As we enter summer, nature changes around us… just as our inner environment shakes off the old and flowers into the new. For us, the fog of density and confusion begins to lift its veil after months on months of difficulty in this off-grid village, and not knowing who to trust.
Right now, there is a nice easygoingness in the village. The semi residents (an older couple) have been present here more, helping improve the village and generally just wanting peace after living through much of the histories that have happened here.
A trusted friend of ours, who is a gifted musician, is staying with us for a bit as well and helping out. He has a very gentle, easy presence that is quite a rarity to come across. He felt no qualms in telling us how much he enjoys aloneness. He has been to this village a few times before and says he never has experienced it so peaceful. The way he complements my partner (a musician too) musically, in their melodies and harmonies, brings very rich dynamic improvisations that’s such a pleasure to watch live.
We all enjoy being in our own spaces, leading private lives and sometimes coming together when cooperation is needed. From observation, overly open communities don’t often work, or can be overladen with toxic patterns, so having our own spaces to recharge and feel oneself is important.
Truthfully… we’d rather call this place a village than a community or else people can get wrong overly idealistic ideas where we must live on top of one another, with no boundaries, a lot of social expectations, whilst also risking communism. I find most of us are too sensitive and individualistic to be able to handle that. Community, to me, is more widespread as I am connected with many likeminded people around the world… whether they know it or not. It doesn’t need to be physical. Each person doing their bit where they are called to on this Earth.
Me and my partner currently live up on the hill in our outbuildings – which feels like being up on a secluded island up in the clouds surrounded by mountainous horizons. It is much needed and nice to have that distance from the main village and the common house we were staying in for many months, which felt like a constant battle we want to dust our hands of. The timing had to be right as, at the moment, the village experiences a lot less trouble and it feels a lot easier to let it run itself now.
We don’t know what the future of this place may be so we’re being very much in the moment. There is less fixation on outcomes and agendas, letting life unfold as it should. Respecting the intermingling of own and the land’s instructions. We feel a deeper trust set in our being.
The cow invasions have finally finished when our semi residents returned. They personally knew the farmers of the cows and were able to come to an agreement with the farmers that they can be contacted to take the cows away if they come again. The farmers also said they will move the cows to an entirely different location that doesn’t have broken fencing. So the land, at last, feels peace and quiet.
Living so immersed in nature like this for nearly a year, out of systems, has put us through our paces and taken us to our edge many times. Yet there is a gift woven through it all and one just has to stop and take in everything this place has shown us. The challenges and rewards of living here brings us bursts of growth. Just like the nature here has suddenly shot into full bloom and showing her wild untamed beauty as we enter the hot summer high up in the Pyrenean mountains. We have to trust the pathways she forms and our internal promptings as we navigate her labyrinth. How she expresses herself through the many varieties of colourful plants and insects. Between the plant and animal kingdom the village often gets swallowed up by nature! Much of it we can romanticise but it can also push one to face their own discomforts.
Here the wasps try to make nests in the pans of our outdoor kitchen. Earwigs fit themselves into tiny gaps of our kitchenware. Mice try to find their way into our bedrooms and we must find all the holes to cover up. Wasps zoom around me at the compost loo (luckily they may not be of the stinging variety… I think) – you might hear me saying “fuck off!” to them! Not forgetting the small snakes in the compost loo too! Being in a pine forest, large plumes of pine pollen start forming a layer of dust over everything, including our belongings. I tiptoe around the many stingy plants in the grass. Tornados of flies and moths fly into my face being attracted to my headtorch at night. Mosquitos try to bite me all over as I try to have quiet time in the garden. My cat looks in confusion as her entire meal of biscuits gets carried out of my bedroom by a large trail of ants. Large beetles crawl out of the pocket of my bag. I find caterpillars on my duvet. Don’t get me started on the giant millipede thing in my bedroom I’ve not yet identified! So not all so glamorous. And this is just the start of summer!
Almost everyday I seem to discover something new in the plant and animal world. Such a contrast to England! Although much of it starts to feel normalised now despite long having a bug and spider phobia. Even speaking with the bugs at times like talking to the nervous big black beetles as I carry them out of the bedrooms.
Something that has come in useful in this hotter weather is that the hosepipes get heated by the sun. Now it is easier and I can enjoy a warmer bath out in the forest. Yes that blue plastic tub in the photo below is my humble bath. This is the area I am able to direct a hosepipe for washing up water, that’s as close to our living space (on a hill) as I can get it without it loosing pressure entirely.
In a village like this it can be a juggle between off-grid life and all my creative endeavours, which are yet to come more seamlessly together, as the village’s infrastructure does need improving to allow more time and space for ourselves. It’s quite something to be both a creative and to live off-grid. A test in increasing one’s capacity. One doesn’t want to fall from corporate world slavery into off-grid slavery or it can defeat the purpose. It can still burn people out. To have the balance between natural living, rest and the time for one’s own gifts is important.
I see more the importance of ease, quiet, stillness and aloneness to tap into that creative space. To live with less pressure, stress and as little drama as possible so we don’t get overstretched. To know we have this time and space to ourselves without any invasions or demands or else one can totally loose the focus of what they’re meant to put out into the world. I find my energy reeling inwards more lately as this silent space makes itself more known to me.
Basic needs take much more time and effort to meet. There’s always work to be done in this village. Yet there are certain land energies that can force us to put up our hands and surrender to natures time. Quite a few times now, we see why things get timed a certain way and we’re somehow provided for. As our semi resident points to the snail sculpture on top of the common house chimney… he aptly tells us that the way of life here is slowness. For he has seen in his over 10 years living here that people push, get frustrated then give up. We have to let go of being some perfect “off-gridder.”
