A Fall In Time: Week Six

20th to the 26th of October, 2010

Hello, it’s lovely to have you here.

If you have no idea what this message is about (perhaps you signed up to my mailing list as a part of a book giveaway?), or why you are receiving it, head to this introductory piece, which also contains a chapter listing, with links. Below is the sixth week of A Fall In Time.

Introduction: More Human, More Wild

Six weeks with no other humans, apart from those I observed when I resupplied, was making me wilder but, in a strange way, also considerably more human. I looked at myself through a different lens, and I truly looked deep, far into my being. It was not always comfortable.

I began to see all the ways I had gone wrong, the paths followed which were dead ends of a sort and the paths avoided which, perhaps, I should have stuck to. The more time I was out there, the deeper I went. Considerations of time and space, of self and others, of love and of hope.

The odd thing was, when I left the city behind, I knew it was to give me a chance to think, to analyse and look at what had been, what was, and would or could be—but the results were already proving surprising. With the power of hindsight, I think it was this sixth week which saw a pivotal change in this self-assessment. Something to do with the weather, my constant immersion in the natural, and the fact I was now living in my shelter, cooking on a fire and using it to keep me warm. I was now far enough away in time from my previous ‘normal’ life that I could begin to envisage different ways to be, with increasing clarity.

Winter Whispers

…saw the treecreeper again, along with the flock of small birds. They were all gathering insects and calling, then one let out a warning and they all stopped, motionless and silent. A tiny female merlin flew into view, scything through the trees, for all the world like a sleek, streamlined miniature jet fighter.

Today, it feels more like late autumn than late summer or early fall. I still love it, and the shelter is such a cosy retreat.

Journal One. 20th October, 2010.

As I gathered bracken, I found many of the small birds would keep me company, eating any insects I disturbed. I am still undecided as to what my favourite of the birds is, but I love the long tailed tits—looking for all the world like tiny, fluffy, feathery lollipops. Do I need to choose a favourite? Probably not. The merlin would visit several times, trying to catch one of the mixed flock of small birds. I never saw her catch anything while I was looking, but it must have been a scenario that was played out time and time again, day after day, in varying locations.

It was a cold night and a cold morning, the first snows dusting the higher ground. I did not know it at the time, but the coming late fall and early winter would be exceptionally cold, with much of the country grinding to a halt through plunging temperatures and heavy snow. But that is getting ahead of the tale. The wren came close again and I sat still, her tiny black eye gazing at me within touching distance, perhaps wondering what I was, or why I had provided such a banquet of spiders, all neatly collected and kept warmer inside the shelter. I have no idea how long that moment really lasted, time paused and I returned to something ancient, buried within me.

I was delighted that my new sprung bed system had worked perfectly—and also that I had decided to stick with the bivi-bag on top of my down sleeping bag, despite there been no chance of rain getting near it. The night was cold, and full of freezing fog. When I got up, my trousers, which had been resting at the foot of the bed, outside my sleeping bag, were soaked through thanks to that fog.

I was met by frost on the ground outside my shelter, linking together fallen leaves, bracken and moss with silver tracery and ribbons of ice. The idea of being safely and warmly tucked up in the shelter I had made myself while the world froze outside was exciting.

By this point, the thick heather thatching was nearly complete, and the addition of bracken bundles had begun. Bracken, like heather, cuts deeply if you are not careful—and often cuts if you are careful. By the end of that first day of collecting, I had given up wearing my leather gloves, as it was ripping them apart—my hands were only cut when I relied on the gloves—as soon as I took them off I was more careful, and did not cut myself again (my hands were also toughened after five weeks of outdoor work). This felt like an important lesson.

Fortunately, there were very few ticks left after the hard frost of the previous night.

The contrasting light and lower angle of the sun was making taking photographs harder, the image either too bright and washed out, or too dark. Along with using the camera, I snapped a few pictures on my phone on this day whilst gathering bracken, the picture quality is not as sharp, but still acting as a record and memory aid.

