughart to her resting place in Kildare. Our feet carry us onwards, up the hill, past the ruins to the trees beyond. We stop under the shade of a mature sycamore tree, her leaves swaying gently in the afternoon breeze.

Wordlessly, we make a circle around a short tree stump (literally a cathaoir or chair in Irish) and an elegant china bowl. The bowl is large yet delicate, decorated with floral patterns. One of the men, Enda, gestures to me and I move forward and sit on the tree stump. I peer into the bowl and see that it is filled with water and there are fresh pink and red petals floating on the surface. Enda kneels down before me and begins to take off my mud-caked boots. As he loosens the laces, he tells us that while we pilgrims on Brigid’s Way are walking the female line north to south through Ireland, he and the other men are walking the male Patrick’s Line from Croagh Patrick in the west towards Drogheda and Amergin’s Mound in the east. He tells us that as they walked, they stopped at several holy wells dedicated to male saints and filled a bottle with water from each well. They then used this water to fill the elegant bowl in front of us.

He explains that the two lines through Ireland, the male and the female, meet here on the Hill of Slane.

Falling into silence now, Enda lifts one of my bare feet and then the other and rests them gently, oh so gently, into the bowl. The cold water sends a shock through my body and refreshes my weary feet. Enda sinks his hands into the bowl. ‘As a man on the male Irish pilgrim line,’ he lilts in a near-whisper, ‘I wash your feet in reverence, with the sacred water from the male wells.’

My heart leaps palpably in my chest. As a 37 year old woman, widowed six years and the mother of three fully-alive boys, the soft touch of his hand and his tone of voice soothe something unknowingly hardened in me.

On a grassy hill, in the middle of Ireland, on a Monday afternoon in July, I cry softly as my weary feet are washed by a gentle Irish man.

***

Brigid’s Way Celtic Pilgrimage is a threshold experience, full of serendipity. In my years as pilgrim and guide on Brigid’s Way, I have witnessed time and again the pilgrimage as a threshold between aspects of our old life, external and internal, and that which is wanting to rise anew. Brigid herself was a holder of the threshold, liminal space– simultaneously holding dual aspects and transcending them. She is both goddess and saint, she was born to a Druid father and a Christian mother, she was a nun and a bishop and it is even said that she was born in the threshold of a house. Her feast day is the 1^st of February, the gateway bet

ween winter and spring, between old life and new life.

Stepping out on pilgrimage, we begin to traverse this threshold and open to the sometimes delicious, sometimes daunting music of what happens. We prise open a chink in the busyness of our everyday and allow for unexpected, deeply moving encounters like the one I experienced on the Hill of Slane. Even the smallest happenings and encounters take on greater meaning and relevance, as if the pilgrimage is our life path and we meet exactly what we need to keep going through the threshold into a new way of being.

As we follow our pilgrimage, we walk towards connection.

We walk towards connection to ourselves, to the hidden wounds and overlooked treasures, the deepest desires and fears within. We step out to step in. We ask ourselves ‘what is alive in me as I set out on pilgrimage?’ We are each on our own personal journey, coming into connection with the knots and stuck places as we walk, which somehow begin to unravel. There is a magic to pilgrimage that can’t always be explained by the rational mind.

Pilgrimage is also a collective journey. We walk in and towards connection to others - to the pilgrims with whom we walk, to the guides and shamans that we encounter and to the many serendipitous helpers in all guises. We often come face to face with the same challenges that we have with people in our everyday, but on pilgrimage there is nowhere to run from them. If we are impatient with people in our lives, we will often meet that same impatience with those around us on pilgrimage. These challenges that we face and move through on pilgrimage can often feed back into our everyday ways of interacting when we return to our everyday.

We walk too towards connection with Brigid and her landscape – to the qualities of Brigid as maiden, mother, wild woman and crone. Both women and men on Brigid’s Way have time to sense into what elements of the feminine they are out of touch with and embrace a fuller sense of female qualities within, and in our relationships.

Brigid’s landscape is a gentle, generally flat landscape. It begins at Brigid’s ancient well at Faughart in Louth, passes through the sacred Boyne Valley and Hill of Tara in Meath and moves on to the wells, fire temple and cathedral of Kildare. Above us, the skyscape is that of the Cygnus or Swan constellation, a cluster of nine stars that mirror the nine days of the pilgrimage and their trajectory through the land. Where the route permits, we walk in nature, by rivers and canals, up low hills and across fields. We walk in nature until the pilgrimage weaves its magic on us and we have moments of walking as nature. We move from connection to the landscape to communion with it.

We also experience Brigid as patron of healers, poets, midwives and smiths through shared poetry, herbal remedies, deep listening and sharing, which can support us in finding healing, artistic inspiration and support in birthing and forging the new in our lives and our souls.

Again and again, I step out on pilgrimage in general, and Brigid’s Way in particular, to walk deeper and deeper into who I essentially am, beyond the distractions, thoughts and beliefs that sever me from parts of myself, from intimacy with others and from melting into nature.

I step out again and again to cross the threshold from separation to unity.

the bush soul.

I leave the blinds up on my bedroom window when I sleep and the soft yellow light of sunrise awakens me early. Even if I stay in bed, as I usually do, I raise my head just long enough to glimpse the sunlight come over Cnoc an tSamhaidh, Sorrell Hill beyond the lake. In the evening, as the sun sets behind me, I sit outside my cottage and delight in the blazing gold windows of the houses at the foot of the same mountain. Bailte Buí, I coon to myself - the yellowed townlands - that I call home.

John Moriarty invites that ‘the who I am is intimately connected to the where I am.’ I am sensing that coming evermore home to where I am allows me glimpse an emerging trail to coming home to who I am, to my bush soul.

For so long, I have rushed around in a car, ferrying three children, shopping in endless supermarkets and getting things done. I’ve lost what my ancestors had before me – the daily feel of the rising slopes in my calves, the slap of the wind as it tunnels over gaps in hills, the intimate relationship with the flora, our food, around me. I have fallen out of elemental relationship with my landscape.

Ireland itself has lost so much of its forests and its biodiversity that looking around, we often no longer know where we are at all anyway. The land is so built up and paved over that we don’t know if the place under our feet is forest or meadow or bog.