It’s like some kind of fight with nature, that I didn’t even realise I had, has left me. Even a stray cat here that won’t leave me alone, that has been very problematic since the start, caused me a lot of stress and extra work, has suddenly become a lot more bearable. It is like nature was having a laugh with us as there was just no way to get rid of him. He seemed like the sum of how one can hate the off-grid life (how whiny he is!) despite being born here as a semi wild cat. Now his energy feels different, which feels reflected in the change in my own energy. The lesser resistance that is mirrored in the whole of the village itself. I’m still clocking his behaviour, seeing where it improves and doesn’t, but the stress doesn’t seem to enter my bones like the way it did before. It’s much easier now to detach from his personal kitty dramas.
Or maybe I’m just drunk from the summer sun… feeling more relaxed in general. Yet I feel there is gold to be learnt in this state. Ah… to be a Sun Being.
I can feel the potentials of the New Earth alive in my cells. Being in this nature bubble away from civilisation and being focussed on our day to day lives makes one forget what’s happening out there. Like being on another planet. In these occurrences when I do hear something of the outside world, it brings a surprise to my being as I realise there’s a lot of shit going down. Like people wanting to go into war in other countries. It feels like madness. Such a contradiction to this quiet mountain village life.
So being here, even with being submerged in some kind of bugs life and other challenges, I have to say this is the best that I’ve experienced this village so far. I count myself very lucky to be here. Something about this place brings an aliveness into my being.
It wakes something up inside.
We might think that untamed and wild just means being out of control, expressing oneself from a place of a loud mind or being overly rebellious in order to favour unhealthy patterns. Acting out of mental or emotional survival instincts rather than true self-reflection. It is not. Nature expresses in many forms – a very bodily expression that comes from a place of silence that pervades everything… we might come up with many names for it.
Untamed and wild can mean that fierce silent force that directs life.
Nothing gets in its way.
We don’t need to make dramas or problems out of everything or if something does arise, it doesn’t stick so much and we can move on quicker. There’s less desire to get involved and we can say no to what perpetuates drama. Catch it, whether it’s in yourself or another. Shit happens, it might look messy and confusing, maybe action is required, but can we move on and not get stuck? We don’t have to become martyrs to it. These days many of us are getting very wary and tired of its onslaught. It is a force, not of nature, that parasitises, obscuring the love that is there. Let it leave if it comes up.
Use that precious life force you have to direct it into your gifts or a better future for Earth.
Moving through life with flow and ease is our divine birthright.
The small human self may go into many fears, insecurities, mental concepts, victim mentalities and stories that keep you small, but it feels like it is time to let go of all that. Many of us, if self-aware enough, probably have experienced how the mind takes us for a ride, getting caught in looping cycles, for us to realise at the end of the road…
…it was all just lies.
See how they were just programs that attempt to disempower you.
It can take being able to hold oneself in stillness and being grounded in one’s being. A lot of successes and failures to eventually work out what voices in our head, or inner signals, are of that pure love force or not. To recognise what are infiltrations or are not.
Once we can discern then we can begin to trust ourselves better.
Hearing… sensing… feeling…
We then act from a place of true love action rather than impulsivity.
Life is very transient and letting go of specific formulas, attachments and fixations, in my opinion, is the best way to go. Even I have to check in deeply with myself as I write this… knowing how reality is so multi layered. I’ve not got it fully sussed as even I’m learning over the course of writing this post.
We can drop back into that silence where things just seem to correct itself. To listen, truly, to nature and her signals… which are ever changing. A transmission that is then felt in the body. The cells in our body become more alive as each moment requires a freshness. A force that revitalises and breaks you free out of anything that has calcified and outdated. Yet nature’s messages are simple even when interwoven through her intricate, creative intelligence. It gets easier to recognise them amongst the complexities and contradictions of life.
Her essence which gives off
With fierce tenacity yet is soft
She dreams to touch you
Her depth one can dream to touch
Her mystery unfathomable
Pushing or pulling, we may try
Around words she slithers
River of poetry that never withers
Her body of solid beauty
Etheric kaleidoscope of colour
Unmovable with firm candour
Her divinity twirling and dancing
Skyless standards that give leverage
Loving, yet boundaried
Rawness that is sundried
Playfulness exploding with foliage
She unfurls her labyrinth
Her maker with a direct path
The bigger plan has no plan
You decide as she decides
She threads back and forth
Twining, retwining
Her patterns and squiggles
Full of seriousness and giggles
Her hand pulls from the ether
She catches a floating feather
Inscribes her dream into Earth
Nature is the wild untamed silence, that is always speaking with you.
All photos by katealexandrapriestley.com
Carina’s share going deeper into what is community.
2 thoughts on “Off grid living: The nature of life – wild & untamed – By Kate”
Dear Kate,
what a beautiful report again – it reached me deeply & provides (for me) on an inner Level a deeper understanding about nature without understanding it logically or mentally.
While reading I did not try to analyse it – but just allowed myself to just „sink in“ ‚your‘ experiences. However, that what has drawn me into this story was ultimately the authenticity, honesty (honesty about the experiences of raw nature). It really has tauched me (apart from the beautiful photos of the landscape there which underline these experiences visually:)) Both together has had a strong impact for me – a positive powerful transfer (if I may say so…).
Thank you for sharing 🙂
Hi Heikey, thank you for your lovely comment and approaching my post in this way. It means a lot to me 🙂 It’s all just windows into our multifaceted experiences of nature… originally this was intended as a small post but then grew into something bigger <3