Nimue Brown's Blog, page 98

Why there were no ducks

I’ve always loved otters. I spent my childhood desperately wanting to see one in the wild. In recent years, Stroud has become a place otters call home and I’ve had multiple otter encounters.

This year there were very few ducklings on the canal near my home. There were noticeably far fewer ducks than usual. Otters will eat ducks. They’re opportunists who eat widely and take advantage of whatever is around. Whoever is around. This year they ate all but one of the cygnets on a nearby millpond, and the one they left died by accident.

Of course the problem isn’t really the otters. They’re just doing what they do. There aren’t enough ducks in the first place, and the reason there aren’t enough ducks is that there aren’t enough wetlands for them. We’ve destroyed most of the wetlands we have in the UK. A wild, complex landscape permeated by water supports a great deal more life than the surviving streams do. How many waterways are now underground, in pipes?

I can’t help but feel sad about the ducks. Not so much the ones who were eaten, but the ones who never existed in the first place. We don’t see what isn’t here. We don’t see what was missing before we were even born. These valleys should have water in their bottoms, there should be more ponds, there should be marshy places.

In the town where I grew up, one of the streams has been restored. For most of my life, it was in a pipe under a factory, and when the factory closed the decision was made to reinstate the water. It is possible to change things, and to change what we’ve done to the landscape. Hopefully at some point, there will be more ducks again.

Time and the living landscape

It always perplexes me when I see Pagans expressing the idea that we should aspire to live in the moment with no reference to the past or the future. Or even when it’s offered as a temporary goal for meditation. To be Pagan is to connect with nature, and when you do that, every moment – surely? – is held in the context of the wheel of the year. It makes even less sense when considered in terms of the landscape.

History is always present in a landscape, whether it is immediately visible or not. The underlying geology is part of the history of the planet itself. The soil is made up from the remains of those who have lived here before, layered beneath your feet, often holding bones, objects and memories amongst the broken down organic matter.

If you honour the ancestors, it makes no sense to focus only on the present. It does however make a great deal of sense to be alert to the ways in which the ancestors of a place are always with us in that place. Their actions, their living and dying are part of what makes a place how it now is. We might not see every influence, but it’s good to look for them and to honour the way in which their lives shape the present moment.

What we do in the present moment has consequences for the future. Being too focused on the present can allow us to ignore the future – and given how destructive our species is, this is irresponsible at best. What we do to our landscape today informs what will survive there in years to come. We have a responsibility to consider the future whenever we interact with the land.

Landscape isn’t just pretty bits of nature, either. You live and work in a landscape, even if there is a lot of tarmac involved. Perceiving the landscape in our urban environments often requires bringing a sense of history with us.

It is always good to be present to what is around us. It’s also important to remember that a landscape is not something that exists only in the present moment. The existence of a landscape is due to its history, to layers of rock and soil built up over time, to human actions, and non-human actions. The landscape holds the past, making it present to us. The land is time made solid. If we ignore that aspect of the land itself in the desire to be ‘purely in the moment’ we miss important aspects of existence.

Mapping the Contours

Mapping the Contours is a poetry collection from some years ago, which I self-published. I’ve been swapping books with David Bridger a fair bit this year – we’re writing together and getting to know each other’s work has been part of that process. So, this isn’t an impartial review, but on the other hand, as a Druid and speculative fiction author David is very much the sort of person I hope would find my work resonant.

“I became aware of Nimue Brown one year ago, through her non-fiction books, the first one I read for research purposes being her “Druidry and the Ancestors – finding our place in our own history.” I found her mind impressive. Then I read some of her fiction, and found her creativity hugely impressive too.

Then she reviewed one of my novels, and then a second, and then we started talking, and then we became friends, and then we decided to co-author a fantasy series. It’s an exciting and thoroughly enjoyable collaboration in a creative relationship that has grown, and continues to grow, organically.

Now, for the first time, I’ve read her poetry. In her collection, Mapping the Contours, Nimue explores place and relationship in her life along the Cotswold edge. This is her, “…walking myself into the landscape, and walking the landscape into myself.”

It’s remarkable poetry. I read it slowly, then re-read it even more slowly, taking many individual poems in it as either mini-meditations and visualisations, or as starting points for deeper meditations.