The last remnants of the landscape are often the mocking names of the housing estates that destroyed them – Sorrel Wood, Springfield Green, Oak Wood.

Placenames, logainmneacha in Irish, are golden threads that help me remember where I am and entice me back into elemental relationship with the landscape. Often the Irish and English names of places differ and usually the Irish, the older and original version, points us more helpfully back to ourselves. I’ve had the good fortune of being educated in Irish (go raibh míle, a thuistí) so I can make a stab at the meaning of a placename but often, I still have to reflect, ask, google to get more clarity. The reward is great.

I see that the four elements are celebrated in the loganimneacha around me and they entice me out to ponder, explore and connect. The earth element stands out in placenames like the village of An Leacain/Lacken that beckons to me across the lake, its name referring to its slablike/hillside location. A stone church huddles here between hill and lake. It is this church that brought me to this area almost twenty-five years ago, when I married Alastair there. He died suddenly four years later and the memory of our Christian-pagan wedding connects me viscerally to him, and to this landscape. I eventually bought a house across the lake from the church and I live now, for a while, on the other shore from him.

Along the road from An Leacain, the name of the village Buaile an Chnocain/Ballyknockan informs us that this area is a summer pasture (for the cattle) on the hillside. In the evening, as I look over at it, spotlit by the setting sun, I notice that more deer than cattle graze there now.

The element of water and corresponding vegetation are also celebrated in the placenames. Cnoc an tSamhaidh, Sorrel Hill invites me to see how much sorrel is left on them there hills (and to add some to my picnic sandwich).

I go through Eanach Carnaigh/Annacarney regularly to meet friends for a sauna in Belle’s horse-box in Cnoc na dTriús/Knocknadroose. Knowing that Eanach is a Marsh makes sense of the ubiquitous reeds in the fields and that Trius means Brambled awakens me even more to the golden, blazing gorse along the hillside on the way to the sauna.

Cnoc na dTrius is on the Slí Caoimhin/St. Kevin’s Way pilgrimage, which I often follow with the desire to move from walking in nature to walking as nature. The placenames spur me on. The pilgrimage moves through Oakwood, whose name makes me scurry out in May to saunter through their ephemeral treasure trove of bluebells, and it leads to the famous Gleann dá Loch/Glendalough or the Valley of the two lakes.

The element of fire is celebrated here too in the townlands of Granabeg/An Ghreanach Bheag and Granamore/An Ghreanach Mhór, translating as the small and the big sunny places. The monoculture Sitka Spruce plantations have sunk their teeth into the area now but as I feel the bog underfoot, the placenames make me wonder if this area was originally naturally unforested, creating sunny clearings in dense, vibrant, native forest.

As I walk on, placenames remind me to zip up my jacket as the element of air comes to play as whipping wind over the Wicklow Hills. A typical halfway point of St. Kevin’s pilgrimage, Ballinagee/Baile na Gaoithe translates as the Town of the Wind. Coming closer to Gleann dá Loch, I snigger in playful cahoots with the landscape as I pass Tonelagee, a hill literally with its Arse to the Wind.

Logainmneacha/placenames bring me into a deeper intimacy with the land. As in any relationship, knowing the other’s name is a pretty essential first step. As I walk these hills, I often move from sensing the elements in the landscape, to feeling into the elements in me – the earth of the bones of my feet on the trail, the water of my saliva and my sweat, my breath in my chest that interchanges with the trees, the fire in my warming body as I move. Earth around me. Earth in me. Water around me. Water in me. Air around me. Air in me. Fire around me. Fire in me.

Other placenames remind me again and again of the sacred nature of my surroundings. They remind me to walk with reverence and joy. The Irish name of my local village An Chrois/Valleymount, translates as The Cross and I know to look out for the cross-inscribed stone, half-lost to moss and forgetfulness, on the Togher road. Tóchar means pilgrim path in Irish. The nearby Cillín Caoimhín or Kevin’s Little Church reminds us also of the gentle St. Francis-esque saint that walked these lands. Historians suggest that this was also a place of pilgrimage and celebration for the pre-Christian Lughnasa festival.

The English name for Cillín Caoimhin is Hollywood. Most visitors are more interested in its claim as the origin of the name of Hollywood in Los Angeles but for me, I love that it means Holy Wood. Here Caoimhín/Kevin, walking through a thick oak wood, asked the trees to make way for him, so he wouldn’t have to cut them down. Caoimhín, meaning the gentle one, lived deeply from his bush soul it seems and I imagine he knew the elemental names of the landscape around him. Calling them by their name, by his name, the trees listened and drew apart to create a path for him.

Perhaps, with the help of our logainmneacha/placenames, we too can remember how to come into communion with our local trees, our hills, our lakes, our bogs. Perhaps these open secrets can help us to reclaim our bush soul and to live more gently on this earth.

The day of the fifth anniversary of my husband Alastair´s death fell on Pentecost Sunday, 27th May. Arising early, I set off at dawn to walk along the estuary near my home in Brazil. This year, he felt so absent and I was in a quiet despair. The sky crowned the Atlantic ocean before me in a haze of dark blue, dim blue and pastel green with brushstrokes of pink and pale-red streaking across it, heralding the sun´s imminent rise. The colours moved like a southern aurora borealis behind the forest-green island in the bay, flowing over the sea and now the lake that spilled into it. I was in a canvas being painted.

Despite my Irish Catholic upbringing, my knowledge of Pentecost was hazy to say the least. My sons’ Steiner teacher Sylvia gave me a quick synopsis - according to the Christian faith, after resurrecting on Easter Sunday, Jesus stayed for forty days among his disciples. He ascended into heaven on Ascension Thursday, physically leaving the disciples for the second time. The disciples felt totally bereft without him, sensing his absence so keenly. Ten days later, to their joy, the holy spirit descended on the world as a symbol of Jesus´ eternal love and presence in their hearts.

Each year, Sylvia avoids telling this story to the 4 to 6 year olds in her class, including my son Liam. Instead, for forty days after Easter, in her classroom, a new, brightly painted egg-shell appears hanging on a branch over the lunch table each morning. She says nothing about it. Each morning, a new egg simply appears. After a couple of days, some children start to notice the eggs and marvel at the colour and decoration on this morning’s new egg. Soon all of the children run into the classroom first thing each morning to admire the day´s new egg. Their shrieks of delight fill the room.