That night, as I sat in my bed writing in my journal, I heard a rifle crack, but there was no way of knowing where it had come from, the sound bouncing from hill to hill. It was long after sunset, and I did wonder if it was someone poaching deer. The two vast rocks I was sandwiched between took on a new level of safety. I was sure no one would come near, especially not at night, but the security those stones provided still felt a comfort.

A Sense of Deep Time

Stormy once more and a really high wind chill factor. Yet again I am hugely thankful for my shelter.

Journal One. 21st of October, 2010.

Another no photo day; my journal for the 21st is liberally splashed with the phrase “still raining”, perhaps recorded in the hope that I would later be able to note when this was no longer the case, but that was not to be.

This was the heaviest, most continuous, rain I had experienced since leaving the city and, if you have ever enjoyed time on the west coast of Scotland, you know the sort of rain—incessant, like a power shower turned on as fast as possible and left to run for day after day.

I sat in my little home carving and cooking and writing, dry and warm and sheltered. The centre of the interior, the part below the opening to allow smoke out, was soaked and muddy, but the rest remained dry. I made a note to remove the top of the soil, the peaty, sticky, ancient-smelling black earth, dig down the short distance to the sand and grit below, which drained much faster.

Ensuring I always had a good stack of firewood on hand, as well as making sure my waterbags were full, just in case of extended bad weather, was now second nature to me. It is one of those things which you fall into, no longer really thinking about it, just doing, naturally.

To sit there, in that warmth—whilst the top of the shelter steamed and the hiss of raindrops accompanied the crackle of the fire into which they fell—filled me with a strangely deep sensation of time, of lineage, heading back for hundreds of generations. I was attached to the ancestors through my being out there, in a way I rarely, if ever, felt in what we call civilisation. I was attached to the nature—I did not own the land and I do not believe this is possible, but the land claimed an ownership over me, bringing with it whispers from those it had owned long before I set foot on that hillside.

This is a thought which has not left me, in all the years since.

A Book of Spells

The 22nd of October, 2010, was another day of incessant rain. The skies were low and the water constant. Streams and rivulets were forming everywhere, snaking across the forest floor and seeking their way out into the Atlantic below me.

All was soaked, but I was dry.

I took photographs of a blog post I would send once the rain let up, the last to be recorded in that first journal, as it was nearly full. The excitement of finishing a notebook is something which I have never lost, filling pages with thoughts and observations is like completing a grimoire, a book of spells.

There is much in these journals which has never been shared. I was still processing all that had happened to me, both out in the woods and, especially, in the years before. So often, in our modern societies, we are given no time to truly think things over as deeply as we perhaps should. The weeks I had already enjoyed out in nature were opening me up to even deeper introspection, making me ask uncomfortable questions, and observe and record the answers.

That evening, I prepared myself for a wet walk to the railway station in the early morning, for a final big resupply in Fort William, before the clock change. I did not really want to go, but it was sensible to take the opportunity, not knowing how long I would remain out in my little woodland home.

The Road to the Isles

October the 23rd, 2010, dawned bright and it dawned clear, with a noticeable nip in the air. All the rain was gone, leaving me to wonder if I had somehow dreamt those days of constant downpour, so cloudless was the sky. This is the way of Scotland.

I was up early to catch the train to Fort William again. I did not need much in the way of food, but I knew I would not be able to restock my supplies in the bigger and cheaper supermarkets again after the clock change. If I was to stay out there as long as I hoped, more food would certainly be necessary.

The rain had been so heavy that the railway was being checked for damage following several landslips, and the train was not running. There was, however, a bus replacement. If you are from the UK, these words, ‘bus replacement’, can easily strike you down in sheer terror, before you even mount that first step. In this case, though, I was taking the Road to the Isles (technically, on my way there, I was taking the road from the isles, but it’s still the same road).

