Deep Dive

1990 Skiathos, Greece. “Jump now!” Andy said “And open your eyes!” and we did. Out of a rickety boat in the bay, into the inky depths of the Aegean and it went all the shades of blue from indigo to ultramarine - complete, huge, unfathomable. “Deep blue!” he yelled “Deep blue!” navigating without fear amongst the rocks in the dark sea swell, caressing the horizon with his eyes, looking for dolphins.

1998 Byron Bay, Australia. We had been doing the dreaming practice all morning with Sarah. “Let’s go to the tea tree lake,” she said. “There’s something amazing that happens there.” So we walked down to a warm still pool where the roots of the tea tree go deep into the water and stain it red brown. We swam out to the middle. “Now,” said Sarah, “You have to dive down as deep as possible, then just let yourself float up. Keep your eyes open and look up. Whatever you do, remember the light!”

We all dived down together. I opened my eyes. It was almost completely dark-brown. Then I looked up and saw a dim golden colour above me. As I floated up from the dive it got stronger and stronger, until it burst into a shower of diamonds as I surfaced with my two companions at the same time and burst into laughter. We were all laughing and splashing water around us. Amazing we all agreed. And immediately dived down again.

Nothing really “happened” at the lake. It was an intense experience for a few moments but in those moments, naked, diving into the brown and golden water, bursting through the surface of the glittering sunlight, we had become different beings. It was as if our modern European histories no longer existed, our city biographies. We were suddenly just three human beings in the middle of their lives, enjoying the earth together, starting again at a certain point in time . . .

2010 Southwold, England. The sea is green and brown, wrinkled, flecked with afternoon light. I am swimming in the shallows with my eyes shut and my dolphin companions are no longer with me. It’s an old working sea, the North Sea and the place I am swimming, this East coast pleasure dome, is old too. It seemed for so many years, those years when I was travelling and writing that the world would change for the better, that people would come to love the Earth again, and now floating in these small waves, I am wondering whether it ever will. Sometimes I feel old and so very tired.

And yet I swim: abandoned to the wild water, immersed in all that light, everything dissolves in the ocean's vastness and fluidity. I stop creaking, the pettiness of the mind falls away. Time loses its hold and I stretch outwards to the horizon. I feel I belong to everything. To the whole world. All those difficulties we face - climate change, peak oil, economic meltdown - are because we forget this small thing, the relationship we come to experience, the cosmic embrace of the sea, the eternal avenue of sweet limes, the expansive month of July. How when we remember anything is possible.

This morning I awoke after drinking the golden limeflower tea. It was a perfect morning. Complete in a way only a summer's day can be. And so we took our breakfast down amongst the dunes and faced the sea that was calm and sparkling. There was no one on the beach. The larks sang overhead. A fishing boat ploughed through the golden water and then Beth appeared with Jessie her African lion-hunting dog and we talked neighbourhood apples trees and about a writing project she calls the Ladies of the Lane and I call Honouring the Elders. Then we all went into the sea together.

It's on mornings like these I know we live in amazing times. So long as we take the deep dive. Into the blue, into the sea change. Remembering to keep our eyes open.

Taking the plunge: submerging in the pool by Marko Modic, Ecuador 1991; showing Ollie how to face the waves, Southwold 2009 - the sequence of photos by Andy Croft that began this blog; Beth, Jessie and me by the sea by Mark Watson

Herbs for Resilience

"That’s very precise," said Erik. "The eighth of July."

"I know ," I said "But it’s true. Every year that’s the day when I start noticing them."

We were talking lime trees. Those extraordinary trees with sticky heart-shaped leaves which for most of the year appear inconspicous beside the showier oaks and horse chestnuts. But suddenly in early July they burst dramatically into flower. And every year I make a journey down the coast to an avenue of great limes and pick some of the flowers for tea.

Because if you want to go to heaven for five minutes drink a cup of fresh limeflower tea.

Fragrant, golden, tasting of honey.

Limeflower gathering is a very rewarding kind of foraging. The flowers are easy to pick and easy to dry. The trees are abundant, dripping, laden with flowers, so there’s no chance of reducing stocks. And what more lovely way to spend an hour: standing, paper bag in hand, beneath a lime tree, immersed in their awesome scent. You’re never alone when you do. Because every bee in the district is there with you foraging for its sweet nectar. Everywhere is humming.

There are three kinds of lime and all are good for flowers. The small and large leaved limes in the country, the common lime frequently planted in the city (several huge ones in St Benedict’s Street). The tea is one of the world’s great downtimers. You can mix it with other heart herbs (lemon balm, hawthorn flowers, rosehips) or have it straight before you go to sleep. It’s a flower that uncoils the springs inside and won’t weigh you down like valerian. Those relaxing flowers will put you on a different wavelength altogether. Out of the mind’s urgency and into the expansiveness of the heart.

