Build it and they will come…
Here She is in her newly born form. My Baba Yaga hut. We have yet to dress Her up and plant Her on the dug up roots of the tornado fallen stumps that will serve as chicken legs. She is stationed at the crossroads of three trails, down the fairy forest hill, into the ancient and abandoned Christmas tree farm-forest. The burled pine trunks and branches, with their gnarly fingers embrace her sharp angles and in time, will incorporate Her to become one with them.
I am reminded of Emily Carr’s iconic painting, ‘Indian Church’. It is a favourite canvas of mine, seemingly holding the tension of the opposites; the devouring forest and the simple Christian chapel. Like Emily Carr, I can neither surrender my soul to paganism and the deification of nature, nor can I stand completely comfortable in Gothic cathedrals. My soul needs to keep a foot in wild nature and a foot in refined culture.
This summer I journeyed to Ireland, to Trinity College in fact, to attend a presentation by Martin Shaw, Jonathan Pageau, and Paul Kingsnorth. I have been following these three writers and commentators for years and the chance to see them gathered together in the land of my ancestors was too much to pass on. Not to mention the topic, “Christ, Creation, and the Cave: Seeking the Bush Soul of Christianity”. It was worth the trip. There is something so resonant in their abilities to hold the tension between their orthodox Christianity and the wild call of nature.
I slept in my Baba Yaga hut under the light of the full Harvest Moon this past weekend. It was magical. The narrow bunk at the back of the hut is a perfect nest for one. With the ‘Father’s Eyes’ Pendleton blanket to keep me warm against the chill of late September in Canada, with the cricket chorus to sing me a lullaby, I slept in the lap of this hut and dreamed. Big dreams. Perhaps I was dreamt.
A number of years ago I used to facilitate dream retreats I called “Old Women Dreaming”. As an analyst for a decade at the time, it was my experience that old women dreamed differently than younger women. Once women are into menopause and the life blood that is designed to carry a child is finally shed and quiet, the dreams seem to come alive. Old women dream for the future. The dreams of old women tend to have a collective fragrance. Surely, our personal concerns and complexes are still woven into the stories of the night, but there seems to also be a whisper of the eternal speaking through. Bleeding through. Like the fecund eternal forest holding the fragile hut of our incarnate existence.
A neighbour asked me what the hut in my forest is for. What is its purpose? I have said that I am not entirely sure. When we became stewards of this land, stewards of what is called FoxHaven, we spent the better part of 5 years listening to what the house and the land needed. We have worked and invested and dreamed to leave this house and land better than we found it. We know that on some level we are stewards of the future. Humble and grateful and attentive.
Beside one of the trails that leads to my Baba Yaga hut, there is a stone statute of St. Francis of Assisi. When we first came to this land as potential purchasers, I laid an ancestral bundle of tobacco in his bowl. I asked him to intercede on our behalf with the creatures of the forest and if they found us suitable, we would be able to make this 100acre wood our home. It was not an easy transaction and we won and lost this home at least three times. I guess like Percival, even when you glimpse Avalon, you have to fight to cross its threshold into wisdom. You have to ask the Fisher King both questions: What ails you? What does the Grail serve?
Too often we seem to get hung up on the first question. We too often identify with our wounds, our afflictions, even our sins. It takes courage to ask the wounded King, the one who knows the ache of a wound that will not heal, “What does it serve?” Everything, every thing that comes to us, serves the Grail King. In our wounds we find our wonders. Everything, every thing is a portal. To suffer is to be alive. We do not seek the suffering, but we must embrace it when it comes. We must discover what the greatest teachers have known; to hold the tension of the opposites and not split, not side with the left hand nor the right hand, is salvation. To spread out our arms and open our heart, against the sword, against the realization that we are forsaken, is the path to wisdom. All our suffering saints and gods and goddesses have shown us how to do this. At this time of year, nature shows us how to do this. The colour and majesty of nature’s death song is an example bar none.
So, at the crossroads of three trails, in a 100acre wood, I forsake the comforts of the big house and retreat to my hut. I lay on my cot and watch the blue shimmering light of the super moon cast shadows against the cedar walls. I listen to the symphony of the night. I breathe in the fragrance of dying and decay. I sleep and dream and awaken with purpose. And should She ask, should Baba Yaga grasp me by arm and ask the dreaded question, I will tell her what those who have gone before me have counselled, I will tell her what the fairy tales have taught me, “I am here seventy-five percent of my own free will, sixty-five percent by compulsion.”