One morning, the children run into the classroom and encounter the hanging branch totally empty and bare. All of the eggs have suddenly and abruptly disappeared. The sense of loss among the children is palpable. ´Where are the eggs?´ ´Those beautiful coloured eggs?´ The teacher remains silent, shrugging her shoulders and allowing the children to experience this gentle loss.

Ten days later, the children arrive one morning and one large, exquisite gold goose’s egg is hanging from the branch over the lunch table. The children point and clap their hands and laugh out loud at its presence. Joy pulsates from the room. Still the teacher says nothing. This is how she teaches the children about the Christian feast of Pentecost - viscerally.

Earlier that fifth year of mourning, I went to Ireland to launch Love’s Last Gift, a book about the sudden death of my husband Alastair and afterwards, I lived my own personal pentecost. The launch was, for me, the end of five years of active mourning, while also fulfilling his dream of having his name on the front cover of a book and raising money for the charity set up in his name in Brazil. A picnic in St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin before the launch, with the sharing of Alastair´s songs, marked the oficial end of my mourning.

The day after I got back to Brazil where I was living at the time, I was giving my son a foamy bath. While in the bath, he asked to play in the water with the gold ring on my right middle finger. I had worn this ring for five years, since the night of Alastair´s death. It was his wedding ring and I often roled it against my lips in thought, a reminder of his continuing presence and love. When I took my son out of the bath, I got distracted and forgot about the ring. I only remembered it an hour later, when we were having dinner. I ran to the bath, but we had let the water out and the ring was gone from bath and drain.

For the next week, I felt bereft, a clawing sense of loneliness, as if Alastair´s continued support and love for those five years, imbued in his wedding ring, had truly come to an end. This was my personal Ascension Thursday moment and it ached.

The following Sunday was the morning I set off on my dawn walk - Alastair’s fifth anniversary and by chance, Pentecost Sunday – and I walked with despair and a deep sense of his absence. The waves of the sea crashed on, crashed on, passionately engrossed in their own beauty. Four dark dots, fishermen, stood ankle deep in the lake, holding their tarrafa fishing nets silently, facing eastward out to sea. Nearby the snow white egrets, slight and elegant, stood on one leg and waited. The nightlights of the B&Bs scattered around were still lit and everyone slept on, unaware of the majestic show unfolding about them. As I walked down to the lake, the red-eyed quero-quero birds cawed their protective caw. A cacophoony of birdsong sang in delirious joy. Flocks of swallows fanned out, swooned and regrouped to fly north. The lake shimmered with their reflection. A couple of stragglers beat their wings furiously to catch up and I willed them onwards with my gaze.

From out of view, the gold-red sun now rose over the horizon, streaming out a path of light across the sea water, as it rose. The surface of the lake was perfect stillness, holding its breath. At that moment, out of nowhere, I was filled with a sense of bliss. Like the descending of the holy spirit, nature was giving me my own personal Pentecost moment. In this instant, it dawned on me with elated certainty that though Alastair’s love was no longer visible in the physical form of his wedding ring on my finger, his love is ever-present like the sun, pulsating firmly and eternally in my deep heart’s core.

There is nothing like love unfurling in spring-time.

Everywhere, darkness softens into light, cold melts into warmth, stillness stirs into gentle movement.

The hedges echo me. The fields echo me. The lambs and foals and calves echo me.

I have fallen in love a handful of times in my 50 years. Often in Spring. Sometimes reciprocated, others - not so much.

I have been set alight by the bubbling joy of deep recognition, like a remembering. I have tasted the sweet adventure of building a life together, of love blossoming into parenthood three times. I have choked on the quiet devastation of sudden widowhood in my early thirties. Since then I have fallen a couple of times, short reprieves when everything felt possible. No regrets. I have licked the bowl clean with falling in love.

This Spring, the spring of my fiftieth year, I turn to rising in love. time now to deeply rise in love with myself. Not to the exclusion of the other but as the ground that I must now till – essential for me and for any other love to bloom. I know, I know, this is such a cliché – yes. But that doesn’t stop it from being true.

Sometimes in meditation, I have that same bubbling joy. I recognise that silent hum at my core, like a remembering. What I’m looking for is where I’m looking from. (According to Saint Francis, I think.)

I have lived through fifty years of portals and arrived here.

I love you.
I love.
Love.

Can I give to myself what I have sought from others all these years? Lifelong commitment ‘til my death? Fidelity - stating my truth and living it? Can I be compassionate, nonviolent with myself in the privacy of my own head? In illness, can I love my own body as it aches and shakes?

This spring, the hedges echo me once again. This time, love points inwards.

Rising in love

White
tentative blackthorn
after a long winter
bare,

Then pink
cherry blossom,
white apple,
white pear.

Boom!
Hawthorn,
White elder
Then white mountain ash,

Now
bright yellow iris
in riverside
dash.

Reflecting
my sweetness
Echoing
the ways,

I bloom,
and I blossom
‘Neath
my loving gaze.

Bright yellow dandelions carpeted our lush, green April fields again this year. It’s hard not to smile at a field full of sunny dandelions. There is an Irish saying that ‘an rud is annamh, is iontach’, that which is rare is wonderful, but in the case of the dandelion, that which is widespread and plentiful is wonderful. These open-faced sunrays are full of healthy vitamins and minerals and are good for liver, digestion and skin. Infused in oil. it is good for aching muscles and to reduce inflammation, If a medicinal flower arrives in such abundance on the land, I assume that I must be in need of its support, so off I go, basket in hand, a-harvesting.

I’ve used dandelions leaves and petals in salads for a few years now and add flowers to herbal mixes of tea. Last year, I made dandelion pesto from the leaves for the first time. The taste lived up to their Irish name Caisearbhán, with searbh meaning bitter. Nothing that an exaggerated heap of parmesan couldn’t fix. This year, I dug up some roots to make coffee. It was heavy work. Their roots dig deep. I washed the roots and chopped them up and roasted them in the oven. I overcooked them of course - a regular occurrence with me. (When the smoke alarm goes off in our house, my three boys sing out in chorus ‘dinner’s ready’.) I put the roasted roots in the coffee grinder and made a cafetière of coffee. What a lot of digging for not much coffee! The taste was passable - more ground charcoal then coffee – but all in all, it was a fun experiment. I also made dandelion spaghetti from the stems – boiling them like pasta and then frying them with wild garlic, salt and butter. Not much can go wrong with enough butter, salt and garlic and true to form, this dandelion stem spaghetti was undeniably tasty as well as nutritious. Polish friends even taught me how to make a dandelion crown to wear with delight at the cross-quarter celebration of Bealtaine.