I haven’t got a pic of limeflowers yet because it’s early (six o’clock - now added! ed.). But here is a downtime tea I’m drinking right now (rose, lavender and chamomile - divine!) and above some resilient herbs I picked from just outside my door. They are all stalwart members of my medicine cabinet. Elderflower and yarrow tea deal with any shivers in a chill. Marigold is a great anti-inflammatory and lymphatic cleanser (I’m using it right now as an eyewash for conjunctivitis). Rosemary, sage and horsetail, all excellent tonics.

The small daisy-looking flower is chamomile which I grew from seed (thank you Erik!). At the beginning of the year I decided I would put together a Herbs for Resilience Toolkit. Some simple wild and garden plant medicines that fellow Transitioners might like to know about. Plants I’ve used through the years that have been useful remedies or tonics. I’ll be writing about all these flowers and leaves in more depth later in the year.

Meanwhile here are one or two good tips about foraging. Rule one: Go for it! Walk out and tune in. Put a pair of scissors and a brown paper bag in your pocket, grab a flower guide and step into the green world of the neighbourhood. You’ll find the plants and trees everywhere once you decide to look. Rule Two: recognise what you need. Get a feeling for those plants appearing in front of you. Certain ones will grab your attention at different times. Those are the ones you need: for your body, for your mind, energetically.

The planet’s wild plants are stronger medicinally and nutritionally than anything cultivated. The native ones most of all. When I went on a wild plant walk at the Transition Conference the herbalist told us that wild greens contained ten times the minerals of commercially-grown plants and recommended putting a handful in with your stir-fries and salads through the year. Here she is talking about the daisy, a substitute for the rarer mountain-growing arnica, whose leaves can be mixed with chickweed and dandelion earlier in the year .

With the flowers of summer: take from the most abundant and least grimy places and only what you need. Shake out insects. Dry in the airing cupboard (in the paper bag or on a tray) and store in jars. You’ll find yarrow is on all the roadsides at the moment, horsetails in every damp patch and sun-loving rosemary and sage growing in neighbourhood gardens if not in your own (be bold, ask for a sprig if you don’t). Elderflower is almost at the end of its season (but keep an eye out for its marvellous berries later on).

And it’s the eight of July: so dear reader look upwards as you walk down the street today. You might find yourself in heaven very soon.

Photos: elderflowers, Greek mountain sage, marigold (calendula), common horsetail, chamomile, yarrow, rosemary; limeflower tea; rose, chamomile and lavender tea; pushing daisies at the Transition conference; walking down the lime avenue Suffolk.

Stoneleigh Revisited

Last night we listened to the second half of the Stoneleigh talk at the 2010 Transition Conference, where Transitioners asked questions about the coming bursting of the finanical bubble.

At about midnight the cat jumped up to be let out of the window. And I looked outside into the warm starry night, into the garden and across the fields and marsh to the sea beyond. What has any of that got to do with this? The moon was a bright sickle over the trees and Jupiter shone brilliantly. On the horizon the oil tanker lights flickered.

The recording was of Nicole Foss responding to questions put to her after what was for many a wake-up call to global financial instability. This thing is going to blow! We knew in our minds that unregulated markets had created virtual wealth, but we hadn’t faced the reality of its consequences.

What should any of us do? Well, some of those answers were practical: putting cash aside and waiting until the price of land came down, investing in tools. Making sure you were in a place where your face fitted. Some of them were ways of seeing the decade that lies ahead, opening ourselves to the reality of a financial deflation. The way Greece is being pushed to the periphery of the eurozone, the way feed-in tariff guarrantees are unlikely to be upheld, that Governments do not play fair and fascism is likely.

But the ones that struck me were those to do with the people in Transition. Those of us who were mentally prepared for such times, showing communities there are other ways of doing things and recognising individuals who may have no money or seeming skills, but are incredible social beings. Who can hold a centre, when everything else falls apart.

Yesterday Helen rang me and said she couldn’t write the blog this week. She is inundated with Knit-In squares. A thousand of them in all the colours of the rainbow. Her original plan to have enough squares for a mammoth woolly to hang over the County Hall balcony for the Pride celebrations has come true. She has been sent squares from all over the world as well as all corners of Norwich. “It caught people’s imaginations,” she said.

In Bungay this week people are coming to the Library to see our Transition community garden being built. A plan was drawn up after the permaculture course in January but the working party had been waiting for funds. Out of the blue Sustainable Bungay was given £500 by the Bungay Society and so now we can forge ahead with the brickwork for the raised beds. Our fruit trees have just arrived in huge pots, between the rainbutts and the plantswap tables. Suddenly everything is ready to go!