This road is one which deserves capitalisation. This area of Scotland was a part of the Lordship of the Isles, with Clan Macdonald of Clanranald, a powerful branch of Clan Macdonald, ruling over the area. The Lord of the Isles title goes back so far that it predates the Kingdom of Scotland and the whole area is soaked in history and, at times, in blood.

I shall talk more about this, about those who once lived in this area, of those who were forced to leave.

Suffice to say, the bus journey was beautiful, and I tried to focus on the landscape every time the wash of voices around me threatened to overwhelm. It was odd to hear so many other people talking amongst themselves, all loud, brash, and with too many teeth. When I got off the bus, I found the noise and sheer weight of people almost unbearable and eased gradually into the resupply by taking a walk through the town instead, sitting for a time on a quiet bench. It is discombobulating, so much humanity, after seeing no one for a long period of time—why are we so loud all the time?

I had decided to check out some of the outdoor gear shops, to see if I could buy some of the kit my sister was trying to source and post—a parcel would be lighter this way. Unfortunately, I could find little of what I needed; at that time, it seemed the shops in Fort William were more used to dealing with weekend adventurers, with hikers who were happy to wear and carry day-glow gear, perhaps preferring a brand name over quality. There seemed to be little which would survive day after day, week after week in the rain, the cold, the mud, the abrasive rocks and clutching trees and brambles.

I did find a Gore-Tex jacket considerably reduced in a sale, and ended up buying it. I normally wore layers of wool, topped by a custom made Ventile cotton smock. Ventile is fantastic when combined with wool; it keeps the wind out and is certainly showerproof—a single layer, however, is not waterproof and, given that my (substantially beaten-up by heather collecting) poncho was now being used as the shelter door, a more waterproof top seemed a sensible purchase.

My other exciting purchase was a pipe. Up until this point I had been happy to hand roll the occasional cigarette, having started smoking again a couple of weeks before I left the city, after managing to quit for several months. Since I had moved into the shelter, and been able to light a proper fire, I felt something was missing, and that a pipe would be far more fitting. It was how the mountain men did it and I wanted to give it a try.

I have always loved the scent of pipe smoke, the tobaccos are far more fragrant than dry, desiccated mass-produced cigarettes. It is a scent that takes me back to my childhood, and my Great Grandfather, a comforting, safe smell, warming. I was pleased to be able to find a decent pipe and bought some tobaccos to try with it, try and find a favourite.*

After I had become somewhat accustomed to the mass of humanity—Fort William really isn’t very big but, to me, it represented a vast metropolis, full of endless noise and loud, invasive stories everywhere—I bought the rest of my supplies and went to sit in a quiet pub to await the bus back. I ordered a pint of beer and sat scribbling in my journal, drawing curious looks from the others in the bar whilst surreptitiously listening to their conversations.

The temperature was due to plummet further, or so said the couple opposite me, relating the various forecasts they had seen and heard. The BBC said this, but ITV said that. I could have told them it was going to freeze simply by feeling the air, smelling the wind and looking at the sky, listening to the world around me, how the deer sounded, how the loon called and how frantic the tiny birds were.

I had already known it was going to freeze that night, even before stepping on the bus in the morning, and I was looking forward to it. The disconnect, forgetting that other people got their forecast from those standing in front of maps and pointing, forgetting that this is how I too once got the weather forecast, felt strong at that moment. It made me wonder, how many other people are there who still smell the wind, who still understand the language of the birds? When was the last time someone had lived near that small glen and looked to the western horizon to determine what the night and day would bring? Could we all do this, with time and distance from our manufactured existence?

The sun was just dropping below that horizon as I reached my woodland home. I could not extricate my camera from the pack in time to capture it, instead relying on my phone to do so. It serves as a reminder.

When I got in to my shelter and started unpacking everything I had a few moments of worry, as I had to rearrange my stores and supplies to ensure they actually fit in the waterproof bags I had hanging on cords around the interior. Fortunately, after a little effort, I managed to make all the food fit and, hopefully, secured away from the ever-present, ever-cute, but ever-ravaging mice. By the time I had done this the moon was up and appeared full. She was bright and the sky clear, the woods lit in an ethereal silver glow, trees casting moon shadow and everywhere steeped in magic.