What fascinates me most about dandelions is the metamorphosis they go through from green bud to yellow sunlike flower to white, moonlike seedhead and then the individual seeds float off on the wind like shooting stars. As kids, we would tell the time by blowing the seeds off the seedhead, counting the time with each breath until all the seeds were gone. Watching their changing colours dot the fields is one of my true April delights. Last year, I plucked a young budding dandelion and put it in a glass by my bed. Each morning, I drew her. (She was definitely a ‘she’). This daily ritual sharpened my eye and brought me into relationship with her. Soon a gentle intimacy arose between us - bush soul intimacy. I came to see her process of transformation as a reflection of my own on the threshold of turning 50. This poem unfurled from our shared intimacy.

MetAMORphosis

I was love-struck in April
The fields were ablaze,
Bright yellow with dand’lions
Ten thousand sun-rays.

I plucked one in rev’rence,
Placed her in a glass,
Kept next to my bedside,
Lest memory pass.

For days she beamed brightly,
At nights she slept through,
One morning she dozed on,
And never came to.

I thought to replace her,
What use was she now?
Her sunny face faded,
Her stem all a-bow.

She twisted more tightly,
Her head, it did swoon,
Surrendered completely
To leaflet cocoon.

She spat out her top-cap,
That served her no more,
I found it, surprised,
Right there on the floor.

Then slow, slow unzipping
Now naked and bare
She shook out and open
Her cosmic white hair.

More rounded, more fruitful,
Much lighter and free
The dandelion seed head,
A ripe, full beaut-y.

----

I too am a-fading,
My cocoon so tight,
What should I let go of?
For what should I fight?

Does beauty await me?
Now deeper, more true?
Will surrender help
Me blossom anew?

We stroll past the playground that peels with the movement and laughter of children and we wind our way along the concrete path to the first area. I exhale audibly with pleasure into the idyllic scene of clear lake waters framed by tidy, verdant vegetation. We have come to a jewel of manicured calm in the centre of Tallaght. Here, life unfolds with order and neat beauty. Gleaming white swans glide on the lake – a pair of adults, followed closely by two cygnets.

We stop to stand at the lake-edge and soak in the quiet beauty.

This family of swans awakens memories of the family I created with my husband almost twenty years ago. I coo with contentment at what was.

***

I brace myself now as we turn the corner to enter the area that was destroyed by tonnes of river silt. Leaving this idyllic image of my past, my body tenses at the realisation that the impending devastation mirrors the sudden death of my husband all those years ago, when our two little cygnets were one and three.

I turn the corner and yelp out loud at what I encounter.

I am standing not in a wasteland as I expected but in a lush, unkempt meadow - wild and wonderful – bursting at the seams with life. It is so much more vibrant, sensual, intoxicating than the pristine scene before. Multi-coloured wild flowers abound, high grasses beckon - there is an audible hum of insects and a cacophony of birdcalls. The aliveness of it!

A wild oasis has arisen from the gallows of destruction. I viscerally experience the vital force at play behind the landscape. I feel it in my deep heart’s core – a flip-flap, leaping recognition.

Heart-struck, I follow the other women as they sit in a circle in the long grass. Moments tick by. We sit, ablaze, in silent communion. My heart sings in tune with the birdsong overhead and soon my voice chimes in - I am the light, light, light of my soul, I am beautiful, I am bountiful, I am bliss, I am.

****

After sitting a while, the guide invites us to explore the area alone for a while. I stand and begin to meander through the blossoming meadow, scattering holly blue butterflies as I go, trailing my hand along the heads of the grasses. I come to a fallen tree. Its branches are slowly turning black. I climb into its crooked embrace, curling my body against its brittle branches. This tree is a remnant of the death and destruction that this area suffered – toxic silt choking, burning plants and all other sentient life. I allow myself be held by the rubble. Tears start to flow, slowly at first, then in torrents, streaking my cheeks.

I get the acute sense that this decaying tree mirrors the despair I experienced at my husband’s death. He was 39 at the time. I was 31. We were on holiday. We were trying for a third child. We were deeply in love. There is still a heaviness in the pit of my stomach as I think of that time. I still miss him. I miss sharing the children with him. As they move off to college now, independent at last, I feel my husband’s absence more sharply still. I mourn not having him with me to travel and explore the world now and to grow old by my side.

***

As my heart calms, I climb down off the tree and walk once again amidst the yellow ragwort and the red clover. This oasis whispers to me of the wild beauty in death, the wild beauty that can come from life not going as planned. Almost twenty years on, I gratefully acknowledge that my husband’s death broke my life open to become more chaotic, yes, but also more wild and more free. I moved to Brazil, worked with children with chronic illness and indigenous groups, welcomed the surprise of a third son, set out on pilgrimage across South America, wrote two books and raised three boys on a joyful diet of music, nature, friendship and adventure.

I wonder now if nature in this place stopped for even a moment to mourn the damage caused by the dumped silt before moving on to new life. Maybe like a river that meets large rocks in its course, it immediately sought out nooks and channels to flow onwards, not missing a beat. We humans though often fail to flow on so seamlessly. We get stuck in whirlpools, sometimes for decades.

One of the other women signals wordlessly that it is time to leave. I quickly fall in line and make up the rear of our little group. I exhale deeply, allowing my breath to find its rhythm as I walk. We pick our way silently back through the wild meadow, past the fallen tree and the pristine lake - swans flown now - and leave through the park gate.

***

The memory of this walk follows me. It comes to my mind’s eye again and again, offering itself to me.

When I am in a dark place, I place my difficult moment in the contours of the memory’s landscape in search of perspective and peace. There I am clinging, desolate, to the blackening tree. I see myself, scared and sore as I deal with illness, loss, dashed hopes. Moving from the tunnelled vision of despair, I consciously expand out from the tree, perceiving the beauty of the larger landscape – sometimes orderly like the lake, sometimes joyfully chaotic like the wildflowers. Positive aspects of life that were eclipsed by the desolation come into clear view, counterbalancing my despair.