I am grateful for this. Opening into my consciousness as it did at first with Nimue’s characteristic humility, it quickly became quite possibly the most meaningful collection of poetry I have ever read.

Mapping the Contours, Nimue Brown, published by the author 2018″

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You can pick up the ebook version for free from my ko-fi store – https://ko-fi.com/s/8e7caa2cfc

Contemplating projection

Projection is the enemy of mutual understanding, but it’s so easily done and can take many forms. The most common type is the simple assumption that other people think the same way we do – that what they do and say means what it would mean if we did it or said it. And so we end up inferring intentions, slights and all manner of other things that were never intended. How we use language, our cultural backgrounds, our points of reference – these things are all unique to us. We all think differently and we communicate more effectively when we factor that in.

If a person is an introvert, or sensitive, autistic, or chronically ill then how they handle social situations is not going to be the same as how an uncompromised extrovert handles the same things. There may be no rejection going on. A person might really like you but just not have the resources to show up very often. Extroverts projecting onto introverts can entirely misunderstand what’s happening.

For the person with a terrible history, it can be difficult not to project fears onto current experiences. When a person is triggered into trauma flashbacks, it can be impossible in the short term to see what’s happening now as anything other than a replaying of what happened before.

Sometimes we project from the desire to believe that the other person is just like us, where that enables us to see the best in them. The kind person who projects that kindness onto others and insists on seeing everyone in the best possible light and as having the best possible motives can be lovely to deal with, but can also leave abusers unchallenged.

Sometimes we project because we want to believe that the other person is responsible for what’s happening. The anger we feel becomes something of their making. If we feel insecure, it’s because they’re doing it to us. It can be a way of having someone to blame without having to look too closely at what’s going on for you. That doesn’t make you a terrible person, but it can make you a dysfunctional one and it is the kind of behaviour that pushes people away.

For the Druid, self awareness and conscious choice are always important considerations. Recognising what we do and why, and what might be happening with other people and why, is worth investing in. Good communication depends on avoiding projections, and if all we’re doing is trying to interact with reflections of ourselves, we can never form true or deep relationships with others. This is one of the reasons why it is so important to cultivate the virtue of open hearted listening. It’s also important to be gentle with ourselves about how we may project things onto others, and this is as true when we’re seeking relationships with spirits or the divine, as it is in human interactions.

Poverty, food and transport

Something that is often overlooked when talking about how poverty leads to hunger, is the role transport plays in all of this. If you have a car and can afford to travel a few miles, you can access food that is better value for money. You can bring home those big bags of veg, the cheap tins of soup, the multi-buys and the other clever things that will help you stay on top of your food budget.

Buses are rare to nonexistent in many places, unreliable and they cost money. If you can use a bus, you are still limited with your shopping in terms of what you can carry in your hands and on your back. It makes it much harder to stock up or to take advantage of better prices on bigger packs.

If you walk or cycle to shop, then where you can go depends entirely on how far you can walk or cycle while carrying a load of shopping. Do you have decent waterproof gear? How good are your shoes? Do you even have time for a five mile round trip to the supermarket? Add in small children, or disability, or having to do multiple jobs and the pressure mounts considerably. This may mean you’re stuck with whatever is within a few minutes walk of your home, and the odds are that will be as limited as it is expensive. 

Being in poverty can be a lot more expensive than being affluent. The impact on your food choices, and the cost of your food if you can’t afford transport, can be huge. Being clever with your budget only becomes possible when you have access to enough resources.

What are the Druid issues here? Justice is the most obvious one, as I try to push back against the ways in which we blame people living in poverty for being poor. There’s also an issue of the connectedness of things – how we structure towns and cities, the assumptions about car use in where the resources are, and the implications of inadequate public transport. I think it’s important to flag up the way people who have to walk are often ignored and forgotten. 

Strange bedfellows for Druids

Sometimes, to get things done you have to work with people who are not perhaps your natural allies. My go-to example of this is that it was otter hunters who first raised the alarm over falling otter numbers in the UK in the 20th century. Hunters and nature lovers worked together to try and get things changed for the benefit of otters, and otters have made a superb comeback.

