The New Journey

A couple of days ago Mama embarked on the Journey. She’d been talking about it for a while, about the Train that she had to catch. But she hesitated for a long time on the platform. The idea of getting on board and leaving everything familiar behind must have been more than she could contemplate. Scary, because though you hold a ticket, you can’t read the destination that’s printed on it. Our material brain, wired for survival at all costs, fights the notion of embracing the unknown.

Rose, her sisters Tosia and Marynia 1928?

Children of Polish gentry in their daily garb








 Finally she opened the door and got on the train. In the preceding months, during her more lucid moments she talked more often about the coming journey.

 “Those are my things,” she said pointing to the chairs in the room, the photos on the wall, the dining table and the china plates hanging on the wall.

 “Yes,” I said.

 “I will not be taking them with me.

 “You won’t.”

 She looked at me steadily. “I won’t need them.”

 At another time she called me urgently to her side. She knew who I was.

 “Where is Theresa?”

 I told her that my elder sister was in Edinburgh. She’d be coming over in a few days.

 “And Munia?”

 “She’s in Ecuador.”

 “When is she coming?”

 “In mid July.”

 At that, Mama grew more agitated and said, “That’s far too late.”

 The conversation wasn’t a one off. She'd had it a few days earlier with Amber.

 Sometimes she opened the door of the train but then drew back. A month ago, dehydrated from not drinking enough she was admitted to hospital. She had a bad infection. The doctor felt that she only had days to live. We called Munia and asked her to fly over from Ecuador.

 I felt that Mama needed to be aware of what was going on. While she lay in the hospital bed, smiling at me, I said, “Mama, you are seriously ill. You’re dying.”

“No,” she said, emphatically, adding silently that I was talking nonsense. Imagining some rubbish.

 “You ARE dying,” I said.

 She gave me a wave of her hand to say, “Oh rubbish. There you go again, you silly."

 Did she know something the rest of us didn’t know?

 A few days later she staged, yet again, a miraculous recovery. Started eating and drinking. The doctors were left scratching their heads. She didn’t talk much after that, lay quietly looking at another world. Sometimes she’d return, smile at us, and even say something briefly.

 She always reacted to Father Jim MacManus who visited her when he was in town. She greeted him with the broadest of smiles and reached out to him. Her last words to him were, “I am very, very happy.”

Munia, Mama and the great grandchildren









 And so on Monday morning while Munia recited a few prayers to her, Mama took a last breath. She got onto the train. The door closed behind her. When Amber and I reached her house, we saw her lying on her bed, apparently asleep. A beautiful aura filled the room, a feeling of blessedness that did not appear to emanate from a human source. The oppressive atmosphere of fear and anxiety that had hung around her bed in previous weeks was gone. I sat beside her as before and drank in that benediction.

Building the Anastasia Hive

I’ve always wanted to keep bees. I want the honey, the wax and I need to have my veg flowers pollinated. Bee numbers are in decline. Our pesticides, and Varroa Mite are just two reasons.  The Earth needs more bees now, if it is to heal. I'd like to keep happy bees who feel at home the way they would in the wild. That way they would grow stronger, more resistant to disease and parasites. Then I read about Anastasia, a Siberian recluse, the subject of several books by Vladimir Megre. She’s a fountain of information on  gardening, homesteading, education, spirituality, aliens and yes, bee keeping. “A lot of what you do to maintain bee colonies just gets in the way,” she says. We need a natural hive, the way that bees live in nature i.e. a hollow log with no internal sharp corners, of a deciduous wood. Let the bees roam freely in their log, build a natural honeycomb. They keep themselves clean and healthy, don’t require the place to be cleaned out. Make the hive properly and they’ll spend their energy gathering nectar rather than fixing up a hive that’s the wrong shape.

The advice made a lot of sense to me.

Curiously, everything I needed for the Siberian hive turned up without having to hunt far afield. Charles at Coldhome had an elm log, rotten in the middle, that was just about the required dimensions (120 cm long, a potential 40x40 cm cavity and walls 5-6 cm thick. The log was already rotten on the inside and would need minimal carving out. I cut the log covers out of a stump I found by the side of the road on the way to Rhynie. Other scraps of wood I just had at home.