The memory then invites me deeper. It brings me to what is beneath the p

leasurable and the painful. It guides me to round the corner again from idyllic lakeside to expected wasteland and encounter anew the wild oasis instead. Ah! There it is again - the vital force pulsating through it all; the eternal force behind the ephemeral landscape. I recognise viscerally that this is the same vital force that pulses through my own veins.

Time and time again, this inner re-rounding the corner ignites joy within me, renewing my trust that no matter what outer conditions I experience, all is deeply well.

This memory offers me the coordinates I need to guide me back to my Bush Soul.

A field draped in winter is gashed by a long, shallow trench. From it, the spindly shoots of one thousand baby trees peek out tentatively, their bare roots covered by spadefuls of soil. The trees are mostly bundles of dormant young oaks, tucked in beside bundles of alders, birches and other native trees. A thin film of snow laces the soil at their feet. The snow also falls on the toes of my dark green wellington boots as I stand motionless beside them, my quickened breath visible in the air.

It is late December 2020, the first winter of COVID, and I have bought these young trees to plant with extended family and community on Wild Eala, a rewilding oasis of 16 acres on the western shore of the Blessington Lakes.

Earlier that day, an upsurge in post-Christmas COVID cases led to the government announcing restrictions on people’s movements and congregation, usurping my plans to create a forest as a community. As I stand before the full trench, I exhale a long visible sigh. Born and bred in Dublin, I don’t have much tree planting experience nor much physical strength but I will have to plant all these trees within the month if they are to survive. I run the sums quickly in my head and realise that if I work five days a week, I need to plant a full fifty trees a day - on my own.

**

Earlier in the month, I hired a local man, a gentle philosopher in his 70s, to bring his digger and make a thousand deep holes. Having finished, he stepped down from his digger and stood next to me and we surveyed the land before us. The holes peppered the deer-fenced field, a frozen sod of grass-topped earth next to each hole. He whistled and then, in a low chuckle, said:

‘The locals think you’re crazy planting trees on good grazing land.’

I nodded my head with a half-smile, aware that planting trees on the land reduced its commercial value by half and that I had been dubbed ‘the hippy’. The ground lay pocked and expectant before us, as he spoke in his quiet, deliberate way.

‘But you know, when I was a teenager, there was an oak forest in these fields. Those four large oaks over there are the last remaining ones. Before that again, it was a Quaker estate by the name of Oaklands.’

**

My daily grind begins in bitter cold and wind. I wrap up in multiple coats, socks and gloves, and head out to the field with a wheelbarrow full of tools and a large bag of dried seaweed that I commandeer with difficulty to the far field. I start at the first hole, breaking the adjacent near-frozen sod in half with the spade. It is hard to cut the sod and I have to jump on the top edges of the spade so that it slices all the way through. Next, I place the young tree inside the hole as I shovel and scrape hard earth to fill the hole around it. The tree keeps slipping too deep into the hole and I fume silently at having no-one with me to hold the tree as I shovel. I then sprinkle a handful of dried seaweed on the earth before fitting the sod upside down around the trunk and compacting it with the edge of my boot.

These boots are soon caked in heavy mud, matching my mood. It takes me ten minutes to fill my first hole and my hands are already sore-cold beneath the two pairs of gloves. I move tetchily to the next hole. Planting ten trees in the rain and hail have me wet to the core. My nose and fingers are numb now. My cheeks are ruddied by the wind, my lips starting to chap. On I go, filling hole after hole after hole with my head down and determined. I think of our family’s lifetime of plane travel and feel a remorse that spurs me onwards with the gracelessness of duty being done. Each hole filled is a tick on the to-do list of my penance.

Day after day, to the backdrop of rising COVID deaths, I grit my teeth and face into the cold, the wind and the regular showers of rain, hail or snow.

I have rushed through the first week and have planted two hundred trees, when a solitary robin comes and perches on a fence post near me. Her gaze flits between me and the worms in the disturbed earth. I lean on the handle of the spade for a moment to return her gaze and then get back to my task. Slower now - the work starts to find its own rhythm. As I compact the upturned sod around a young oak, a simple song arises spontaneously in me in Irish ‘go n’éirí leat, crannóg, go n’éiri leat, crannóg’ (good luck little tree). The song spreads out like a mist on the cold, quiet air and shakes me out of my dutiful haste.

I notice now the texture of the bark in my hand and the uniqueness of each set of exposed, dangling roots. I start to recognise the different leafless trees from touch without looking at their plastic nametag. I hear the movement of the hedgerow in the wind and the cawing of its occupants. I smell the breath of the wet earth exhaling from the holes.

The daily grind slowly becomes a daily practice.

The young tree in my hand, little more than a metre in length, is so fragile, so dependent on me. If I were to leave these trees with their roots exposed in this weather, they would quickly die. Their absolute sleeping surrender kindles a rising sensation in my chest.

Ah! love.

In the mornings now, I bound out to the field, no matter the weather - wild alive as the rain, hail, snow soaks through my coats and gloves. Each tree I plant now is a new friendship sealed.

My mind travels to the past. I remember my recurrent dream seven years ago of diving headfirst into Irish soil, planting myself – a dream that led me back to Ireland after fifteen years abroad and led me to buy this land. I imagine the oak forest that stood here over fifty years ago and see my local digger man as a teenager, full of vitality, running and laughing among the trees with friends. I picture the Quakers before them again, taking a rest from their looms to walk together amidst the birdsong.

Then my mind spills into the future. I see the trees growing strong and tall and turning this barren field into a living, breathing forest again. I can nearly hear the sharp oo-whit call of curlews in flight overhead.

A steely commitment erupts in me. ‘You will never be cut until you fall from old age,’ I promise the trees in a loud gush. Some of them sway audibly before me in seeming applause. ‘I will never sell this land and will set up a trust to ensure protection when I die,’ I pledge to the sods of earth as I cut and fit them around the young trees.

It dawns on me that I will never enjoy this forest in its prime. Tree time is so much longer than human time. Other people and countless creatures will find refuge in this forest in all its glory but not me. I consider for a moment the many woods I have walked in my life and for the first time, I feel a surge of warm gratitude for all the anonymous hands that planted or protected them for me.

