It is bluebell season… early this year, by my reckoning, as I think of them as May flowers. However, they seem to be pushing ahead this year. No doubt this means that the trees, likewise, are preparing to put forth their leaves and wake from their winter sleep, as it is the closing of the canopy and the loss of light to the forest floor that the bluebells rush to precede… one of many symbiotic, networked relationships to be found in a woodland.
Bluebells are something I love. Since we moved to the country when I was two, my family and later I have gone purposefully every year to visit with them. I wait for them, counting time until they arrive. This year, it is more poignant, as my mum, who loves them equally, is growing frail and dependent on me to get her to see them, as I once was her. This may be the last year she is well enough to make that journey, and that only with great difficulty and arrangement. So to me, they are tied in with so much of my childhood and adulthood memory and formation. Not only in my mental memory, but my body and emotions carry physical traces and reminders of such encounters. And also they are embedded and embodied in that most fundamental of relationships, with my mother. More of the symbiotic, networked relationships to be found in a woodland.
Two days ago, as part of the work I am undertaking here, I went walking… which I am learning to see these days as an embodied practice of being with the earth (another symbiosis). So much of human movement on and interaction with the earth over the millenia has lead to harm, scarring of the earth’s skin. (I felt that recently, walking on the Ridgeway, which has been a human pathway for over 6000 years. The deep ruts along this ridge appeared to me as the scarred, puckered skin of the fact that at one point, nothing I could see from this high vantage point was natural, all was human made, an exploitation, a manipulation, a bending of natures forms to our own… the antithesis of symbiotic, mycelium-like interaction.) As I walk, now, I contemplate how this most intimate act, of placing my foot on the surface of the earth, can become an act not of mutual harm, but of mutual healing, of interconnectivity.
But on this walk, I was not on the Ridgeway, I was in Bagley Woods, near Oxford. Whilst there is little there that is natural (it has been ‘managed’ for many, many years), clearly the soil there bears some of its more ancient, untouched past. The presence of bluebells is one of many signifiers of ancient woodland, and whilst that is certainly not what Bagley Woods is, the magnitude of the profusion of bluebells there suggests that woodland in some form has been present on that land, growing out of that earth, for a very, very long time.
Down one less-trodden path, I came to a large area which was rich beyond measure with the colour of these most extraordinary flowers. With all of the meanings they hold for me, I was stopped in my tracks, immobilised by delight at what I saw. For many minutes, I stood still, then walked slowly, taking great care to keep to the tiny tracks and so not crush any one of my vibrant fellow beings. And finally, I knelt amongst them, and rested with them.
I have a ritual, that every morning, on rising, I pour myself water and before I drink, I spill a few drops on the ground, and give thanks to the earth. Present with the bluebells, overwhelmed with love and gratitude to them and the processes that brought them and I there, and with the need to respond or acknowledge this in some way, I did this now, pouring a few drops on one particular bluebell, and thanking them all. And then – I’m slightly embarrassed to admit how tree-hugger I can be – without thinking at all, spontaneously, I bent over and very gently kissed the flowers blue petals. As I did so, I understood that, through the very real, physical networks of which this flower was an integral part, and through the nature of my intent, I was kissing not only this bluebell, but all of them, all the many thousands, and not just the bluebells, but the whole woodland.
As I reflect now, I see that it wasn’t only the woodland I was kissing, but, through all the intricate, intimate networks in which that woodland rests, I was in fact touching all of nature. Through that mesh of interconnectivity, that kiss ultimately returns to my self… and takes in all of you on route ,)
What we do, what we are, what we intend, happens not in isolation, but within a universal field. What we choose to do and be in this field in turn determines what that field is, which then shapes our own being and that of all others. We could fear this, or, more usefully and wonderfully we could see this as opening up innumerable, beautiful possibilities. This is the profound, potent, fertile nature of all our doing and being. This is the symbiotic experience to be found in a woodland. This is being mycelium.
beingmycelium 