After Charles delivered the log on a trailer --- it was a heavy bugger, I hollowed out the rotten wood and some more, mostly by chainsaw. I replaced the chain oil by rape-seed oil (in the US that’s Canola oil), so as not to contaminate the wood with hydrocarbons. Chain-sawing required using a curved stroke with the saw, a twist of the wrist and a pull to get the cleanest cavity.

The top lid was screwed on and covered with a layer of cob (adobe in the US) to seal all the holes. We want the hive to be draft free and to retain the bees scents. Anastasia recommends fitting the bottom lid inside the log, and seal it there by cloth or grass. Since the log’s opening is such an odd shape, I made a cardboard template of the opening, and transferred it to the lid. Then I jigsawed out the excess wood. I plugged extra holes with cob. The access slits for the bees are 10-15cm thick. I cut them first with closely spaced drilling, then cleaned them out by chainsaw.

Ready for Occupants

Finally I placed the log on pilings, at an angle of 20 degrees, the slits facing due south. The little roof is made of plywood, to keep the hot Scottish sun ( ha ha!) from heating up the hive. I think that the bee colony should be comfy, even in winter. Later I'll add a screen for wind protection.

Before sealing the hive I rubbed lavender and lemon balm scents on the wood to attract passing bee scouts. I also left the bees a chunk of beeswax inside. 

I’m waiting for some bees to move in. No deposit necessary. I've also asked around the glen among local bee keepers for anyone with an extra colony. Here's a video. of how they might look.

Once a colony is established, the queen flies to the highest point where she starts to lay eggs and build the brood comb. Meanwhile the workers work at the lower and to build the comb for their winter food. The cloth cover is to prevent the honey laden comb from sticking to the cover.

Natural Honeycomb

For the first year I won’t harvest any honey. The Russian method is to harvest the honey in August. I'm not sure if that timing would work in Scotland, because the length of our winters are very unpredictable. In a long winter the bees could get hungry. This year for example, wintry conditions dragged on into May. Perhaps harvesting in early summer might be a better plan.

Does anyone out there fancy sticking their hand into the log and pilfering some honey? Do you think that the bees will mind?

Kissing's In Season

When gorse is out of bloom, kissing’s out o' season. These days our hillsides are covered in gorse which, thanks to the warm spell we had in March, is in full bloom. Kissing's also in season, and so I embarked on making gorse wine. For years, the thought of pricked fingers from picking gorse flowers dissuaded me from making gorse wine. One evening at Coldhome I tasted Fi Thompson’s wine. Something absolutely heavenly hit my pallete. The wine had captured the essence of sunlight; warmed the heart. It also had magnificent and complex body. Wow! The sensation was like a long and tender kiss.

The next day I was out on the land, in a gorse patch, pulling at the flowers with my bare fingers. It was a zen sort of exercise that required total mindfulness, at all times. Inattention was punished by getting pricked, sore fingers. I picked the brightest bushes, those with large, rich flower clumps, pulled them off. The rain dribbled on me, but what the hell. After a couple of hours I had amassed at almost two gallons of flowers. No blood on the fingers either.

Fi sent me her recipe. Here it is.

Ingredients:

 1 gallon gorse flowers
 2 oranges
 3 lb. sugar
 1 gallon water
 2 lemons
 Yeast; yeast nutrient

 Method:

The best plan is to put your flowers in a calico bag, which can then be dropped into the water and simmered for a quarter of an hour, afterwards making up the water to the original quantity. When you remove the bag, squeeze it well to extract the liquor, and return this to the bulk. Then dissolve the sugar in the liquid, and add the lemon and orange juice, and the skins (no pith) of the fruit. Allow the liquor to cool to 70 degrees F.then add the yeast (a general-purpose wine yeast) or a level teaspoon of granulated yeast and yeast nutrient. Three days is sufficient a soaking period to extract colour and aroma, and for fermentation to get well under way, as long as the liquor is kept in a warm place (65-70 degrees F.), closely covered and given an occasional stir. Then strain it into a fermenting jar and fit an air lock and put it in a slightly cooler place. Siphon it off the lees when the top third has cleared (after two to three months) and again three months later. Put in a cooler place still (55 degrees F.); it will be ready to drink after another two months or so.

