Issue # 54 - On Stone circles, restoring calm and building our own monuments

A weekend building project and a mini adventure to brush off the festive rust

Winter can be hard for those of us who work outdoors. Short days and bad weather at the weekends make it difficult to keep on top of things. Tools get dirty and blunt, gloves and waterproof clothes get worn out, things get tossed into boxes or propped up in corners in the dark instead of being put in their proper places. Piles of wood accumulate. Disorder conquers where order should reign supreme. Niggling thoughts of background chaos and neglect cloud my judgment, permeating into what should be moments of joy, like the fine roots of Japanese Knotweed creeping into solid foundations, threatening to reduce everything to rubble.

With the first sunny weekend in what feels like forever predicted, we were faced with a tough choice: do we head out into the mountains for a long hike? Or stay at home and tackle a backlog of projects?

Emma and Benji at one of the stone circles

When we moved from the woods to the Lake District (almost exactly!) two years ago, we left behind a lot of infrastructure that enabled our way of living. We brought our way of living along with us however, and it has been difficult at times to figure out how to get it to fit in this new landscape, and without the bits of infrastructure that made it possible. It posed difficult questions: Which bits of ourselves do we want to let go? Which bits of our old lives should we try to hang on to? Who the hell even are we and what do we do now?

One little bit of infrastructure that we have dearly missed is an indoor / outdoor space to work and play in. Somewhere dry and sheltered to carve wooden things in, split firewood and make kindling in, a place to keep wood dry, and somewhere to sit in the evenings with a fire crackling away in our little stove. This has been on our list of things to do ever since we moved, yet we have not been able to scrape together the funds for materials. So, instead I have been steadily salvaging offcuts and leftovers from work projects, begging and borrowing, squirrelling things away until at last I had everything I needed.

As I worked in the winter sun, I could feel the mountains and valleys calling but tried to ignore them, focusing instead on building this simple yet meaningful wooden structure; a monument to our old selves and to our future intentions. A step towards regaining calm amidst chaos. It did not take long - two years to gather materials, two days to build.

With things coming together quicker than expected, we decided to answer the calling hills and headed up the valley on a search for more monuments - the stone circles of Eskdale. A short but steep hike led us high up on to the moor in the glorious winter sunshine. Skies were cloudless and vivid blue. The sun warmed our backs and we stripped off layers as we climbed, yet pockets of thick frost lingered in the shadows of boulders and stone walls. One side of the whole valley lay cloaked in shade and ice, while the other basked in golden light, as if a dividing line had been drawn by the seasons, winter on one side, spring on the other.

It felt good to be outside again. A wave of lightness washed over me as I hiked up the rock strewn track, meditating briefly on each carefully placed footstep. A few weeks of weather and festive season induced indoor time had left me feeling sluggish and heavy. Benji crunched through icy puddles and played with icicles - he too is rejuvenated by the outdoors. It was a relief to have been able to fit this very small adventure into our day and a joy to be in the hills with views of the mountains all around as we approached the first of the stone circles.

Benji stands transfixed inside the stone circle.

I am not quite sure what the feeling is that you get when following the footsteps of ancient ancestors, but I definitely feel it, whatever it is. I am wary however, of not giving too much reverence to a group people or to a time in history I do not know enough about. The human story is a fascinating one, but I find myself wondering instead of what the landscape would have looked like 4,000 years ago when these stone circles were erected, and of what became of the other wild creatures that would have called these now empty hills home.

Standing stones, the alter and exploring peat cutter's huts

We ate lunch perched on top of a rocky outcrop called “the alter”, a prominent feature which seems like it must have held some significance for our stone circle building friends, though what exactly we can only guess. I wonder what our ancient ancestors would have felt as they gazed at the mountains from this spot. Did they revere them? Fear them? We lingered for while at the top, thinking of ancient cultures, pondering changing landscapes, enjoying the feeling of the sun on our faces, until at last the cold penetrated into our bones and we set off back down towards the valley bottom.

At home, we hammered the last few nails into feather edge boards and moved firewood into our new shelter. The little box stove we used to cook on outside in the woods had sat rusting away since we moved, but it cleaned up ok and we lit a small fire to dry it out and to warm our bodies as we tidied and organised our new space. It was good to hear the fire roar in the belly of the stove and to feel its warmth, reminding us of happy outside evenings spent watching wrens flit to and fro, or waiting to catch a glimpse of the tawny owl as it embarked upon its evening hunting excursion.

This simple shelter may not look like much, but it signifies something important to us about who we are and the life we live. I have hopes of making more things and of more evenings outside by the fire as the winter wanes. How that pans out we will see, but at last our monument stands complete, we have restored a little calm where chaos threatened to take over and we had a little adventure along the way too.

---

Well, that’s all from us the week. Thank you as always for reading our Digest - we love hearing from you with feedback and comments so please do keep them coming.

With warmest wishes for what looks like a chilly week ahead,

Andrew, Emma and Benji

x