If we wait for the perfect allies, we might never get things done. However, if we team up with people that also has implications. Who and what are we supporting and validating? Is that a good risk? I feel strongly that as Druids we have a responsibility to consider who we empower and where that might lead, no matter how urgent the cause. People with terrible motives will show up for causes they think will win them support and make them seem acceptable. I recollect how locally, UKIP folk very visibly joined the popular campaign against the local incinerator, while UKIP councilors went ahead and voted for it.

Enter stage left, my strawman for today, the fictional organisation Nazis for Nature. If they appear to share our aims around a pressing issue – like saving a local wood, should we shun them, or embrace them? Perhaps we embrace them, for the good of the cause, and a few weeks later photos of our smiling faces as we work alongside them come up alongside material about eugenics. The thing about Nazis is that we know what their intentions are, and where they are going and to what ends they might find us useful. Increasingly, people who support politics that seek to harm other people, are being vocal about it, guessing is not so much of a problem now as it might once have been.

We might not agree with what the otter hunters do. We might be going to actively work against them in the future, but we also know what they want. For otter hunting to survive as a sport, there have to be plenty of otters, which means there have to be lots of habitats for otters and the rivers need to be clean. At no point are they likely to change tack on that score. Everyone in this scenario is working to avoid otter extinction, and other differences can be dealt with when the otters are safe. It’s worth noting that otter hunting is now illegal in the UK. 

When you can see what a person stands for and how that might play out in the longer term, an uneasy truce around a key issue can be a good choice. Solve the biggest problems first and deal with the other issues later.

Sometimes, doing the right thing will call for some challenging compromises. The key is to look at the overall trajectory. Ask whether these people genuinely care about the same issue, or whether they might be piggybacking in the hopes of benefiting themselves. Ask if what you have is a valid difference of opinion from the people you might make an uneasy alliance with. People who hate Star Trek and people who love it might realistically work together to save a science fiction convention. The differences of opinion aren’t really that important compared to what’s at stake. 

People’s right to exist is not something that we should consider open to debate. These are not opinions we can agree to differ over. Anyone whose policies are murderous or ecocidal is not a good ally even if their short term aims seem to align with ours in some way.

The power of urban trees

We’re having a heatwave in the UK, thanks to the climate crisis. It seemed like a good time to talk about how powerful and important urban trees are.

Urban trees have a huge cooling effect on urban spaces. They cool the ground beneath them, they shade and shelter nearby buildings. The need for air-con goes down when there are trees, which of course reduces energy use and that in turn can help reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause the problems in the first place. With a crisis of living cost in the mix too, not everyone can afford to cool their homes. Less affluent areas are less likely to have trees in the first place, though.

Heat can be a killer. 2021 saw thousands of heat related deaths across Europe. Heat puts a strain on the whole body – heat stroke and dehydration cause problems in their own right, and put strain on your organs. Hearts can give up in extreme heat. 

Publicly owned trees have the power to save lives, and to make it more feasible for people to keep functioning safely in hot weather. At the same time, trees help solve the problem of excess C02 in the atmosphere. It’s a win all round.

Cities would be much better places if some of the colossal amount of space given over to driving and parking cars was used instead for trees.

At this time of year I’m very aware of how the shade from a nearby horse chestnut tree impacts on the temperature in my small flat. Smaller living spaces, especially if they’re a bit on the crowded side – are harder to keep cool to begin with. The tree makes a lot of difference. No doubt many people would be helped through excessive heat by the presence of more trees.

Planting more urban trees right now won’t solve the problem immediately, but it’s a good investment in the future.

Working Collaboratively

The one thing I never much liked about the book writing process is how solitary it can be. Going away for months, maybe years to make something before anyone else gets involved doesn’t work for me. I prefer to be more interactive. It’s a big part of why I love performance- that immediacy of engagement with an audience.

Currently I’m very collaborative on the performance front – as part of a team of four who go out as The Ominous Folk of Hopeless, Maine. Hopeless, Maine is itself a really collaborative project – I primarily work with Tom Brown on this, but there’s a much bigger family of writers, artists, performers, and makers who sometimes also get involved with things.

I’ve got one co-writing project on the go at the moment. I’m working with David Bridger, which is a lovely process and taking me to some decidedly interesting places. 