Apparently, with the bottle I tasted,  Fi  left her wine in the fermenting jar for five years before she noticed it there. All recipes emphasize the need to allow this wine the time to mature. My mixture is in the fermenting jar, bubbling away. When Christmas rolls around, ask me how it tastes.

Hunger Games --- The Scottish Version

In both Gaia’s Children, and the short story, The Lottery, I speculate that in 50-100 years time Scotland will revert to being the land of small crofters, with most of the food grown on homesteads, typically a small house on a couple of acres of land. I surmised that the rising price of diesel would make large farms uneconomical. Farmers would then sell of their land, perhaps at a handsome price, to homesteaders. The same might also be accomplished through land reform : absentee lairds selling off their land to the locals. So, in the coming, warmer days, small scale food production will turn out to be more economical than today’s large scale, mechanized farms.

Science fiction? Maybe not entirely. In fact Russians demonstrated the effectiveness of small scale food production. I was recently startled to learn that in 1999, 35 million small family plots produced 90% of Russia’s potatoes, 77% of vegetables, 87% of fruits, 59% of meat, 49% of milk.

How else did the average Russian survive the transition from communism to capitalism in the 1990s: the years of crippling inflation, stagnant or non-existent salaries and sky high food prices? Most middle class people, including residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg had a country home --- the dacha, where they worked the land on weekends. In 1995 while on assignment in St. Petersburg, I visited one --- a small cabin with a woodstove for heating, no electricity, a composting toilet, and water drawn from a nearby well. It was on an acre of land planted with root vegetables, potatoes, cabbage, every vegetable that grows. I didn't see cereal crops; those still are mostly raised on large farms.

During July and August, city offices close their doors, the employees take off for their dachas where they tend their gardens, harvest their crops and preserve them for winter. Any excess is carted off to the city and hawked by little old ladies on street corners. Russians also are avid wild mushroom hunters, and have every recipe for preserving their haul.







Dachas in Omsk






Doesn’t the idea of small scale food production as a means for sustaining a large population, fly in the face of accepted economical models? What makes dacha farming work in Russia are several factors:

1. The existence of abundant cheap land. Russia has a very low population density.
2. Limited globalization. No access to farms in Africa for example, where these days most of UK vegetables are grown.
3. Low overhead. Dacha farming needs no mechanised equipment apart from a rotavator, often shared communally.
4. No reliance on oil-sourced energy.
5. Large numbers of people doing it (35 million families).

Is this the future face of Scotland? Except for access to cheap land (Point 1), and one could argue that there’s plenty of land, just that it isn’t accessible yet, the other factors could all become the new reality once global warming kicks in, and the price of oil soars out of reach. At least in Scotland which has a lower population density than England.

I believe that the Earth is not only growing warmer, but it will continue to do so, regardless of our best efforts to change the course. If that is the case (and I wish it weren't), we need to adapt to the coming, warmer environment. Securing a reliable food supply would be a priority. Kenya's vegetable farms won’t always be there to grow our food. If not, a new paradigm is called for: communities of small scale crofters, growing their food sustainably. The Russian experience demonstrates that it is much more than a pipe dream.

Rumi : The disappearance of Shams

Episode 5 of Sophia Through Time is set in thirteenth century Syria, the time of the great mystic Rumi. For many years Rumi (Mevlana) grieved the unexplained disappearance of Shams, his beloved master. Some said that he had been killed by Rumi's disciples. Others, that he chose to retire from public view. Rumi transformed his grief into some of his most splendid poetry.

In this fictional narrative, Fatima Khatoun is a real person, as is her female companion. Historical archives don't reveal the latter's name.

Click here for Sophia Through Time: Mevlana

A Story Wrought in Glass

A few days ago, Amber and I chanced on the old parish church in Croick. If you think Cottarton is remote, try out Croick which is fifteen miles from the nearest shops, in an empty glen and not a farm in sight. Only a few scattered houses. You can walk for miles and not see a human soul. The adjoining glens contain the Alladale Estate, the site of an ecological restoration project. It's an idyllic spot with a dark history.

While taking us on a safari tour of Alladale Estate, our guide John, told us about the days of the Highland Clearances, when hundreds of families were forced from their homes to make way for large sheep farms. In 1845, after a prolonged struggle, 18 families, some 90 people, from the glen of Glenvalvie were evicted from their homes. They sought refuge in the nearby church of Croick only to find that the local factor had locked the doors against them. The people spent the night in the churchyard, using tarpaulins to shelter from the wind and rain. Before they left, some of the women used their jewellery to scratch their names, and their story in the windows. We were able to make out a few of those scratches.




