Druidry of place
This post was inspired by Ryan Cronin’s recent post about Druidry which you can, and should read – https://wrycrow.com/2020/05/10/druidry-of-the-real/
It got my thinking about what is unique about where I am and how I do things. The landscape here certainly does have an impact on my Druidry. One of the reasons I don’t do community ritual any more is that there is nowhere in easy walking distance where that would make sense. The wilder places are too windy, ritual shouting doesn’t do it for me. The woodlands are on slopes – again this doesn’t work well for a circle. The flatter outside places are really public, so that doesn’t work.
This has led me towards making walking and sitting out the heart of my Druidry. I make and walk labyrinths, and this is in no small part because I have space where I feel comfortable doing that. It’s something I can do in a park without feeling uneasy about other people. I managed to get one in before lockdown, but it is something I have missed doing.
Walking is affected by how the paths change through the year – where is accessible in winter, in mud or icy conditions. Where is sheltered enough from the sun for summer walking. Which paths flood in heavy rain, which ones feel unsafe in high winds.
One of the curious features of the valleys around Stroud is that where you are has a big impact on how you experience the shape of the day. The hills mean that twilight settles in some places before the sun sets in others. Dawn comes earlier on the hilltops than it does in the secluded valleys. Spring starts earlier some places than others, and across a distance of just a few miles there are all kinds of microclimates. Living here makes it hard to have a single coherent narrative about time and the seasons. I am more plural for living in this landscape.
There’s no grain in the valleys, so either I have to go out to where the grain is, or my sense of the summer grain festivals is impacted by this. We do have sheep and lambs, so my Imbolc is shaped by encountering them. We do have an abundance of hawthorn flowers and bluebells for Beltane.
On top of that, we have a local events calendar which intersects with my personal calendar. My wheel of the year has a book festival, folk festival, a theatre festival and a wassail in it, reliably, and some of the other regular events impact on me as well. Culture should be place specific.
