(Notes from time spent with Carolyn Hillyer, Nigel Shaw and
Martin Shaw at Lower Merripit Farm, Dartmoor, Devon from the 30 November – 4 December
2015.)
Indigenous people honour ancestors and the land. As we
arrived at our new home for the next four days we found a shrine before us
mapping out a winter pilgrimage rooted in Dartmoor. The four directions are
set; Wild Horse represents the untamed spirit of the land; Reindeer is the
ancient memory; Bear is winter in all its darkness and Owl is night and the
ancestors.
The skull of the wild horse is our totem. Dartmoor upon
which our feet are pressed represents freedom.
Ancient men and women travel deep within our myths and we
carry their stories inside of us. Women who carry heron feathers in their hair
remember our people connected to us by blood or land, shaping the road upon
which we choose to travel. The stories we carry flow, change and grow as we
move. They are mythic, too old to be defined by history and a linear concept of
time. They fit more into our ecology and cycles.
We place our feet into the footsteps of our ancestors and
tie our spirit to the ancient land. Listen and hear the songs sounding out on
these old roads. They resonate with the voices of our ancestors. As we walk we
sing of returning, belonging and home. Wild land is crucial to the return.
How do we return to
the wild land inside ourselves? What will we find there?
If we are ever blessed to see this land something in us is
returned, completed and blessed.
On Dartmoor White Horse
Hill woman’s burial site was recently revealed to us again after 4,000 years.
Her burial chamber became eroded out of the peat in which in lay. Not for 100
years has anyone touched a Cistven. During the excavation a full intact bone
bundle was found. Her bones had been cremated and wrapped around her burial
goods. A 200-beaded necklace was found,
this included 7 amber beads and there was also one tin nugget representing the
wealth of these lands at that time. The oldest example of spindled wood was
found and all these offerings were wrapped in bearskin. This is a truly
significant find connecting us to the ancestors of Dartmoor. On the northern
section of the moor an arc of ceremonial circles all point towards the White
Horse Hill ridge. This is a deeply ritual landscape. Even more recently a new
stone circle has been uncovered to further confirm this. The energy is to be
observed, felt and experienced when you are here.
Reindeer invites
us to journey north to connect us with our time of ice on the lands. There was
a time when we were all nomadic. There was a constant search for migration
trails showing the movement patterns of our ancestors. Reindeer roads are awakened and kept alive
through our dreams, remembering and song. The reindeer road is the meeting
place. Here past and future connect and over lap. We feel the memory of ice on
the ice road. Hearth fires have warmed our people through the oldest and
coldest times. Our drum is the vessel of the reindeer road. We cradle its
mystery in the drum. It’s no longer enough to weep and sing about the loss of
our ancestors and their ways.
Bear is next on
the wheel of our journey. It represents winter, being in the mystery, death,
transformation and thresholds to be crossed. Forty thousand years ago twelve
cave bear skulls were found in a circle. Each of the skulls was resting on bear
claws. In the centre was a thirteenth big bear skull also resting on bear
claws. The skulls are 40,000 years old, carbon dated after they were found a
decade ago. It shows Neanderthal people also had a spiritual life and made
shrines. There is an old man who guards the cave where the bear skulls were
found. You can still go inside the cave if you have permission.
There is no limit to how far back you can go in your journey
to connect with our ancestors. We can go back through human, more than human,
animal, elemental, rock – eventually we find we are connected to everything. The drum is also a symbol of connection to indigenous
peoples. The sacred drum is a symbol of the non-hierarchical, non-religious
connection between people, the world and all of life. It’s a symbol of our own
indigenous roots. Drums are egalitarian. What happens when our drums are taken
from us, exiled, broken and forgotten? How, then, do we keep alive our songs
and connect to the ancestors and land? The situation for indigenous peoples for some is getting
better than it has been. Some drums are back in the hands of those who treasure
them. It is at night the drums come into their own and sing across the land to
other hidden drums.
As the wheel turns once more we find Owl, who represents our journey into the night. Owl is an intuitive
oracle. Owl is about broken stories and the mending of these stories. We
witness and remember in the tent of broken stories. We weave hope in the tent
of mending stories. It is important to honour both tents. We are story carriers
and as such we have a duty of care to keep sharing the old stories to raise
awareness. It’s our responsibility to
keep our ancestors warm and alive.