"Glencalvie people was in the churchyard here May 24 1845"

"Glencalvie tenants residing here"

“Ros James Borthwick”

“The Glencalvie tenants reside in the kirkyard in May 24, 1845”












"Glencalvie people, the wicked generation”




The latter scrawl suggests that the church leaders persuaded the people that they were being punished for their sins.

Interestingly a nearby plaque makes no mention of the doors being locked. Rather, it states that the people voluntarily decided not to enter the church as to do so would be sacrilegious. That’s not the story the locals have passed down to their children. Nor does it accord with the following letter to the Times newspaper in 1845:

Behind the church, a long kind of booth was erected, the roof formed of tarpaulin stretched over poles, the sides in with horsecloths, rugs, blankets and plaids ... Their furniture, excepting their bedding, they got distributed amongst the cottages of their neighbours; and with their bedding and their children they all removed on Saturday afternoon to this place. In my last letter I informed you that they had been round to every heritor and factor in the neighbourhood, and 12 of the 18 families had been unable to find places of shelter........

History is re-written by the winners.

We don’t know where the people went. Some ended up in cities, others crossed the Atlantic to Nova Scotia. It's sadly ironic that these days Glencalvie doesn’t host any sheep, in whose names the atrocities were committed. The sheep farming of old is no longer economical.

Happy Birthday to Gaia’s Children

Linella's Spread







It was the long expected party, with dozens of guests. Just about everyone we could think of was there, on a Thursday night too. The Texas/ Louisiana spread surpassed its legendary reputation. Chili, salsa, gumbo, queso, beer, spicy beans. You don’t find those in a Scottish restaurant, unless the chef happens to be Amber. Southern cuisine is in her blood, and she knows how to treat it well. For me, sharing the book’s birthday with friendly and supportive people was what it was about. And an opportunity to thank everyone who helped me prepare the manuscript: editors, reviewers, critics and supporters.

I can’t judge the book any more than I could judge a child who is born. It has everything right about it. I’m happy with the way it turned out, and that’s as far as I’ll go. I'm pleased that people whom I’ve never met reportedly like it. While I’m not expecting a bestseller, I hope that the book will please, inspire, provoke a thoughtful response, open a window to a new and awe-inspiring world.




Fiona Alden, Alastair Grant, Charles Ashton, Adam Archibald Charlie Roy, Rachel Ashton, Annie Ashton (All pretending to read)





It’s been a long journey since the sunny October in the French Pyrenees where I penned the opening chapters. The first seeds were kicking about much earlier. Questions about language, and how it shapes our thinking. How would we think if our thinking wasn’t wedded to language? In forming a sentence we already separate subject and object, you and I, I and the world, Catholics from Jews, Americans from the French and so on. Language fragments our world, chews it into small bites that don’t appear to relate to each other. We accept that fragmented reality as the real world when it is more likely an illusion resulting from our rational thinking --- a thinking chained by language. Is that modality of thinking inevitable? Is there another that doesn’t fragment our experience? If so, then it’s not common. Perhaps it’s experienced through meditation or an altered state of consciousness.

Those who know me have had to put up with my tirades about global warming. I’m not one for political action. I’m convinced that humanity’s devastating effect on Gaia goes back to our basic psychology, to our tendency to see ourselves as separate from our environment, and from each other. We only exploit nature without regard to her needs when we feel separate from nature. Which is where the lupans come in, showing us the way to heal the troubled Earth. Less rational than us more empathic, lacking “the ego”, they may at first appear remote to us, however they are humanity’s unrecognized alter-ego. I won’t say more here. Song of the Earth, the sequel to Gaia’s Children will answer some of those questions.






Back to the book launch and to Linella Sienkiewicz’s table. The outside temperatures aren't warm enough yet to dine al-fresco in March but within fifty years time that will change. Unfortunately no lupans showed up after the guests were gone to take away the leftovers. They haven’t been born --- not yet. This party was only their baby shower.

We all wish the lupans anticipated Happy Birthday!