The fire blazing, I cooked my dinner. I did as I had done on my previous resupply two weeks earlier, and bought some steak, a baguette, butter and this time a full bottle of Shiraz Cabernet. After I was sure I would not need to use my axe or knife I poured myself a peanut butter jar of wine**, packed my pipe for the first time, and sat back to listen to the owls and sounds of the night woods, tired by the other humans during the day and the heavy pack on the walk back but, as I was increasingly realising, content and at home.

* I know

The Forest Path Uk

is also a big fan of the pipe—if you are enjoying this adventure, do have a look at his work, too, you won’t be disappointed. Personally, I eventually quit smoking around April 2011 (I can’t remember exactly when), going cold turkey, and haven’t had a cigarette or pipe since. Strangely, I find I miss the pipe—especially when I am outdoors and by a fire—much, much more than the cigarettes, which I rarely think of at all these days, despite only smoking the pipe for a few months.

**Alcohol and sharps do NOT mix. This is bushcraft 101, but it is bizarre to me how often this rule is ignored.

Naked And Not Very Afraid*

I arose very late today, the latest I have thus far (0950). I’m not sure why, exactly, but it was cold and my sleeping bag was so very warm! I’d also woken at 0400 (or been woken by something nibbling the heather thatch above my head), so I got up, put my boots on and wandered out to relieve myself. It was cold and I was glad to climb back into my toasty nest.

Journal One. 24th October, 2010.

After so many weeks out in the woods and hills, away from people and the man-made issues they bring, I would think nothing of strolling around at night outside my shelter, wearing only my boots. There is something oddly enjoyable about feeling the freezing night air against your skin, knowing that after your bladder is empty you can crawl back into a pre-warmed down sleeping bag, and return to the land of dreams.

After failing to properly document the sunset on my camera on the 23rd, I made up for it with a sequence of such photos on this day, taking fifty-seven different shots. Clear, clean air often enabled me to see for a long way and this is evident on some of the photos.

Other than the sunset, I snapped no other photos on this day, my time being taken systematically working my way among the bracken patches on my hands and knees, gathering huge bundles. The resulting thatch made a huge difference to the weatherproofing, as the thick stalks, bundled together into ten fronds or more, created an angled covering for the rain to flow off.

After the resupply of the previous day, I had plenty of fresh fruit, vegetables and meat. Although these things weigh more than dried or preserved options, they are far more welcoming to eat. For breakfast on the 24th, I had sausage, bacon, black pudding and a penny bun (boletus/cep) fungus I had picked up on the walk back from the railway station, all fried in butter and added to a soft boiled egg in a large soft tortilla wrap. I think the breakfasts in the wilds, whether fried, eggs or just porridge, are nearly always my favourite meal of the day.

I reached the end of my moleskine notebook on this day, and decided to fill in the small gaps I had left earlier in the book, before moving to the new one. Every entry was time and date stamped (not always as clearly as I would like, rereading these!), with signposting throughout, arrows and notes on where to continue reading everywhere. These days, the first thing I always do with a new notebook is go through and number every page—it saves considerable difficulty later, especially when combined with an index of sorts but, back then, that idea had yet to occur to me. It makes linking pages somewhat tricky. As I reread, I’m making this linking clearer, in a different colour pen.

The nights were getting colder still, with the skies clear and the darkness pricked with brilliant starlight. Once the sun had gone, and dinner eaten, I would sit by the fire on the bench I had built, listening to the sounds of the night and watching the sky through the gap in the middle of the shelter roof. I began to wonder whether I’d be able to capture the magnificent stars on my camera, whether it was worth trying.