As a soft rain falls, I am plugged into the full, unbroken chain from past to future. My heart soars. Like a pebble thrown into the lake of time, it expands out in concentric circles, including everything.

Here. Now.

Cut, place, shovel, scrape, sprinkle, fit, compact, sing.
Cut, place, shovel, scrape, sprinkle, fit, compact, sing.
Cut, place, shovel, scrape, sprinkle, fit, compact, sing.
Cut, place, shovel, scrape, sprinkle, fit, compact, sing.

I am a dance with tree and spade to the crisp music of blade-on-sod.

The crux of the childhood story is that a king, Labhraidh Loinseach has long, bushy hair that he only gets cut once a year. Each year he kills the hairdresser after he/she cuts his hair. Fear flows in the community and the King’s heart. It gets to the point that there is only one hairdresser left in the province – a widow with 3 children. She is summoned to the palace and turns up reluctantly, with fear in her heart. As she is cutting the King’s hair, she soon realises why the king kills the hairdressers. She sees that the King has two horse’s ears. As the king draws his sword to kill her, she begs him to spare her as a widow with three boys and she promises never to tell anyone what she saw. His heart softens and he lets her go, warning her that he will kill her whole family if she breaks her promise. Over time, the secret starts to strangle the hairdresser from within. She goes to see the Druid and he counsels her to tell her secret to a tree in the forest. Like Jimi, the widow goes off into the forest to unburden herself to a tree and she comes across an inviting willow tree. She throws her arms around the tree, nestles in the crook of its embrace and whispers ‘Labhraidh Loinseach has horse’s ears’. After a while, relieved and revived, she goes home to her three children.

The next day, the King’s woodsman is in the forest to cut down a tree to make a new harp for the King’s court. He comes to the willow tree and cuts it down. At the next community solstice celebration, the King and his people are enjoying the feast. The King claps and calls for the court harpist. The harpist has his new harp. Before he can play, the harp itself starts to sing ‘Labhraidh Loinseach has horse’s ears, Labhraidh Loinseach has donkey’s ears’. A hushed silence falls on the community. The King reddens with anger and shame as moments tick by. Suddenly the excited voices of the children are heard – ‘horse’s ears, how fantastic! We have such a special King – the best King, the most special King’. All the people start to cheer and whistle with delight. The King’s face changes into a smile and he pulls back his hair to show his ears. The people whistle and cheer even louder and the celebrations go on until dawn, with the King and the hairdresser leading the dance.

As I write out the story - slowly in Irish, quickly in English - it strikes me that this childhood story is about the Bush Soul and is an antidote to the more widely known story of The Emperor`s New Clothes. We have become ashamed or ignorant of our Horse’s Ears, of our connection, of our oneness with Nature. It has made us unhappy, violent and intolerant. Could it be that by recognizing our oneness with nature again, by embracing and confiding in trees, by listening with bigger, more sensitive ears to the voices of children, to our traditional music and native tongue, to the trees themselves, we will once again delight in our true bush nature, banish fear and celebrate life more fully?

I invite you to read the story in simple Irish below out loud to hear the sound of this beautiful teanga and to see if you can follow it.

Fadó, fadó in Éireann, bhi rí ann agus an t-ainm a bhí air ná Labhraidh Loingseach. Bhí cáill ar Labhraidh Loingseach de bharr a chuid gruaige – gruaig fada, gráganach a bhi aige agus níor ghearr se a chuid gruaige ach uair amhain sa bhlian. Gach blian, tar éis don ghruaigeadóir gruaig an rí a ghearradh, chuir an rí an gruaigadóir chun bás. Tharla sé seo ar feadh na blianta agus bhí eagla ar ghach gruaigeadóir sa Chúige go gcuirfeadh sé glaoch air nó uirthi. Tháinig an t-am nach raibh ach gruaigeadóir amháin fágtha sa chúige uilig - baintreach le triúir mac óga. Ghlaoigh Labhraidh Loingseach uirthi agus le heagla ina croí chuaigh sí chuig pálás an rí.

Thosaigh sí ag gearradh gruaig an rí agus bhí crith ina lámha. Tar éis cúpla noiméad, thug sé faoi dearradh go raibh rud éigin difriúil le cluasa an rí. Thosaigh a lámha ag crith níos mó nuair a thug sí faoi dearradh gur cluasa capaill a bhí aige – dhá cluasa capaill! Thig sí anois cén fath gur chuir an rí na gruaigeadoirí uilig chun bás. Nuair a chríochnaigh sí ag gearradh, bhain an rí a chlaíomh amach chun í a mharú. Thit sí síos ar a glúine. ‘A ri uasail,’ dùirt sí, ‘más é do thoil é, scaoil saor mé agus geallaim duit nach ndéarfaigh me focal ar bith le duine ar bith faoi cad a bhfaca me anseo. Bíodh trócaire agam dom. Is baintreach mé agus tá trúir mac óg agam agus gheobhaidh siad uilig bás muna bhfuil mé in ann aire a thabhairt dóibh.’ Bhogaigh croí an rí agus scaoil sé saor í leis an rabhadh go gcuirfeadh sé an triúr mac chun bás muna chomhlionadh sí a gealltanas.

Ar ais sa bhaile lena páisti, bhí faoiseach ar an ngruaigeadóir agus níor duirt si rud ar bith le héinne faoin rí. Le dtrácht na haimsire áfach, thosaigh rún an rí ag cur isteach uirthi níos mó agus níos mó. Bhí an rún beagnach ag pléascadh amach as a béal agus ní raibh sí in ann é a choinneáill isteach níos mó. D’iarr sí ar an Draoi cad a bhféadfadh sí a dheanamh. Dúirt sé lei dul isteach sa choill agus an rún a insint do chrann. An lá ina dhiaidh, chuaigh sí go dtí an coill agus tháinig sí ar chrann sailí. D’fhéach sí mór thimpeall uirthi – ní raibh duine ar bith le fheiceail sa choill. Bhreith sí ceann croí leis an gcrann agus dúirt sí i gcogair ‘tá dhá cluas capaill ar Labhraidh Loingseach’. Le scaoilt na focail sin, tháinig faoiseamh uirthi agus d’fhill sí abhaile, go breá sásta lei féin.

