Sometimes, when I get the opportunity – which isn’t often – I like to go off and have adventures on my own.
I like setting off on journeys feeling slightly unsure of where I’m going. A fixed destination with only vague directions as to how to get there is best. I quite enjoy the getting lost, which is fortunate seeing as my sense of direction is nothing short of appalling. I am – embarrassingly and unwittingly I might add – the ideal poster-girl for every pseudo-scientific ‘fact’ you have ever heard about women and inferior spatial awareness. I even get lost in peoples houses. But I know I’ll always find wherever it is I’m supposed to be in the end, and in the meantime there is the pleasure of driving around new places in a slow meandering fashion, discovering previously unseen villages and countryside and stopping every now and then to ask directions in a place where nobody knows you and you could, in fact, be anybody. It still raises an eyebrow or two in my part of the world, a woman striding into a pub alone to ask if anybody knows where such and such a place is. It always makes me smile to myself, the feeling of vaguely disapproving eyes on my back as I set off to my car again, inevitably to turn round and go in the complete opposite direction to where I had been heading.
Anyway, last saturday night presented one such opportunity. I was heading out into the wilds to a remote campsite where a very old friend with whom I have only recently been reunited after many years out of touch was staying with her partner and a group of their friends. A journey that should have taken just one hour in fact took two as I became hopelessly but happily lost in amongst the green hills and valleys of the beautiful landscape that I call home. I love those hills. From a distance they look for all the world as though they have been covered with smooth green suede, dense and velvety, solid and constant, the shade of green forever changing depending on the time of day and the season. I was looking for a mysterious left hand turn which I was beginning to suspect was entirely fictitious, when I spotted a likely looking muddy track and turned off to drive up and along it, only to have it suddenly and almost cinematically open up onto a small festival in full swing. Surprised and delighted, I got out of the car and walked onto site to see children playing happily with brightly coloured diablos in the middle of a sunny field while adults lugged brim-full water butts into a make-shift kitchen to fill enormous communal pans for dinner. Nobody seemed to have the faintest idea where this elusive campsite might be, or the mysterious left hand turn, and finding myself drawn slyly in by the carnival atmosphere I became tempted to buy a cup of chai and stay awhile. But of course by this point I was already late.
I eventually found – as I knew I would – the turn-off to the campsite. It was between two white rocks. Hidden almost behind one of the rocks was a small yellow milk-churn with the campsites name painted on it in faded letters. When I got to the end of the track my friend was waiting for me, smiling, excited, her eyes shining,
“Come on. Come and see this amazing place.”
There were no tents or caravans. Instead there were yurts and tipis pitched in small circular clearings, each one made private by a surrounding of trees and hedges and wild flowers. Pale round paving stones, some painted with astrological symbols and strange patterns marked out the paths, while tucked secretly away in all the dark little corners, beautiful tall wooden carvings kept quiet eerie watch like sentries. The sun set bright orange over the panoramic views of those ancient green suede hills and hundreds of tea-lights inside tiny little jam jars that hung from branches everywhere flickered gently like strings of fairy lights as the smoke from open fires drifted in swirls and scented the air. It was magical. A fairy glen. Other worldly as though out of a story book. It was all so absurdly beautiful, I nearly laughed out loud.
And so it was there I sat in the fading light around a fire with my friend and the eight or so women she was with, most of whom I had never met before. Taking turns to draw on a large Hookah pipe, the spicy appley charcoal scent merging with that of the wood smoke, they talked happily of their day, of swimming in the sea, of the photgraphs they had taken. Leaving the group a while to wander and marvel a little more at my surroundings, I felt the atmosphere on my return to have subtley but noticeably shifted however. People sat sombre and quiet, all turned towards and intensely focused on just one woman who now stood at the head of the group holding a small pink wild flower in her cupped hand.
I looked around me, feeling slightly off balance, my eyes seeking some further visual clue as to what was happening, and I saw in fact that all of the women held something in their hands. Another flower. A stone. One held a small feather. The woman at the front seemed almost to be struggling for words, or at least to be searching for the right words. She shifted her weight slowly from one foot to the other and looked up at the stars – for it was now night – all the while turning those delicate petals over and over in her hand. The others waited. Silent.
After a time my friend spoke.
“You need to ask him to come forwards. He’s behind you. You need to ask him to step forwards so that you can see him more clearly.”
For a moment I thought it might all be a prank. But the expressions on the faces around me showed clearly that it was not. These women were communing with the spirits of their dead ancestors. They truly believed it. Believed that the woman stood in front of them had a gift – a sacred gift that could be used to help and heal others. Over the course of the evening I watched, speechless, as one woman openly wept with gratitude and joy at having contacted her much loved and long dead grandmother, and another left the group to wander angrily into the surrounding forest alone, unhappy and unnerved that the spirits should be being called upon at this time and in this place.
It’s funny because sometimes in my darker moments I mourn lifes adventures. I fear that mine are done – that my stories have all been told. But that night my old friend reminded me that really – no matter my skepticism, no matter my cynicism – there’s still more to come. I’m still only half way through.
