Dixon Hill Land Girl

                                                                               (Photo by Robin Jackson, edited by me)

I’m living in a time warp right now.  It’s the annual 1940s Weekend in Haworth.  Thousands of visitors have descended on the village, many dressed in wartime costume.  British sailors, soldiers and airmen are rubbing shoulders with American and Russian personnel.  German officers are walking up the street beside French Resistance workers.  There are period nurses and policemen; I’ve spotted a miner, a padre, an occasional spiv and lots of glamorous ladies in red lipstick and furs (there are also some less glamorous ones in rollers!).  Children are dressed as evacuees and there are even babies in big old-fashioned prams.

Haworth’s steep, cobbled Main Street has been dressed like a film set.  Sandbags are stacked around doorways; windows taped against possible bomb blasts.  Shops sport signs warning of rationing.  But to counter the gloom there’s live music, jiving in the streets and bunting strung from house to house.  Winston Churchill is making intermittent speeches and there are regular victory parades.  So maybe it’s V.E. Day after all.

I’ve become a land girl for the weekend.  And also a marshal for the event (walkie-talkie in one hand, loud hailer in the other – oh, the power!).  Despite the freezing cold, we’ve had a fabulous time today.  If you’re within travelling distance of Haworth, do come along tomorrow and join in the fun.  If not, then indulge in some 40s nostalgia by watching this slideshow I put together of the same event two years ago.

P.S.  Promised to give a shout-out to fellow marshal, Michael.  It was great meeting you, Michael, and far more fun freezing together than freezing alone!

The Ghosts of the Moors

Wandering the moors, every so often we’ll come upon a seat, placed there in memory of someone.  Some of these benches have become our regular haunts.  ‘Let’s visit Vera’, I’ll say to Joss.  Or ‘Let’s go and sit with Jackie’.

The seats always command lovely views and are often in sheltered spots.  They’re good places to pause.

The strange thing is that these women who I never knew in life have become acquaintances of a sort.  Sometimes we just sit together; sometimes I’ll talk to them.  Their names are now familiar to me and I hold them in affection.  The benches that bear their names are markers on our journeys about the moors and part of my personal landscape.

I like it.  I like to know that even though they’re no longer walking the fells themselves, these ladies are still meeting folk and playing a role in people’s lives.  I’m glad of their presence.  And occasionally, I wonder whether one day I’ll become a ghost of the moor myself.  A benign one.  Smiling on girls out walking in the same way that Vera and Jackie and Jose and the rest smile on me.

Changing Places: Kellen Meyer on Ecuador

Perspective

My feet rested on the hard dirt floor of the hut.  Birds sang in the surrounding trees.  Flies buzzed past.  Large tree trunks shaped the oval dwelling.  Gathered grasses tied with vines made up the roof.  A slight wind through the hut cooled the humid day. 

Ten minutes earlier our small group of women had filed in quiet and respectful with only an Achuar greeting. 

We sat on a log bench at the far end of the hut.  The man of the house perched on a stool in the middle, engrossed in his work of weaving a basket.  His bent head adorned with parrot feathers, his chest draped with strands of bird bones and beans. Brown feet touched the earth below his woven skirt.  

Behind him his wife scooped chicha, a fermented drink made from manioc root, into small pottery bowls.  Bowls made by her hands and clay dug from the forest floor.  She squatted with her eight and a half month pregnant belly.  Nimbly brushing her dark hair behind her ear as she leaned over the big pot. 

The conversation between our guide and the man of the house lilted back and forth as we sipped from our bowls. Some things were interpreted.  Most were not.  I found myself shifting on the bench to watch the woman behind them.  Intrigued by her.  Her movements so fluid and sure.  She exuded a certain calm, tending to her home as we sat listening to the language and gestures that floated through the air.  

She pulled out a slab of rock with a hunk of clay on top and began the slow process of creating more bowls.  I watched mesmerized as her hands formed the rough clay into soft pliable pieces which began to take form under her gaze.  Shards of shell were used to smooth the clay and create the sides of the bowls we held in our hands.  Busy in her work, she took little notice of the conversation or the ten women sitting within her home. She had tucked four bowls beneath banana leaves to be dried in the sun before we left that day. 

Her work far from done.  Food still needed to be gathered from the forest.  Her foraging skills determined what they would eat that day.  She would tend to her children, strap the baby to her back, and traverse the forest in bare feet.  Their clothing she would wash in the river.  Safety from animals her constant concern. 

I remember thinking that this life would be so hard.  A life of survival everyday.

Then, she looked up.  Her dark eyes glanced toward her husband and then toward her children playing outside.  A faint smile touched her lips as her hands continued her rhythmic motions on the clay.

A smile so full of contentment. happiness. peace.

Her life. Her view. Her perspective.

I realized, in that moment, that maybe my life would appear difficult to her. The events and activities that my children participate in may seem unnecessary. That consumption of more she wouldn't understand. That to her she would see complexity in owning so much clothing or shoes or things.  To witness the way in which we survive each day in our own jungle and how we separate ourselves from our tribe. 

That moment shifted something deep within me.  Something I have yet to find words for.  A certain way of thinking that will swirl its way into creation.  I know I was forever changed by her that day. Her hands.  Her way. 

All it took was a shift in my own perspective to see it.

(Ecuador 2012)

Kellen Meyer lives in Colorado with her husband and four children.  Enchanted Mama (one of my absolute favourite blogs) is her beautiful ongoing account of their life together.  Kellen visited Ecuador with Pachamama Alliance.

Changing Places is a guest post series about the power of place to change us.  You can read other stories in the series here.  If you’d like to share your story, please contact me for submission details.

LandScape Magazine

I picked up a copy of newly-launched LandScape magazine today.

It carries the tagline ‘Life at nature’s pace’ and is a sort of seasonal Country Living.

There are articles in this first issue on bluebells, bunting and border collies (bedtime reading for Joss).  Cuckoos and crocheted flowers feature, as do red deer and rapeseed oil.  My favourite article lists dozens of uses for rosemary.

Focusing on gardening, recipes, crafts and nature, LandScape will be published every two months.  Launch issue is still available; next issue hits the shelves on June 13th.

Monday Meditation (15)

‘For breath is life, and if you breathe well you will live

long on earth.’

Sanskrit proverb