One Willow Apothecaries
3 de octubre a las 20:43 ·
Maybe it’s the fact that I was on vacation. Or perhaps it was the long stretches of time without any WiFi, but I think it might just be Ireland, with its hawthorn hedgerows and impossible green fields and sheep with black feet who nod at you as you go. There is something about this land that just calls you to woolgather.
Woolgathering has long been one of my favorite terms. It’s synonymous for the act of daydreaming, the gathering of thoughts as one might collect tufts of wool lost here in there within the heather. When I first started my blog over seven years ago. I named it Woolgathering and Wildcrafting, because it seemed apt for the textures my mind most loves to explore.
Going to Ireland was a return for the woolgatherer in me. As a child I was often off in my own world, unfocused and libal to stare off into the dreamtime. When I entered adulthood I learned, slowly, how to hone my attention, focus my will and accomplish. And it’s been wonderfully fruitful. But a large part of my spirit always seems to ache for this, the whimsy, and the invisible harvest, of woolgathering in the inner landscapes of my mind.
The beautiful thing about Ireland is that you can literally woolgather as you daydream. Over the green hills and fields you can find bits of wool, left by peaceful sheep in their pastoring. During my time in Ireland I gathered small handfuls of wool from the places that felt most powerful to me. I found tufts on the bodies of hawthorn in full fruit, tucked into the heather at the base of the Paps of Anu, scattered outside a stone circle built to point to the stars. In the day I gathered and at night, around the fire, I picked out the bits of moss and bramble, and I twined. Creating cordage from the very places that fed me, and set me free in heart and mind.
At the end I had one long, thin white rope with which to wrap myself when I got back home. So I could remember, even as I fell back into my daily rhythms, to still give myself space and time to pasture. To put down the to-dos, sometimes, and just putter around in the creek. To go for a walk and drink a whole pot of tea and be content picking tufts of dreams from the hedgerow of my mind. Sometimes collecting them to twine. And sometimes just letting them go, floating onwards like a wish already fulfilled.
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