The Trees Are The Community We Have Been Searching For

Finding peace after crisis...

Quote: Lao Tzu: "Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished."

Finding magic in the lockdown

Me, my pregnant wife and 4 year old daughter found ourselves in the spare room of my parents house. A few years prior during the Covid Lockdowns we took a leap of faith and moved out of the city into the countryside. We had been back and forth to the quirky town of Glastonbury and had fallen in love with the local eccentrics, holy wells and sacred sites.

Most people know Glastonbury for its yearly music festival, but we know it as a spiritual centre with a living mythology and thriving culture. A walk down the highstreet will have you meeting wizards, horse drawn carts with traveling folk at the reins, and endless caravans housing those wishing to escape mortgages and the 9 to 5 lifestyle.

We were visiting so much that we decided to move there, and after a few homes we wanted to rent fell through, we were lucky enough to find a place next to a field of cows and rolling countryside.

Baby number 1 - Rose Magdalene

This would be the home where my wife would birth our first daughter, which we did together in the bathtub singing, with incense burning and cows mooing in the background. It was the perfect welcome for our beautiful daughter Rose Magdalene.

We realised how lucky we were in this space and while compassionate to the suffering in a world locked down, the solitude was perfect for us. We managed to stay together pretty much every day during the first year of our daughter's life, and I took over household duties and became keeper of my wife, while she became Mother to our precious babe.

Living in the Amazon Rainforest

Being somewhat nomadic and a well travelled family my wife was supportive when I told her I had been invited to the Amazon jungle to live with a tribe for a few months. Rose was 18 months at the time, and Mumma embraced the temporary extra responsibilities, even though I would be uncontactable for my time there. We made our preparations and off I went to be with the trees and an indigenous culture to learn songs, story and tribal ways.

This would be the incubator for a different type of birth, a project that had been fermenting for nearly a decade of community and offgrid living. When me and my wife had met we shared a vision in common, which was to live with the land, unplugged from the grid with my wife wanting to work with birthing Mothers guiding then through the process of natural birth, and my desire to live more of a monastic lifestyle coupled with a space where others could unplug, heal and find a the kind of peace only nature can offer.

I had experienced the healing power of nature during multiple visits to the Amazon rainforest and knew it was something I would like to offer in a somewhat micro form in the English countryside.

Community living and a mini crisis

I enthusiastically returned from the jungle wanting to create community and live with the trees, and was met with the news that we had been handed our notice to leave our rental home in Glastonbury. It felt like both a synchronised call to action and a shock that things were moving faster than I had planned.

We found a lovely organic farm close by, bought a live-in van, and decided to have a crack at living in a community. Much of it was lovely, but all that glitters is not gold and during our time in a small van we struggled trying to manage hours working the fields, keeping ourselves dry in the English weather and entertaining a young one. It became quickly apparent it was not our dream, but someone else's and we had to re-evaluate.

At this time we had spent all of our savings, and after being disappointed multiple times trying to rent I found myself in sunny London in my parents' spare room, with a 2 year old and my pregnant wife who was pregnant again. This was the opposite of what we were expecting!

After the idyllic birth of our first daughter we found ourselves cooped up, feeling like caged animals that had experienced freedom, only to find ourselves back in a cage again. There was a lot of gratitude that my parents put us up, but we were feeling cramped and wanted our own space as a family.

Leaps of faith, more community living and the magic of manifestation

At 3 months pregnant we took another leap of faith and in the deep of winter, we got a bigger van and spent a few months back in Glastonbury between an off grid community and nomadic living, before settling in a community living in a Castle 20 minutes from the town centre.

It became somewhat surreal as during a discussion with the person running the off grid community, I semi-seriously announced my desire to buy the neighbouring land to live out the dream that had become more concretised during my time in the Amazon. 2 days later I received an email saying the neighbouring land had come up for sale, and without any idea of how we would pay for it, we decided that we wanted to be the new owners.

It was an ancient forest, with 250 year old oak trees and carpets of ivy covering the floor. It was beautiful, right next to a space we had temporarily called home, and in the heart of our adoptive home Glastonbury. As the auction for the land approached we visited many times offering our prayers and promises that should we become its new guardians that we would take good care of the space.

Then we had to beg, burrow and steal to find the cash. Miraculously I received some unexpected inheritance and after a few miracles we became guardians of the land. A 10 year manifestation that came to fruition overnight.

We were back in the flow!