If you have ever camped with an open fire, or even if you have one in your house, you will know the hypnotic effect the flames can have, especially in the evening, before bedtime. I am not sure who first called it the Bush TV, but it is a perfectly fitting name, and I, for one, would rather spend hours in front of a flickering, dancing fire than a normal television. It is warming, on many levels, and something we as a species have done for oh so very long.

Fire was another connecting strand to those who had walked the path in millennia gone by, another thread to tie me to the land and the ancestors, and something I have never taken for granted. To know fire, how to make it (especially when you can conjure it from sticks, from stones, and from the sun) and how to use it, is a truly powerful thing—it is a security perhaps second only to the ability to find water and, in some places and cases, even more important.

*This title is a play on the Discovery Channel Survival show, Naked and Afraid. I can’t say I have every watched it, as the title just irritates me too much!

Compare the position of the setting sun from the above photos to the one originally shared on the 16th, below, barely a week before. The seasons were changing and the earth was moving fast.

Setting sun on the 16th of October.

Bones and the Earth

October the 25th, 2010, was another day of bracken collection. In places, it grew above my head and, as I went through the local patches, I tried not to waste a frond. In the first of the attached photographs, my shelter is visible—only, it was becoming less and less visible with every day.

You receive an entirely different perspective on the world when you are down on your hands and knees. As children, we are all closer to nature, aided by the simple fact we are physically nearer to the ground; plants around us tower, our senses are assailed from all sides, we slip and fall in the leaves, on the moss. When we grow taller, bend less, forget what it is to roll around in the dirt, crawl or simply lay listening to the hum of bees, our divorce from the earth is hastened. There is, of course, a simple solution. Get back down there, touch the ground, gently feel the different tree bark, is this rock warmer to the touch than that one? How do these leaves feel under bare feet, compared to those? Can you see how this spider web was made? Who lives in this tiny hole? These things are simple and they are free, yet have a powerful medicine.

Gathering bracken for thatching is also a good way to rectify this disconnection. As I collected the fronds, snapping them off at the base by hand, uprooting the occasional plant, loosening the soil, I found myself closer to the tiny tree seedlings, to the fungi, the plants, the insects, slugs, snails, spiders, the little frogs, the robin who kept me company, the moss, the rocks, and the bones of a red deer yearling. I found myself looking at my world in a different way, my face lower to the ground, seeing things differently. I could inhale the scent of the earth, deeply inhale, and it told me a story of its own.

I had walked past the skeleton dozens of times. It was unseen, silent bones sheltered by the growth of the months since it had died. It was only when I started to move the bracken, my face inches from the ground level, that I found it or, perhaps, it found me.

I gathered the bones and added the skull to my shelter. Now, it was Two Skull Shack. Everything has a use in bushcraft, in the study of ancestral skills, and bone was one of those materials our species used extensively until very recently. Plastics have replaced much of what we used bone for and, in some ways, I think this is a sad thing. Animals are still slaughtered for cuts of meat, but the bones (and skins) are rarely turned into anything other than meal or animal food of some sort, if that.

Some of my favourite things to make from bone are copies of the small sewing kits worn in the north by the Sámi, along with buttons, dice, jewellery and needles. The art of scrimshaw is something else I have enjoyed. New pieces to decorate or to use, in a respectful and contemplative manner, can be found with relative ease and relative regularity. If only we remember to look.

How much do we miss by looking ahead and not down, not stopping and examining that toadstool, or laying down to observe a tiny wolf spider, smaller than the nail on my little finger. People rarely look up, either.

Perhaps next time you are out in wilder places, or even just a park or garden, pause for a moment, forget about the worry of muddying your clothing or what others may think, lay down and look, hear and smell the nature, closer. It is often a quiet voice but, by placing ourselves within its embrace, the stories become clearer.

Just watch out for ticks.

A Richness of Rain

It’s dreich. Constant, heavy rain since about midday (there was a break this morning, from when I got up at 0745—but it had started raining as I went to bed last night).

Journal One. 26th October 2010.

A day of no photographs and much water.

