Earth Pathways Showcase

In Southwark, one of the oldest, poorest, and dirtiest parts of London, an extraordinary thing is happening. Where before there was only concrete, a wild garden is blooming, its roots threaded through the bones of the dead. Here, in this most sacred of earth, lie the remains of paupers and prostitutes who the church refused to bury in consecrated ground. From at least the 14th Century until 1853, when the graveyard was closed and forgotten, 15,000 people were buried there in unmarked graves; approximately 9,000 of them children. And then in the 1990s workmen digging the Jubilee Line extension on the London Underground began to unearth bones and a deep healing of the dead, the living, and the land, began. Since 2004, on the 23rd of every month we have gathered at the gates at 7pm to hold a vigil; to tie ribbons, offer songs and poems, and to remember those who lie just beneath the surface of what had become a temporary car park. A people’s shrine has been created at the gates of the site and many have campaigned for a permanent memorial to the ‘Outcast Dead’. We dreamed of a garden and sang to the Greenman of future children who might play there. It seemed that it would never happen; the ground was just worth too much to developers; but then there was wild magic! Crossbones began to be marked on official maps and now we have been offered the land for three years to create a ‘Meanwhile Garden’. Hawthorn, crab apples, mistletoe, mugwort, foxgloves, hollyhocks, and thyme grow there. Dragonflies, honeybees, bright-eyed mice, curious rats, and tiny, fierce wrens have made it their home. The wild land was always there just beneath the concrete. We should never underestimate its power to break through.
crossbones.org.uk

On Crossbones Graveyard © Jacqui Woodward-Smith 2015

We buried him in the Spring, next to a badger path in a clearing where the deer go to give birth. We buried him on a wooded hill facing the sunset and overlooking the sacred landscape of Stonehenge. We buried him in a grave of sea-spray white chalk on the very farm where, without our realising it before the decision was made, the Battle of the Beanfield unfolded almost 30 years before at a time when he had been travelling with the Peace Convoy, and when he and his friends were forced from the land that they loved. Like so many, he was a man of the land, always looking for a place to belong. On that spring day the land took him home and on that day the land taught us the meaning of 'laying to rest'. Here was a man who needed to rest in the earth and who changed my mind about what burial means. As we lowered him into the earth and silently began to offer flowers and prayers, stars of ivy and willow, and to take up spades to cover him, a deep peace descended on us all. In the twilight, we began to light candles and plant wild flowers: primroses, bluebells, foxgloves, snakes head fritillary, snowdrops, narcissus, and black knapweed. It felt very old. On that day the land called an ancestor home and it was good.

In memory of Will Greenwood, 13th June 1959 to 10th February 2014.

The Day We Planted a Greenwood © Jacqui Woodward-Smith

Life is full of beauties; not just those vast expanses of landscape or emotion that force us to notice, but those tiny, seemingly mundane, flashes of intimacy that might often pass us by. Life moves quickly and somehow we lose sight of moments and glimpses of what is good and bright and might warm our 'hearth'. For several years I have been creating, and sharing, a daily list of 'small beauties'; things that have caught my eye, kindnesses and moments of connection experienced, happenings that have made me smile, all of which have opened my heart just a little bit wider to the beauty that surrounds us all...

There are days when I really don’t feel like noticing; days when I feel heavy or cracked open, days when I am just too tired. These are the days when small beauties matter most of all and, when I do go back over the day, often the balance tips and I find that it was sweet after all. I have found that it is all about where I choose to put my attention. What the daily small beauties might be doesn’t matter, and they will be different for each of us. What does matter is that they are always there and there will always be more. Life and the land are constantly offering us honey for the soul.

On Small Beauties © Jacqui Woodward Smith

Today, the heat was flame,
a Shakti dance of sun and breath
And I, made slow as snails,
flow out in spirals across familiar green
and dream of rain,
seek shelter in the shadow of the cherry tree
and lie with baby bindweeds,
let salt sweat trace its tendrils on my skin
as we, as one, breathe out, breathe in...

In the Shelter of the Cherry Tree © Jacqueline Woodward-Smith 2014

The snow is falling again and the night is soft and silent. I have tasted winter on my tongue and opened to its prayer. Vast white landscapes of frost and silence are as close as breath and as endless as stars. When the snow comes it feels as though there is no time; no past, present, or future, that the far away ancestors, who still live beneath our skin and in the land beneath our feet, are following the reindeer tracks even now. I feel them in the marrow of my winter-white bones, in the red pulsing serpents of my blood, through the tingling soles of my feet, feel the drumming of hoofbeats in the dark and secret cauldron of my belly. I know that there are antlers on my brow; that land and ancestor and reindeer have become one in this timeless and ancient dreaming. I lift my face up to the sky, expose the sweetly vulnerable pulse of heart in my throat to the icy bite of night. I raise my arms and feel the softly falling flakes kiss my fingertips like lovers. Winter has come and I am welcoming all who have walked far and woven strong threads of love and support for those of us who have yet more journeys to make. I know we will have good company.

Following the Reindeer Tracks © Jacqueline Woodward-Smith 2013

This mist is like angel's breath.
I hunt the Fly Agaric like a fox
seeking red, the secret fire.
The trees are all aflame and burn themselves to bare,
draw their magic down, burnt toffee for the boar,
hearth-root honey for the sow
who winds the year to still with cloven hoof and song of briar.

I keep my belly low and snuffle-seek the Chanterelle
I wise-woman-walk the web and weave of mycelia
find waxcaps; scarlet, butter, honey, crimson,
King Alfred's Cakes to light the inner fire
I pad-paw the paths of a thousand years,
trust my nose, the knowing of my feet
sniff out the place where two roads meet
set sail for longer nights, and shorter days made diamond bright
by frost and fear.

A Morning Walk in Autumn Woods © Jacqueline Woodward-Smith 2013