3~In the Beginning 1

I've only been in this valley in North Pembrokeshire for about fifteen years, but it's felt like another lifetime. Like a reward for Effort, a consolation gift for Trying, a gentle introduction after my solitary and headstrong  projects, to a place where Things Happened.

Where the land had Soul, where Nature Spirits were vocal, and apparent, and where people shared a deep unspoken purpose.

One of these maxims was to live as lightly and respectfully as possible upon the Earth, and one expression of this was to make living spaces that encouraged a sharing of the Earths moods and seasons.

I arrived here in the middle of a story, but at what turned out to be, the beginning of another chapter. 

The first part had been to do with the discovery by the National Park of an illegal roundhouse, spotted whilst a plane was searching for furtively sited caravans. On further investigation, a number of other planning infringements, including a domed living space, were found near the farmhouse, Brithdir Mawr, that was the home of a community, initiated by Emma and Julian Orbach.

Emma had been living in a tipi on one of the lower fields when all this happened, so quickly took her tipi down, and with Tony and Faith's help, put up a small straw bale hut, on a deck of pallets, just inside the woods. 

A new chapter had begun...

When I met Emma, she had three huts, a big, middle sized, and original, little hut. I suppose that's where my coinage of the term 'goldilocks' for my present day huts derives from..

We came to live in her middle hut, the other two being lent out occasionally.

It was on a raised wooden platform, with strawbale, pegged walls, two windows, a doorway facing East, a sloping reciprocal frame roof, made of ash poles and hazel struts, insulated with straw, and covered in rubber pondliner that also clad a wide overhang, that accommodated a kitchen space and storage. It held a metal open stove box, with a clay liner chimney stack, for heat and cooking, some boxes and shelves, and a roll up sheep wool mattress bed, that served as a back rest in the day. It was lit by candlelight.

The straw bales were plastered with a mixture of clay and horse manure, which deterred them for the most part from becoming the homes of rats or mice.

This was a new chapter, for me, as I had made a major life change by coming to 'live with a wood-witch' as my sister proclaimed, and for us both, as the Parks enforcement officer had discovered the huts, and so proceedings to remove them were underway...