Baby number 2 - River Sophia

We birthed our second daughter River in the castle, again a beautiful birth, just the two of us, with a music festival pumping in the background. A few hours after the birth, I went outside and in the style of Mufasa in the Lion King announcing Simba on the sacred rock, I shared that we just birthed our daughter! It was caught on camera with a touching story as the prelude.

There were cheers, tears and cuddles from people I had never met before. It was a beautiful moment, but I quickly returned to check in with Mum and babe at her breast.

2 Babies is definitely more than 1

During the early stages of our second daughter's life I tried my best to support Mum, entertain our young daughter and prepare the woodland for us to set up a space so we could stay on the land. A lesson I quickly learned is that 2 children is definitely more work than 1. The first time round I tended to Mum significantly, this time I was on Daddy duty, and the dishes and washing piled up!

Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea and the secret church of Glastonbury

Adding to the intrigue, while browsing the Castle library during our move I found a book called “Glastonbury”. It contained local myths and information about the sacred sites. In this book there was a section on Joseph of Aremithia a relative of Jesus Christ.

The book contained a story, stating he set up the first Christian church in Glastonbury shortly after the Crucifixion of Christ, and was given a sizable chunk of land - there was a map included and our land was on the map. There is some debate between scholars if this story is legend or history, but it was a fascinating and unexpected find either way!

A castle, a woodland and the ancient site of the world's largest religious order! Everything was starting to feel somewhat Mythological and Magical, and we moved into the ancient woodland with baby, and toddler.

2 puppies and 2 babies is definitely more than 2 babies

We got a couple of puppies to keep us company and help watch over the land. 2 boys who are a cross between German Shepard and Czech Wolf.

We definitely had our hands full, but were full of enthusiasm to embrace all the unknowns.

No more community and a big crisis

What followed was a long, wet and lonely winter. I definitely underestimated the amount of energy it takes to train 2 young boisterous wolves and managing the mud was a full time in itself. We had a vision that some friends and loved ones would join the project, which did not materialise, and even though we were next to a thriving community, they had an established project to manage and we did not want to be burdensome to them asking for too much support.

At moments we doubted our decision, we realised it cost a small fortune to do many things we had planned to and my background as a writer and mentor, did not pave the way well for the endless DIY skills I needed to learn on the job. To put it lightly we were in a crisis.

This was the second time we had spent a winter off-grid, and while it was not as wet as the first, it was certainly more lonely. We had big visions of community, ceremony, singing and celebration, but what actually occupied our time was how do we keep warm, dry and sane.

Spring time, the other side of crisis and meeting our community

As the winter days started to get longer and the spring equinox dawned, we were gifted with a new perspective on the need for organisation and preparation. It made us realise on an experiential level why so many cultures past and present worship the sun, and I found a new appreciation for hot baths and washing machines.

As the days equalled in length and the heavens stopped flooding the ground, we found ourselves on the other side of our initiatory crisis. It was a relief!

As we spent more time outside with the trees and the wildlife it became apparent that we were never alone, and while it could be said that we are the owners of this land, we are only the new residents. The badger sets come to life in the spring, as do the butterflies. Life springs from the Earth and after the deathly winter energy, the forest floor is teeming with life.

Bees pollinate, trees flower, the bluebells decorate the canopy and the deer and rabbits bless us with their presence (while giving the dogs a good run). The wildlife and trees have been here far longer than us, and if we take care of the land, they will be here long after we leave.

We appreciate our human community, and still hold the vision to create a beautiful place for other families to join us while collectively raising our wildling kids. But we now know the community we were longing for is already thriving in this wild space.

The gold in the challenge

If there are a few things I can offer up here as a take away it is that visions take a while to manifest, and when they do, they are never the way you think they will be. Life is full of ups and downs, and sometimes the things that we think will bring us the most happiness bring monumental challenges. However, if there is somewhere to mine the metaphorical gold it is in those character building moments.

I hope in some ways this can work as a motivation for those wishing for a more natural life, because the more people I speak with in my somewhat eccentric corner of the Earth, the more I hear from people that wish to do something similar. And with house prices and cost of living skyrocketing, soon (I hope) it will become a more normalised alternative.

We now find the one year mark approaching us, and feel changed by the experience. Winter will come again, as it does every year, and while there are many ways this next one could go we find ourselves a whole lot more humbled and little more prepared.

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I’d love to hear from you! What part of this article spoke to you the most? Do you have aspirations to live off-grid? Or are you happy with central heating and washing machines? 😅😥😂Leave a comment below and lets start a dialog!