Lá ina dhiaidh sin, bhí coillteoir an ri ag siúl tríd an gcoill ag lorg an crann oiriúnach chun cláirseach nua a dhéanamh do chúirt an rí. Tháinig sé ar an gcrann sailí. ‘Sin é an crann foirfe don chláirseach’, a smaoinigh sé dó féin. Bhain sé amach a thua coille agus ghearr sé síos an crann. Cúpla mí ina dhaidh sin, bhí an rí ag ceiliúradh an grianstad leis an bpobail ar fad. Taréis an féile mór, bhuaill an rí a bhos agus ghlaoigh sé ar an gclairseoir. Bhí an cláirseach nua déanta as an gcrann sailí ina bhaclainn aige agus thosaidh sé á sheinnt. Go tobann, thosaigh an cláirseach féin ag canadh. ‘Tá dhá cluas capaill ar Labhraidh Loingseach, tá dhá cluas capaill ar Larbhraidh Loingseach.’ Thit ciúnas mór ar an bpobail. Las an rí le náire agus fearg.

Go tobann, sa chiúnas, chualadar guthanna na bpáistí agus iad ar bís. ‘Nach rí iontach speisialta a bhuil again ar fad. Rí le cluasa capaill! Níl rí níos spesialta in áit ar bith sa tír. Thosaigh gach éinne ag bualadh bos agus ag feadaíl agus ag glaoch amach I nguth ard - ‘Tá rí speisialta againn, an rí is fearr, an rí is speisialta! Go maire go deo le Rí Laghraigh Loingseach.’

Tháinigh ionadh ar an rí agus bhain sé a ghruaig óna aghaidh chun a chluasa a thaispeaint don phobail. Thosaigh gach éinne ag feadaíl níos láidire fós. Lean an ceiliúradh ar aghaidh go dtí breachadh an lae agus ni raibh eagla ar an rí nó gruaigeadoiri sa chúige riamh arís.

Slán go fóill/Bye for now

An old metal milk churn, an honesty box, is the first thing to greet me. I slip the suggested entrance fee into the slit at the top of the milk churn and step into a wonderland of colour. Flowers strain their waving heads towards me – an explosion of pink, red, yellow, blue and green, endless tones of green. I saunter through the welcome of flowers, stopping for a moment at a sculpture made from pink-rimmed folded cloth. Leaving the rush of colour, I begin to descend into the steep forested valley that creaks under the weight of brown-green moss and ferns. In the valley bed, I walk across a rickety bridge over a gurgling stream and pass a large, low, wooden table, straight from a fairy-tale, that is being slowly reclaimed by lichens. Up the other steep side of the valley I go, moving through the dense canopy until ah!, step out into a bright, wild-flower meadow and a stretching vista of green fields and Wicklow hills. A mowed path snakes its way through the meadow, leading first to a tall, solitary standing stone and then to a large rath encircled by mature sycamores.

I happen upon this unexpected haven, Huntingbrook Gardens, on my way from my parents’ house in Dublin to my stone house on the edge of the Blessington Lakes. I have just moved back to Ireland from Brazil with my three sons, after 15 years abroad. I came back to Ireland after having a recurring dream for six months. In it, I was diving into soil, acutely aware that my roots need nourishing. I left Ireland straight after studying at University College Dublin and am now 37 years old. Over the years, I spread my branches wide to over 20 countries but largely ignored my roots.

Later at home, touched by the breath-taking beauty and diversity, I go online and find the owner Jimi’s e-mail and send him a message to thank him for creating and sharing such a vibrant, verdant sanctuary.

A week or two later, I make my way back to Huntingbrook Gardens to join an evening meditation group. After class, Jimi and his partner invite me to stay a while, when everyone has left.

Alone now, in hushed tones, they ask me – ‘You are Bébhinn, right?’ I nod, intrigued.

‘We have a strange story to tell you,’ Jimi begins.

‘On New Year’s Eve last year, we sat by the standing stone in the wildflower meadow and meditated, asking the stone to tell us its story. I inherited the land here but the family has no information about the origins or meaning of the stone. As we meditated, we both sensed that someone else was present and it was a woman. Then I heard the sound ‘bay-veen’. I didn’t know if was a name or just a word but I heard it loud and clear. We asked some friends about it and they said it could be the unusual old Irish name Bébhinn - your name. Now, six months later, you turn up here at the Gardens, first sending an email and now in person.’

I laugh out loud.

‘So we think you can tell us about the standing stone,’ Jimi adds with a wink.

I open my hands empty before them. ‘I know nothing about standing stones, I’m afraid,’ I say, ‘but I really appreciate you telling me about this experience. It confirms to me that I was right in my decision to uproot my three boys from Brazil and come back here to Ireland. The land called me back.’

***

Months pass by. Seeking to plant myself and native trees back into Irish soil, I search for land to buy. One day on a walk by the lake, I stumble across a for-sale sign by a rickety cattle gate. I climb over the gate and explore the gently sloping fields. It is 16 acres of mostly bare agricultural land on the western banks of the Blessington Lakes, surrounded by ancient hedgerows full of ash, hawthorn and elder, tangled in blackberry brambles. I come across a native wych elm in the hedge, fully mature and disease-free. A row of five majestic oak trees stand like sentinels right in the heart of the land. They feel like the true owners of the place. The low grass and lack of any wildflowers suggest that the land is being used for grazing cattle and lathered with fertilisers to fortify the invasive grasses and insecticides to repress any other growth. I look east over the lake as I walk the land and imagine its sunrises and moonrises over the water. It feels so feminine somehow - hard-worked and under-cherished. A lost pocket of land by the lake. The St. Kevin’s Way pilgrimage passes by it on its way to the breath-taking oasis that is Glendalough. Looking out across the broad lake, I gasp as I make out the small triangular roof of Lacken church. This is the church in which, twelve years ago, I got married to Alastair, my late husband and father to my young children. I feel in my gut -this is the place for planting.

I buy the land and every day after dropping the boys to school, I walk, getting to know it. I discover where the wetter patches of land are as the rushes grow back. I notice the exposed areas as I feel the prevailing winds from the northwest and find the sheltered places when sudden rain-showers or strong winds surprise me. Sometimes I fall asleep in the crook of one of the old oaks, other times I play tin whistle from the branches of the old crab-apple tree. Over and over, I ask the land in Irish ‘céard ba mhaith leat go ndéanfaidh me anseo?’ ‘ what would you like me to do here?’.