The rain in Scotland and, in particular, on the west coast, is something that puts off many people from visiting. I believe there is a beauty in the rain and, as long as you are warm and comfortable, it is there to be admired, something to be thankful for. I had arrived in this part of the world fully knowing its moods; I love the cold-in-the-shade, sunny, blue-sky days, but I also take the time to watch the world when it gets a soaking. The colours, especially the greens, can be stunning, the rich, ancient scent of the earth, the sound of the waterfalls and the churning burns and the dripping from rocks and trees are all enriching on a primal level. Water is life*, and life surrounded me.

Although I was still to fill in all the gaps in my first Moleskine, as mentioned on the 24th, I began to use a second on this day, writing a seasonal piece for Shiverwriggle, my sister,

Lydia Crow

’s literary website. It is a piece I love still, more so because it is all true—despite being Halloween related. I shall share this (slightly spooky) story next week. That second notebook would also be filled out in the woods, fully, every word scribbled inside the shelter I had made, or just outside. There’s something quite magical about that.

*In the Ancestral, Wild Empowerment section of The Crow’s Nest, I shared a piece about water, which might be of interest, so I shall link to it here.

What About You?

How does the changing of the seasons make you feel? More so than perhaps any other, I feel Autumn signals a sighing shut of a year. Does this season make you want to hibernate, curl into a cosy cave and rest, or perhaps make plans for next year, or do you long for colder days, the first snow, perhaps midwinter festivities? At this time of the year, do you head out into your local environment and gather the bounty of the season? Nuts, seeds, roots, leaves, or fungi?

Between Two Seas

Rebecca Hooper is relatively new to Substack but, in that time, I already consider her words old friends. One of the great joys of this space is the constant discovery of wonder, of things that challenge us, that make us feel, of words and images which alter our existence, the path forward no longer the one we might have trudged along yesterday, a seemingly simple, random, read becoming something more, a guiding light.

Between Two Seas is like this. Each essay (and Note or comment, for that matter) is one which carries a seed of change, which lifts a veil onto something Other, something which might not be how you thought you felt but, suddenly, just makes a sort-of sense. These are words which flow together into something beautiful.

Recently, she shared a piece which she said:

“…is really an introduction to between two seas. I don’t intend for this to be a newsletter about my life, but it is a newsletter inspired by the journey I am on, the lessons I am learning (and unlearning, and re-learning) and all the small and beautiful things (like bones, birds, whales, folktales, evolution, painting, poetry) that bring me joy.”

Storms and squalls and shifting sands

And, just this week, she shared an essay about joy (something I am seeing several of lately—some thanks to Nick Cave, others seemingly springing up like shining baubles of fungi in a warm, damp autumnal forest), which also bears sharing. Both of these pieces, and her other work, are well worth exploring—for me, Rebecca being based in Orkney is just the icing on the proverbial cake.¹

if the price for joy is death

Finally

A thank you is due to

Erik Hogan

, who recently demonstrated we can now display images in a wider format—perfect for those of you who view on a computer—with his recent post, Portrait of a Field in Autumn, which is full of the colour and light of this season, elegantly and powerfully captured. You really should look at his work, too.

If you are enjoying these posts and wish to support my work, but do not want to pay to subscribe, you can also leave a tip of any amount.

To read the introduction to my autumnal 2010 adventure, click here.

To go back to Week Five, click here.

I hope you are enjoying reading this revisited journey as much as I enjoy sharing it. If you have liked it, please share with anyone else you think may enjoy the adventure.

I truly appreciate every share, like, and comment. I will reply to everyone who leaves a message—sometimes it just takes a little longer than others.

Thanks for reading,

Alex

1. I am naturally and obviously drawn to anyone writing from or about Orkney. The islands are still the closest thing I have to a home; despite not having lived there in a long time, now, that is where I was raised, at the very end of the analogue period of humankind, playing out in the hills, along the shores and cliffs, being chased by bulls, sneaking into ancient archaeological sites at night, and constantly buffeted and shaped by the wind, skin salted by the sea, and my eyes and brain washed repeatedly by the remarkable light.

