A Sherwood Forest Affair

The bird song. The most noticeable thing is the birdsong. I close my eyes and pick out at least seven unique songs intertwined gloriously. Ebbing and flowing, giving way to one another.
I had every intention of coming out here to write, but now, sitting in the grass, back against a tree, eyes closed...I just want to sit like this forever as my other senses come to life. The sun is warm on my skin, and the cool air does it's best to calm my burning forearms and shins after the two hours I've spent weeding stinging nettles out of the garden (kneeling accidentally in a hidden patch more than once). There are puckered patches of angry skin all over me, as if a tiny ant army had unleashed it's forces. They'll fade.
The air is sweet here...I came two hours south from the Dales and it's like I crossed some barrier between winter and spring. I'm sitting on the ground without becoming soggy...I've spent the day working in a t-shirt...it feels like a miracle. Trish and Ricardo, my hosts, say this is definitely not the usual, but since it's my first day and my first peak at the area, I'm choosing to believe otherwise for now. I'm hopeful.
I finally open my eyes and the vibrant colors surrounding me blaze as my reward. The spiderwebs strung between blades of grass glisten in the setting sun, and through the trees in front of me, I can make out the top of my house for the next few weeks...built in 1842 and standing at least four stories high, it completes this fairytale feeling of having traveled back in time. Sherwood Forest. Wow.

Am I totally nerding out about being in Sherwood Forest for two weeks? Absolutely. Am I the only one? Hell no. Everywhere you look, there's a Robin Hood Inn or a Robin Hood Pub or someplace trying to claim part of the story.
"That's the church where Robin Hood and Maid Marian got married!" Trish tells me, driving in last night. "Allegedly..." she eventually adds on.
Yeah, it's probably not, but who knows. And who cares. I'm letting my imagination run with this one and go as crazy as it wants, because...what's the harm? Keep your wonder alive.
Hell yeah, Robin Hood, rob those rich bastards!

Regardless of the tales, this place holds something magic...maybe it's the knowledge of a forest so old...maybe it holds ancient secrets that giggling sprites keep while they spy on visitors and make sure the forest in respected. Maybe it's simply the wonder and the peace a place may exude after having existed so long.

Trish tells me they're going to frack the forest. My heart shatters. What is wrong with people? So greedy, and for what? When we've destroyed that which sustains us, all the money you've made off the destruction will become meaningless.

Aside from meal times and the occasional clarification on in progress projects, I'm left largely to my own devices, which suits me well. Trish casually mentions jobs that need doing throughout meals, or as we walk about the land together, and I'm trusted to put my hours in honestly, as no one asks me or checks my work.
I spend my off hours sitting in the forest, or walking through the forest, or cycling through the forest to find a different place to sit, or typing in the forest...are you getting the picture yet? It's magic.
The work here is fine, though I find I prefer the harder work the farm required, but the forest makes up the difference. A hundred times. I sit and listen to the birds, or walk down to the river and listen to the water. Lots of places for sitting and contemplating the matters of the mind and soul.  Lots of space to be with myself.
I'm grateful to big hearted people like Trish and Ricardo, who are willing to let strangers into their home to share the beautiful world they have cultivated for themselves.
"I don't own the land," Trish tells me one day, "I just pay to care take it. You can't own Earth. It owns us."

My Office

To get to the nearest village, I walk two miles on a narrow winding footpath along the river through the forest. It's gorgeous. The grass sprouts with vibrant color between the trees, the bases of which are coated in fuzzy green moss. It's cool beneath the canopy, shaded from the abnormally hot April sun. The river and the birds sing to each other as I journey toward more inhabited land. Here in the wood, it's easy to let myself feel like a traveler of old. Journeying through the wood, stopping in villages along the way. My imagination runs beside me as I walk. Flowing like the water below.

On my fourth day at Arch house, Jakamo, my hosts son, comes home for the weekend. After seeing him pop in and out of the same spot in the woods a few times with various tools, I finally ask what he's up to back there. He grins. "Go check it out."
I wander back and find a small clearing with a target set up...for throwing axes. Because what else would you possibly have hidden in the woods? Hell yes. I quickly add a new forest hobby to my off time.

My favorite pass time in the forest

I've only been here a week, but already the barren limbs in the forest show new signs of budding life. My mile loop with Pip the Dog this morning was even more beautiful than it was on my day of arrival. The trees, reaching gently toward each other, create picturesque archways over the path, so I feel as though I'm wandering through fairy land.
Picturesque, yes, yet no picture I take comes close to capturing what the eye sees. It's not long before my phone becomes a nearly forgotten prop left in my caravan the majority of the time.

The Major Oak. 1,150 year old oak in the forest...wow.

 The place, the people, the work, the routine...this jem of a home, tucked in the woodland, whispers to me of new beginnings. A good place to start fresh. I've always been a fan of physical and visual symbolism in key times of my life, so when the thought hits, I don't hesitate. I ask Jakamo if he has any clippers, and I shave the rest of my hair off, a physical reminder to shed the person I was in Austin, as she no longer suits the needs of my life.
Ideally, if I keep on the right track, as the new hair grows, so too will a new perspective, a new person, a new understanding of people and their pain.
I hear the loud ringing of the dinner bell through the tress, just a soft tinkling at this distance, and I quickly collect my things, brush myself off, and head to the main cabin, same as every night, to begin the evening routine. As I mosey up the hill, I swear I can feel the forest watching me and wishing me a good night.
Goodnight, Sherwood...