After several months, one morning as the fog is lifting off the lake, a wave of impatience and frustration rise in me. Here I am, opening myself like an eejit to hear the land speak and I am getting nothing in return, not a whisper.

Suddenly, stand-out memories of my walks on the land flood my mind – the time I found a tiny eagle with a broken wing, the time I saw the white swans running comically on the surface of the lake, the time a flock of birds were raucously eating the red berries on the rowan tree reminding me it was time to go home and feed my own children. A thought forms – ‘it’s something to do with birds.’ Just then, for a split second, an image appears in my mind - a white swan is flying in the sky overhead and now it turns into the stars of the swan constellation and now, it descends to imprint itself onto the land around me. I gasp audibly. The image is so clear. It is so fleeting. It is so unforgettable.

When I pick up my three boys from school that day, I announce triumphantly - ‘the land told me its name today, it’s Wild Eala – Eala is the Irish word for swan.’ The boys, ranging from ten downwards, laugh at their crazy mother and run towards the car.

****

It feels like an answer from the land - it wants me to map the swan constellation onto Wild Eala. But how? Who could help me do that?

The name Anthony Murphy comes to mind. I walked the 9 day Brigid’s Way pilgrimage earlier in the year, which included a talk by him at the Ireland’s main ancient temple, Newgrange. He is a prolific author and set up the Mythical Ireland website, sharing his vast research about the relationship between the constellations, the old Irish stories and the land.

I contact Anthony by email and ask if he remembers me. He replies that he does and he remembers the land I bought in Wicklow. ‘The land is called Wild Eala now,’ I tell him, ‘and I would like to map the swan constellation onto the land and was wondering if you could advise me on how best to do that.’ ‘Send me the coordinates of the land,’ he invites, ‘so I get a feel for it.’

Later in the day, I notice several missed calls from him on my phone. I call him back and he greets me with an incredulous - ‘why did you buy that particular piece of land?’

‘It was for sale,’ I respond plainly.

‘Well, ‘ he says, excited, ‘I wrote a chapter on the Cygnus or Swan Enigma years ago in my book Island of the Setting Sun and described an alignment of passage tombs, henges and standing stones connected with the Swan constellation. The sites were aligned with the trajectory of the rising tail star of the swan constellation at the time the great Irish temple Newgrange was built, 5000 years ago. The alignment shows that the Irish had deep knowledge of the movements of the stars all that time ago. My theory is that the stones of Newgrange came from along this alignment and I proposed that the white quartz came from Wicklow.’

I can feel goosebumps on my skin as he talks.

‘And when I put the coordinates of your land on the map, I find that the alignment goes straight through the land you bought, it goes straight through Wild Eala. And now you ask me how to map the Swan Constellation onto the land? How did you know the land was on the alignment.’

My head is slightly dizzy as he speaks and the image of the swan constellation grounding itself on the land arises again within me. ‘The land spoke,’ I reply, my tone slightly stunned, ‘the land actually spoke and I listened.’

****

Soon afterwards, my local friend Eleanor Sutherland, a homeopath, herbalist and bean feasa of West Wicklow was babysitting my kids. I was telling her about the whole experience. ‘That’s amazing,’ she tells me with a broad smile, ‘my friend Hilary Healy, not too far from here holds an annual Aisling Eala dance every equinox. She holds it because she too intuited a relationship between the swan constellation and the land around here. You must meet her.’

Eleanor is also a friend of Jimi at Huntingbrook Gardens and he had told her about his meditation by the standing stone where he heard my name. ‘What about Jimi’s stone?’ she asks me now.

With goosebumps rising once more, I take out my computer and go onto Google Earth. I have the full alignment mapped out on it, showing the line going through Wild Eala, the Fourknocks temple, the two Baltray standing stones and several henges. I zoom into Lamb’s Hill where Jimi’s Huntingbrook Gardens are located.

‘Well, what do you know,’ I laugh out loud, ‘Jimi was right. I can tell him all about his standing stone after all. It is right here, right on the Swan alignment too.’

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Fáilte ó chroí, heartfelt welcome to the Bush Soul Living/Maireachtáil ón Anam Nádúrtha substack.

Here, I explore how to live from the Bush Soul, a phrase used by the Irish mystic John Moriarty, as a joyous opportunity to help heal self, species-wide community and planet. This substack includes sharing my personal experiences with nature and conversations about the topic with others, as well as thoughts arising from books, films, songs, poetry, art, online resources etc.

Questions I want to delve into, experientially more than theoretically, include – What is the soul? What is the bush soul? How do we experience it? What is our relationship to nature? How do we connect, communicate and commune with nature? What, if anything, happens when we do? What is the relationship between our bush soul, nature and our indigenous heritage? How can we live from the bush soul in today’s world? What relevance can this have for the climate crisis?

The call to create this substack comes from moving experiences I have had during my rewilding project on Wild Eala in Wicklow, Ireland (www.wildeala.ie) and other places in nature. I want to explore these more deeply, hear if others have had similar experiences and ignite and strengthen a beautiful way of being in the world. I would love to do this in community with others.

Your comments and participation are so welcome.

Go n’éirí linn. May it go well for us.

Here, I explore how to live from the Bush Soul, a phrase used by the Irish mystic John Moriarty. This includes sharing my personal experiences with nature and conversations about the topic with others, as well as thoughts arising from books, films, songs, poetry, art, online resources etc.

Questions I want to delve into, experientially more than theoretically, include – What is the soul? What is the bush soul? How do we experience it? What is our relationship to nature? How do we connect, communicate and commune with nature? What, if anything, happens when we do? What is the relationship between our bush soul, nature and our indigenous heritage? How can we live from the bush soul in today’s world? What relevance can this have for the climate crisis?

The call to create this substack comes from moving experiences I have had during my rewilding project on Wild Eala in Wicklow, Ireland (www.wildeala.ie) and other places in nature. I want to explore these more deeply, hear if others have had similar experiences and ignite and strengthen a beautiful way of being in the world. I would love to do this in community with others.

Your comments and participation would be so welcome.

Go n’éirí linn. May it go well for us.

Subscribe now