But we're revelling in being fully immersed in the elements. There are such riches in just being here, before we start counting up all the goodies we're harvesting and the new skills we're acquiring.
We are being enriched in every sense, our eyes in particular having been wowed with the colour changes in the trees, the light, the vibrant quality of blue in the sky this month...
And it's a season of good, hard graft, as the heat and the drought give way to wonderfully cooler days, where we can work outside and build up a sweat (and some new muscles), starting to move wood around.
Particular trees, like a new hazelnut that popped out from between two tangled beech trees. We worked together one evening, to lop the tops off of the beeches, and to take a handful of saplings our from around this precious nut tree. It was a joy. Giving the smaller tree the chance to be fruitful (nut-full), and to grow larger and wider; this is such an exciting activity!
Shaping the woodland. Crafting the landscape. Making our property meaningful, functional, productive.
We've begun creating paths too; building up branches and leaves, stones and other natural detritus, on the lower sides of proposed pathways - along the steep flanks of our land. Hoping eventually to develop at least some semblance of a walkway, rather than our clinging to trees and plants as we wobble along the steepest slopes! Many mishaps prevail, losing our footing....
Sitting down to refresh ourselves with our spring water, and looking out on new views that we're opening up - it's truly awe-some to be inter-acting with the landscape in this way - like painting it! Watching it take form, under our custodianship.
The change comes so very quickly; colours leap out of the masses of green: the hillside becomes more character-full, less monotonous! Wee saplings create bursts of bright contrast against more neutral leaf mould, and the whole cacophony brings a raucous visual music!
It is greatly healing to the psyche and the energetic body.
We feel such an integral part, an inalienable aspect of Nature, because of our observing and interacting with all things here, slowly and easily.
We think a lot about Rights, right actions and right alignment. Many people in the world today are wrestling with 'govern-ment' 'restrictions' and externally imposed directives... Why? Why do we choose to be overseen and controlled?
Mark Passio often talks rather aggressively about our need to grow up, to stand up as living men and women and to take up the space, the resources, the energy that belongs to us....
I talk to this in my podcast this week - listen on Spotify or via Fountain App here, too; - to what it feels like (not to be coerced by folks in the alternative media world!) but simply to settle into what is ours, without controversy/ drama/ external directions.
My 35 + years of living within the paradigm of 'normalcy' is being shed. Every moment of every day, I'm offered a better choice, and I take it. Even (perhaps especially!) the kinds of challenges that the average person openly expresses shock to us about, hearing that we're living without 'mod cons' - even these, bring us into alignment and harmony. Humility under the elements.
Owning our own land makes this even more power-full; in the area of Italy that I lived in before, as with many places I've lived in my relatively-adventurous life (and bar Scotland, where we have a well-respected Right To Roam) there have been myriad negative reactions to my foraging, or to us claiming firewood, fruit, asparagus, funghi from land that we do not 'own'. All kinds of hysteria from my demented neighbour in Guardia, when I dared to set foot in abandoned garden plots below our street!
It was hard to consistently hear this kind of non-sense, whilst calmly, peace-fully filling a basket or managing trees so that they can flourish...
Here, there's none of that of course. Just full days of playing, trying, shaping our land. Just peace, and the right kind of responses from nature, not from other humans!
The trees reply to us with their stretching limbs and leaves, their brightening colours and buds and flowers. The soil responds by darkening, dampening and filling out. Even the skies respond, seeming to be glad that we're here and doing what we're doing.