In front of us our alter has parts of Tawny owls from these
lands of Dartmoor. Related to owl and the air is the flute. Sound and music are
very much part of being human. Flutes are musical instruments perfectly bonded
with the land and the materials of a place and make the sound of that place.
Indigenous peoples have a triad of instruments; the drum, the rattle and the
flute. You will find representations of these three instruments all over the
planet.
We have more examples of flutes made by our ancestors
because they were made from materials that do not decay like wood and animal
skin used to make drums. Old flutes made from animal bone and clay have been
found, for example, in southern Germany a flute made from the bone from a
vulture has been dated as 40,000 years old.
Homo sapiens arrived in Europe 50,000 years ago travelling
up from Asia and Africa. These peoples definitely brought with them their
flutes. In a 45 – 50,000 year old burial site a bear bone flute has been
uncovered. A flute has a descriptive sound quality much broader than that of
human words. Our ancestor’s musical minds are locked into a different
discipline of music. Part of being a human being is a musicality; it brings
with it a second voice. Back then it would not be something specialised as it
has become today.
Pilgrimage
That afternoon we made our own rattles from wild horse skin
and river stones sewn onto sticks given by nearby trees. And we fashioned
simple flutes, or whistles using half a walnut shell, sanded discs of wood and
hollowed out ash twigs for reeds. These instruments were needed on the
pilgrimage into Dartmoor we embarked upon the next day.
In silence we set off
to visit a cistven, a stone row and the remains of a roundhouse. As we walked
out we were met by buzzards circling above us, and a herd of wild ponies that
came from over the horizon and right up to us to touch, it felt like a blessing
from the animal kingdom.
Before reaching the cistven we collected two objects
from nature. The first we donated to our grandfather ancestors as each in turn
we stepped up to the stone cistven playing our flute and placing the object
within the stones. From their we walked down an incline in between the parallel
row of stones down to a small round house at the end. There we lit a fire and
gathered to place our second object to our ancestor grandmothers. We sang songs
and shared stories. We sipped tea and ate chocolate before lifting ourselves to
our feet and heading back to where we had came.
In the afternoon of the same day we continued our
pilgrimage, this time taking solo time on the land. It was a moment to listen
and make personal offerings. I wandered asking myself, how does wild land encompass our human journeys?
Ancestors
Hear this small plea
Storms are stirring bringing with them
Tumult and turmoil
I’m scared
I see fear in the eyes of others
It’s as if a Great Darkness is descending
I ask for your wisdom
I ask for your assistance
Show me where to place gentle acts of kindness.
Please send delicate parcels of inspiration
To activate hearts lain broken for too long.
Plant seeds of regeneration and healing
In places calling your names
I find myself on the edge between land and water
I yearn for the freedom of the flowing river
I yearn for the soft gentle embrace of the land
They both feel far far away
Illusive even
Ancestors teach me about freedom
The ways of the river and the land
Help me find balance
I feel lost
I ask you Ancestors
If I sit still here will the alarm call of wild birds
quieten?
Life the curious Dartmoor pony
Will the woodland creatures see me and come rest by my side?
Can I slow down enough
To be in the flow of the river of life?
If I sit here tell me, will I become wrapped
In the mossy blanket of wild land dreaming?
Like ancestors before and descendants to come
Help me to keep the hearth fire burning
In welcome of passers by
Guardian Angel
Warm
Unconditional
Uncompromising
Insistent
Feed me
Feed me meat
Feed me more
On my terms
Not yours
Only you
Can do this for me
In return
I give you
My everything
My heart
My all
Feed me
Feed me meat
Feed me more
I will never leave you
My battles are my battles
Fight your own fight
And we will meet
Together at home again
To lick our wounds clean
Follow the Sun
Be guided by the Moon
Love your life
Stars foretell in ways
We both cannot fathom
And yet we each have our own star
In the sky just for us
Be alert
Strangeness can arrive at the door
At anytime
This cannot be stopped
We may walk this land each day
I go alone
Trust I will return
When I return
I will notice your movements