Recently I’ve been exploring other ways of taking a more collaborative approach to books. Back in the winter I was working on my Earth Spirit book, and I had a test reader who took content one chapter at a time and gave me really valuable feedback. Said test reader is also going to be involved with the new Pagan Pilgrimage project, and we’re figuring out how exactly that might work, which is exciting. I’ve also been talking to a lot of people about their pilgrimage experiences, and intend to do a lot more of that, because I want this project to be about more than my own limited experiences.

Every now and then I see something online where people in the writing business make unhappy noises about anything they see as limiting imagination. Issues of accuracy and sensitivity readers come up a lot. As though an uninformed imagination is something to be proud of. The whole notion of the lonely author in the high tower making things out of their own ideas has always seemed suspect to me. What use is an author without insight and understanding? What good are we if all we can put into the world is versions of ourselves? 

Creativity is a human activity, made by humans, about humans and for humans. It seems very odd to me to try and do that without really involving other people. I doubt I’d have very much to say at all if I sat in the metaphorical high tower trying to squeeze stories out of myself. It’s the interactions with other people that inspire me. It’s the opportunities to connect with other people that I get excited about. I’m always looking for new ways to connect because I know I’m a better writer when I do that.

Healing is not just a personal issue

I caught myself thinking recently ‘oh, it’s just period pain, it doesn’t matter.’ I’m so used to feeling that I have to push through pain – especially if it’s just regular body pain and there’s no threat of taking physical damage by ignoring it. I’m in the habit of thinking that being in pain is something to ignore or minimise and that I should expect to do as much as a person who was not in pain might do. This being an imaginary person who gets a great deal of stuff done all day, every day.

I live in a culture that doesn’t take womb-pain seriously and tends to treat people who suffer with painful periods as though they are just making a fuss. Collectively, we aren’t good at showing compassion and respect for people who are limited by pain or other disabling problems. Resting, pacing and other kinds of gentleness are all too easily treated like laziness. That all creates anxiety.

Pain takes a toll, physically and emotionally. Pushing through it to get stuff done requires a lot of mental effort. That’s a cost I’m not in the habit of thinking about when I just default to slogging on. I’m in a situation at the moment where I can afford to be a bit more gentle with myself around pain. I’m also aware that this is not an option everyone has, and that poverty and insecurity around both work and housing are major factors contributing to people not being able to move gently in response to their own distress. The longer you have to do that for, the more distress it causes and the mental health damage can be huge – and that’s not a pain everyone can afford to take seriously either.

Healing is a social justice issue. We tend to focus on it as an individual issue, but that’s not enough. What scope we have to rest, heal and recover is framed by capitalism, by poverty, by unsympathetic workplaces and unaffordable homes. No one should have to choose between trying to recover from pain or illness, and being able to afford to eat.

It should not be normal to have to ignore pain.

What is courage?

I’ve been thinking a lot about courage lately (previous post about courage). Often we define courage as feeling the fear but acting anyway. What troubles me about this approach is that it defines courage as something that only exists in opposition to something else.

One of the things I like about virtues is the idea of cultivating them, but if courage only exists in relation to fear, then you can only cultivate it by having things you are afraid of. You can only measure it in terms of that – so the person who develops courage so far that they overcome fear doesn’t really count as courageous any more. 

I’m interested in the idea of courage as an innate quality, not a reaction. It struck me that this would require the courage to be for something, rather than coming up in opposition to fearful experiences. What things are we invested in such that the idea of them gives us courage? It takes courage to act, to make changes, to stand up for things. It’s perhaps not so much about overcoming fear as overcoming apathy and disbelief. The courage of your convictions is a rejection of the idea that you can’t make a difference, or that the struggle itself is futile. It can take courage to try and to strive – not because the action is fearful, but because it takes a certain kind of boldness to assert meaning in this way in face of an often uncaring universe.

Thanks to some helpful facebook prompts, I’ve been thinking about lions and oak trees in relation to courage. Neither of these really suggests overcoming fear to me. They do however suggest ways of standing in your own power, with a kind of poise and awareness that makes action possible. 

I’m considering the idea that fear isn’t the opposite of courage – often fear and courage exist alongside each other. Apathy and defeatedness are the opposites of courage. It is apathy and a feeling of defeat and futility that stops people from acting – fear is often a spur to acting and creates necessity. Courage is the quality that keeps a person moving when it seems like all is lost, or the problem is too big to take on. Thus whether or not you are afraid may not be the best measure of whether or not you are courageous.