In between the cracks of the system different things can happen. Seeds that were lying dormant, that you never thought were there, break through. You can’t expect them, but you can notice them. You can open your window at night and see Jupiter blazing in the heavens.

Because as well as the imminent financial meltdown there is also a new mood out there in the bigger picture. Of a possibility of something else happening. This is not a grandiose thing that has come out of board rooms, universities and temples. It comes from the bottom up, from the streets and shanty towns, from the people at the end of the line. People pulling together, reinventing their lives and their neighbourhooda. Something that’s happening everywhere - from small moves in East Anglia to the big movements in South America. From Mark on this blog to Oliver Stone’s new documentary, South of the Border.

To tap into that mood is important because if things really go to the wall the way Stoneleigh talks about and within a short timeframe, we’re going to need to hold together. And what holds us together are not the sentiments of Empire, nor the bullying tactics of corporations, nor the glitterati of society, but something far more ordinary. Something that catches the imagination, sparked by people you would never expect to matter. Who have been working in the community and on the land all along. The people in charge of the lifeboat.

The new push: photo op for the Bungay bike strategy outside the Library Courtyard; looking at the big picture in the Big Group process, Day 2, 2010 Transition Network conference; seakale flourishing outside Sizewell Power Station against all odds.

Fruits of Our Labours

A month ago I wrote a post about Malcolm and the Strawberries. They were in flower at the time and Malcolm reckoned, in spite of all adversity, this year would be the best crop ever.

It was. There were so many strawberries he and Eileen didn’t know what to do with them. There was an abundance of ripe scarlet berries. The sudden July heat ripened the whole crop in a week.

On Sunday morning Mark and I went over and picked pounds of fruit and had a strawberry feast: strawberry jelly, strawberry coulis, compotes (with rhubarb) and jam. Lots of jam. The whole house was steeped in the fragrance of roses. It’s that time of year. Suddenly after all that waiting, after the patient sowing and repotting and watering the rewards start coming fast. And you have to start eating and cooking and preserving to keep up with them. Blackcurrants and gooseberres under the greengage tree, broadbeans and tomatoes among the pots. And a new wonder - cucumber!

I’ve never grown a cucumber before. I’d taken them for granted. But it’s a really exciting plant. A big vigourous climber with showy yellow flowers and tendrils, now joining the long trails of morning glories and passionflowers around the conservatory. Up to the solstice things grow in a steady, upward swing. You feel sort of in control of things. After midsummer they grow out, everywhere. There’s a seismic shift. You go outside and the lawn has turned into a savannah. The trees have doubled in size. The world is full of insects – bees, dragonfly, thunderbug, hoverfly, butterfly. Everything is thirsty. Suddenly you’re in demand.

Amongst all this wild exuberance and activity the big vegetable moments come and go: peas and sugarsnaps, French beans and young turnips, spinach and courguette. I have learned in my eat-in-season, love-it-while-you-can years to relish each one and eat as much as possible in those days, the way I put flowers in a jar beside my bed to absorb their fleeting beauty - mock orange, honeysuckle, peony and rose.

Because very soon the moment will be gone. It will be replaced by another. You want to be there for that moment, as if it were the only time you were experiencing it. With everything you have. That’s the way I’ve learned to love the earth. As if you will never see summer again. Holding the moment in your heart. and then releasing it, like a bird in your hands.

Right now in strawberry season, I can’t look at another strawberry. I am strawberried-out. But in my larder are a row of intense red shiny jars. One day when the snow falls, when the evenings grow dark, or it’s just been grey too many days in a row, I’ll come back to those jars and open one and the room will fill with the fragrance of summer, with the memory of how it is when the world is full of light and the days stretch endlessly in front of you, the air is filled with the scent of hay and the sound of skylarks, and the butterflies begin to appear, as if from nowhere.

My first cucumber among the sage flowers; Mark and the strawberries; strawberry jam.

Growing Up Through The Cracks

When I began to work with medicinal plants, I started in the wastegrounds of Oxford. These were the places on the edge, ignored or dismissed by most people and often ‘earmarked for development’. Out of the stony bare ground rose magnificent mulleins with their spires of yellow flowers and soft leaves, a huge borage shaped like a boat flowered into November, tough and beautiful evening primroses flourished on disused railway tracks. There were gnarly goat willows, butterfly bushes and elder trees crammed with berries. Some of the strongest medicines grow in the toughest places.

In similar territories in Suffolk, bee and pyramid orchids appear before being mown down by the council at the height of their flowering. They come back, although this year I haven’t seen any bee orchids.

Last night we watched Michael Moore’s documentary Capitalism: A Love Story, where all over America, in Detroit, Florida and Chicago, people who have been made redundant are reclaiming their jobs, repossessing their homes from the banks, backing each other in neighbourhood groups.

