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In a previous life I was responsible for giving local-authority funding to a large number of environmental groups (broadly interpreted) across London. The only reason I got that bit of the work was because I belonged to Friends of the Earth and I'd always been a gardener of some sort, no matter where I lived.
But when I really got into the environmental groups I realised that for a heathen - seen to much pain of every kind, misery, death and destruction to have any sort of accepted faith - there had to be different way of seeing the world. So, I got into the more animist, vaguely wiccan, druidic stuff, looked at the earth as a whole, vaguely alternative lifestyles.
Life moved on, changed jobs and had other priorities (mortgage/kids etc) but managed to stay with my beliefs.
Since the early 1980s I've been struggling with some pretty serious health problems as a result of which I've had to undergo some pretty drastic and intensive treatments. Currently on another course which makes life grim some days.
But, one of the reasons I moved here was to actually reflect on my beliefs and try to come to terms with or understand them and also put some of them about being almost self sustaining food wise, that sort of thing into practice.
I 'own' two areas of woodland, one that will eventually be thinned and used to extend the potager but the other is just magical - hardly ever touched, wonderfully wild, top of a hill and I can sit up there with a book, bottle of wine and some water in the spring, summer and autumn and just be taken away somewhere. And the use of woodland here cannot be changed, cannot be used for building, cannot be nicked for development - woods is woods!
Every morning I open the shutters at the front of the house and no matter what the weather - and it does get bloody cold down here and it's very wet in what still is a very short winter - I look out across the valley to the village and just wonder at the wonder of it all.
I'm a great believer in Gaia, the earth healing itself. To me, we come and we go, we live and we die. One day somebody else may share my wonder in my woods or my garden, will look around and see what I see - or they may not.
I'm fortunate in that, on balance, life has been good to me and I can indulge my life style. I can live the life style that I want to live, that I've really always wanted but for which earning a living has taken first place. Materially I'm ok, no kids to worry about now, probably well set up for life so can really do my own thing.
My beliefs haven't changed, still believe in the 'new age/alternative stuff', in some ways they have just been confirmed and being here just reinforces them even more.
If there is a God, she had it just about right when she invented fruit and vegatables and gave people the sense to grow them and use them and then talk about them to other gardeners.
But when I really got into the environmental groups I realised that for a heathen - seen to much pain of every kind, misery, death and destruction to have any sort of accepted faith - there had to be different way of seeing the world. So, I got into the more animist, vaguely wiccan, druidic stuff, looked at the earth as a whole, vaguely alternative lifestyles.
Life moved on, changed jobs and had other priorities (mortgage/kids etc) but managed to stay with my beliefs.
Since the early 1980s I've been struggling with some pretty serious health problems as a result of which I've had to undergo some pretty drastic and intensive treatments. Currently on another course which makes life grim some days.
But, one of the reasons I moved here was to actually reflect on my beliefs and try to come to terms with or understand them and also put some of them about being almost self sustaining food wise, that sort of thing into practice.
I 'own' two areas of woodland, one that will eventually be thinned and used to extend the potager but the other is just magical - hardly ever touched, wonderfully wild, top of a hill and I can sit up there with a book, bottle of wine and some water in the spring, summer and autumn and just be taken away somewhere. And the use of woodland here cannot be changed, cannot be used for building, cannot be nicked for development - woods is woods!
Every morning I open the shutters at the front of the house and no matter what the weather - and it does get bloody cold down here and it's very wet in what still is a very short winter - I look out across the valley to the village and just wonder at the wonder of it all.
I'm a great believer in Gaia, the earth healing itself. To me, we come and we go, we live and we die. One day somebody else may share my wonder in my woods or my garden, will look around and see what I see - or they may not.
I'm fortunate in that, on balance, life has been good to me and I can indulge my life style. I can live the life style that I want to live, that I've really always wanted but for which earning a living has taken first place. Materially I'm ok, no kids to worry about now, probably well set up for life so can really do my own thing.
My beliefs haven't changed, still believe in the 'new age/alternative stuff', in some ways they have just been confirmed and being here just reinforces them even more.
If there is a God, she had it just about right when she invented fruit and vegatables and gave people the sense to grow them and use them and then talk about them to other gardeners.
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