The Village #2: Landscape and Layers
Partial thoughts on place, motherhood and self - plus some links
Welcome, especially to new subscribers. If you’re new here, this post is a good place to start. I write out of my experiences of community, motherhood, soil, soul, politics, ecology, writing and more. I’m so glad you’re here.
Hello! In case you missed it, here’s an introduction post to this series. In brief: I want to know where the the literal and figurative village is that will raise my daughter, and perhaps raise each other and our shared future too. I want to think about how interconnectedness makes things what they are, and about individual and community, home and place, loneliness and belonging. These pieces will sometimes be personal reflection, sometimes research, poems, pictures, or contributions from others. I’d love to hear your own experiences. Lastly, please like/comment/share/subscribe - it supports my writing and helps others to find RedLands. Thank you!
The cold metal of the gate props me up, and the soil props the gate up, and this place — formed by people and time and earth — props the soil up. I am resting on layers of support and I am trying to feel it.
My own own ancestors are somewhere in these layers. They used to live thickly here in Devon, their name — Staddon — a pre-7th century name given to them from the particularity of place; stud horses and hills. Horses and hills have echoed through my own life, too.
Now, it is cool but clear, and from this gate I can see the outline of Dartmoor crisp on the horizon. Its ancient folds rise and fall not as sharp peaks and deep valleys like those in other UK uplands, but as a softly settled blanket of moss and grass, heather and horse, laying over hard granite worn down by the persistence of time. Dartmoor is an altogether ancient place; it holds a spirit that feels older than time itself. I am drawn to it and repelled by it, and I sometimes wonder if it feels the same about me. I have been held, sleeping, by soft beds of moss, and I have also been eaten up by lonely fog and soul-sucking bog.
From this gate, I see the landscape open in front of me — moors and millennia-old hedgerows; farms and the lanes that connect places and stories. And, since the birth of our daughter, a new landscape has appeared — motherhood, with its soft folds and hard edges, with its ancestors and descendants, with its loneliness and community.
I look again at Dartmoor, thinking of its scattered skeletons of Bronze Age villages, and then of Sherlock Holmes describing the place in The Hound of the Baskervilles:
“…you are conscious everywhere of the homes and the work of prehistoric people. On all sides of you as you walk are the houses of these forgotten folk, with their graves and the huge monoliths….The strange thing is that they should have lived so thickly on what must always have been most unfruitful soil…”
Earlier still, about 10,000 years ago, when trees reigned across the moor (‘Dart’ is a Celtic word for Oak), people roamed and hunted and came and went. Our early hunter-gatherer relatives lived in communities of care even when they roamed, even with no fixed place. Children had multiple parent figures around. They eventually settled down to farm, and constructed huts and enclosures and villages to support it. Relationships shifted: people to place, people to nature, people to each other. How did they choose where to stay? How did they, to paraphrase Wendell Berry, decide to stop moving and finally arrive where they stood? I have been wondering the same for myself, for my family — how do we know that this is the place to stop roaming and commit to? Is this the place to build our literal and figurative village?
The question feels linked as much to a landscape of time and context as place: how do we arrive, live, and thrive on the ‘unfruitful soil’ not of Dartmoor but of modern life? — where people are getting poorer and sicker, where there are worsening stats around food bank usage, democracy, Covid-amplified inequality, biodiversity, and soil health to name a few, and loneliness is a public health concern. It feels important to think wisely about the village I want so deeply to weave around my daughter, and around all of us, because it will need to withstand forces that are working to fragment. I love people, and have deep relationships, but have always watched from the edge of groups, never really felt I totally belonged in any of them. Now, I imagine the village and see trees with roots sunk deep, able to withstand the storms. I always thought trees stood alone until I learned about the underground fungal networks that connect them, and the hundreds of other species they shelter. Trees are linked deeply and tightly, elegantly and reciprocally, with like and unlike. They root and reach in community.
From this gate, I look at the trees in the landscape — some ancient, some newly planted — and think about my own roots; where they’re from, where they reach to. Because though I have deep and old roots in Devon, I also have roots in the north, in the Lakelands, in Wales. I carry these places in my name, in my story. Sometimes, I wonder whether I am newly planted or ancient in Devon, whether I’m better suited to soil elsewhere; whether the feeling of home taps into some echo of ancestors who have left a trace, an understanding, a story in the air or snagged in the hedgerow. Whether any of this matters.
I carry these questions into community. I carry other things too — ideas and strengths, fears and frustrations, care and love. From this gate, I see an ecology of place — people and wildlife, history and landscape, events and gatherings and all the other elements — and I want to fit into it, to give and receive, to know and be known, to fold myself into its layers. Later, I will head back to our house, shut the door, and squash all that into four walls. It feels a waste, to crackle with a desire to be part of an ecology and then close myself off and direct all that inside — even through I love this family, even when we’re connected to people and groups and plans and neighbours. It feels like we’re all running on our own schedules, arranging get togethers and meetings rather than encountering life communally, in its diversity, in its mutuality, in its shared rhythms.
This village, then. What was it? What does it need to be in these ‘unfruitful’ times? How do we give care a seat in decision-making, prioritise better support for relationships, for social infrastructures? How do I best help my daughter love and be loved by her neighbours? What do we each carry with us into our places and communities? How do we slow down and face each other and link roots and weather the storms together? I turn from the gate and walk down the hill, towards the village, hoping to find some clues.
I’d love to hear about your experiences, thoughts, longing, belonging. What does ‘the village’ mean to you?
Some other things I’m thinking about:
Envy. This post from Kirsten Powers was a good reminder that envy can creep in not to sabotage but to offer a clue about the direction we want to move in.
The fact I’m turning 40 this week. It feels more significant than my 30th. I’m thinking about why, and about what the next decade might look like. I’m hoping to send a bonus post this week about being 40, and the lessons I carry and things I’m reaching towards (if I can finish it around a grumpy toddler, some work, and a celebration).
The term ‘woo woo’, prompted by this piece from Grace Pengelly. I have used this term, I think, to refer to thinking that feels a bit, pseudosciencey? Misleading? I’m not sure. I am very right-brained, I believe in the sacred and the unseen, my soul reaches beyond western thought and rationalism. I notice I do not want to be yoked with something that I thought woo woo pointed towards…the phoney? the fraudulent? (not least within the coaching world where I spend some time). I’m not sure. Grace’s essay made me think about the term, and how it might obscure more than reveal.
‘We Can Do Both’ - a podcast my husband produces, hosted by former Conservative MP Neil Parish. It meets the people who are trying to produce food AND protect nature. So often these are pitted against each other. I’m drawn to spaces and conversations that seek to encounter more than argue.
The book Fully Alive by Elizabeth Oldfield. I reviewed it for a magazine, and it has lingered. She asks, how do we build ‘spiritual core strength’? How do we tend to the soul in these turbulent time? I will return to it.
Elizabeth
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Absolutely beautiful writing and so many paths of thought that I want to follow you down. Can’t wait for your book! X