This is what Naomi Klein at the end of her book about disaster capitalism, The Shock Doctrine, calls ‘starting from scrap’ rather than scratch. She’s referring to movements of ordinary people everywhere beginning to work together with whatever they have at hand to reconstruct their lives - from people who lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina to dispossessed farm and factory workers in Latin America.

These pictures are of St. John's Wort growing up through the cracks of Lowestoft railway station. At the end of the platform. At the end of the line.

Wild In The Summer Garden - Reptiles (and Amphibians?)

Calling John from Transition Circle Hethersett of toad-saving fame! Do you know who this little creature I found amongst the pots the other day might be? Does someone else know? I've seen them occasionally disappear into the dark damp green through the years, always this size, which as you see is very small. This is the first time I've been able to pick one up and take a photo. Young newt? Young lizard?

A few months ago I described this same creature to Erik (also in TC Hethersett), who'd dug up an unknown hibernating creature in his garden. Somehow in that exchange we discovered we both spoke German, but I was left none the wiser as Erik told me that being a microbiologist didn't necessarily mean you could identify amphibians. It could also have been my description of course.

The other day we arrived home to find this grass snake on the path. Calm and collected as you like, he/she flicked his/her tongue and stayed right there whilst I fumbled for the camera and took several pictures. Eventually we had to move forward to get past and only then did the snake move, slowly, into the long grass.

The grass snakes live in our compost heap, which means that it's not a compost heap for quite a lot of the year. I've found up to seven of them at once, all different sizes. It's really exciting to lift up the old carpet and see them curled up absorbing the heat. This year they are sharing with a common lizard, ants and other insects.

Oh, and you know I was talking about our low carbon cat a few weeks ago. Well, she continues to feed herself. First she brings her catch to show us. Then at some point she has her dinner. And she rarely leaves anything on her plate.

Pics: As yet unidentified creature on my hand; Grass snake on the path; the path to the compost heap; low carbon cat food; the compost heap snake and lizard home all by Mark Watson June/July 2010

Standing Up To Speak – (Pattern 1.8)

Last night I went with Charlotte to The Chaucer Club. We were giving fellow transitioner Nick from Sustainable Bungay a hand to set up and deliver his first talk – A Tale of Two Curves – about the limits to economic growth, peak debt, peak oil and climate change. It was a lively talk which Nick illustrated with nicely hand drawn graphs and a timeline. As he explained Hubbert’s Curve, showed the illusory and unsustainable nature of the present economic growth model and spoke about physical resource limits, Charlotte would occasionally blow one of those whistles which whoop up or down (unlimited growth) or I would ring a bell (Time, ladies and gentlemen, please. Everything has a limit!)

At the Transition Conference last month Rob Hopkins introduced a new way of understanding Transition using A Pattern Language. It was felt that the twelve steps were rather too linear an approach. Many people thought they had to follow them to the letter in the "correct" order. The Pattern Language is more fluid and self-organising. You can read more about it in Charlotte's excellent posting from the conference here.

So far there are 63 patterns and Standing Up To Speak forms pattern 8 of the first section What We Start With. It's about learning how to speak in front of people about Transition, a skill anyone in any initiative can learn to do - just get on out there and get as much practice as possible. Nick took the leap last night with the rest of the group backing him, and it was a great first show.

Being involved in Transition for the last few years has brought about radical changes in my approach to the world. One is I’ve become much bolder about speaking with people, both in public and private.
Whether I’m taking a group out to introduce them to the wild, native plants in the neighbourhood, connecting people who want to learn more about growing food locally, speaking to a group who want to set up a Transition initiative or writing these posts, a lot of my old hesitation and timidity is just no longer there. I think the key for all of us lies in the passion for our subject and the desire to share it, whether it's mine for wild plants or Nick's for economics.

About thirty people came out on this warm summer's night for the talk and to join in the discussion afterwards. As with many Transition events people weren’t in any rush to get away. The bar was open and conversations carried on till closing time.

On the TV screen in the bar Cliff Richard was singing, dancing and laughing with a studio audience in a show from some time ago. My attention shifted after a few moments back to the Chaucer Club and Nick’s talk and I realised not only does Transition interest and engage me now more than any TV entertainment, but it’s just not true that We Don’t Talk Anymore.


Pics: The Chaucer Club, Bungay; Nick talks about Peak Oil, Peak Debt and Going Local; Me getting passionate about plants*; Charlotte talking to the Mayor of Norwich about Transition at the Peace Camp on 26th June All by Mark Watson except * by Josiah Meldrum

PS In February this year Norwich transitioners attended the day long Transition Talk Training in Colchester organised by the Transition Network. You can read Andy Croft's report of the day here.