I would like to return, one day, to spend some time in Orkney, show Ailsa places I still know well, ensure she understands other children, the lilt and unique words of Orcadian dialect a strong part of my own upbringing, but one I rarely dip into any longer.

Yet, thanks to Brexit, we cannot do this. Sure, we could spend a few months there but, I think, the maximum is six—which means, to all intents and purposes, I am a refugee from my own nation. I know Scotland would like to allow us (and others) to move there for a longer period of time, to have the right to repopulate a nation in places and ways the UK government does not allow.

To be unable to return to a place I still think of as home is not unique to me, it happens and has happened to countless millions, those fleeing war, persecution, despair.

This century will be shaped by these people—as richer nations refuse to actually do anything to halt the horrific changes being wrought on our climate, so too do the poorest pay the price. This is the way it has been for millennia, we have not grown. It is easier for them to somehow instil a seed of fear in their populace that, somehow, everything that is currently wrong, is the fault of the immigrant.

(And if you think those who make the dangerous and often deadly journey to, for example, the UK, do so because they somehow want to arrive and take your jobs, then perhaps you are reading the wrong letter. To risk all like this is not a simple decision, but one forced and hoisted upon the individual. We have an instinct to survive, and this is survival.)

As nations parch and other drown, so too will their populace become something else. They will move, or they will die. And there is only so much those richer nations can do to stop them. Build your walls, but they cannot be high enough. Deport and deport, but more will come. At some point, perhaps sooner rather than later, something will give, something will change. Already, it can be argued that a cascade has begun, that our climate is pushing people away from their own ancestral, cultural geographies, as it can be argued that the steady chip chip chip of erosion on our societies and lives is not just beginning, but accelerating.

A hurricane here, a storm surge there. A pandemic, or three. A failed harvest. A bitter winter. Deeper snows, vast floods, crumbling shores, and burning woods.

In his latest fiction, the writer William Gibson introduced the idea of the Jackpot, which began in the mid 21st century, a combination of disaster after disaster, coupled with political chaos and societal unrest, to begin that chip chip chip, ultimately resulting in an 80% reduction in our species numbers, empty cities and extinct species.

For years now, I’ve gone on and on about active hope, about how we cannot give in to pessimism, cynicism, and despair. That gets us nowhere. Likewise, we cannot be lured by the false joys of hope without activity—it is not enough to simply be positive and upbeat, willing things to be good, we need to work towards an end, we need to push and keep pushing, lest our own jackpot hastens us into a decay from which there might well be no coming back. Active hope means reminding people of what is good, it means a reconnection to nature (this is the whole point of this series, to demonstrate what a deep immersion into a more natural way of life can be like), and it means a re-evaluation of our entire way of life.

We cannot simply wish or manifest climate change away. Nor can we rely on our ‘leaders’’—who have demonstrated, time and again, just how ineffective and corrupt they can be—to stop our own Jackpot.

I have no answers, not here, but instead I am working suggestions and ideas into my fiction, into my other writing. And I suggest you do likewise—think, deeply, and share that thinking. Remind each of us what you see as good and real. We can talk to one another as never before, yet too often those conversations are not worthy of the name; hatred, bile, and cruelty are rampant, and those who could tell us incredible stories often hold them inside, locked away for safety and out of fear.

All of which is to say, we live at a point in our collective history unlike any other. Civilisations come, and civilisations go—this is how it has always been, then the next great civilisation arrives, convinced that somehow it will last for all eternity.

Everything ends, everything alters.

(I would normally tack on a paragraph here to apologise for this off-course section but, actually, I believe it underpins all my work and, therefore, cannot remain unsaid. I have been unable to openly discuss these things for months and months now, so it feels good to be able to begin once again. It might not be pretty, it might not make you feel comfortable, but it is real and cannot be ignored. However, I still place these words as a footnote, which is ironic in some ways.)