When accident and trauma reduced the space I could exist in, it took something from me, something that I took for granted when I was abled and brave. The freedom to move, to trek and to wander. I could just get up in the morning and decide that I was going to lose myself somewhere and I didn’t have to think twice, now everything is done with careful measures of how much I have got in my battery, what I may need that energy for, how much I can spare? and how long will this keep me out of action if I do it? Is it worth the drain I will experience? It keeps my sphere of exploration very contained and very carefully managed – it is what it is, I can’t change it so I live with it but my word, it’s so annoying.
I recently sat down and did a little bit of brain dumping about my relationship to my body and nature since my accident and it made me really examine those thoughts and feelings that I honestly thought I’d mastered. I realised that the trust I lost in my body after my accident hasn’t really returned. I relied on my body to keep me moving, to be strong and fit and then it broke and I never really trusted it anymore. This affects how I move in the world and how much (or little) I physically push myself. I stopped appreciating my physicality, how powerful I can be even though I’m only small. I noted how little I look in the mirror since my accident, how I lost touch with my body and my outer shell because I felt that it was irrelevant and pointless in my smaller bubble where I couldn’t move. I didn’t want to see a person I no longer knew looking back at me.
I looked at my relationship to nature and how that has evolved. Don’t get me wrong, I love nature, I love being outside with the trees and the plants and the mountains but where nature had been a source of joy and adventure, especially when I was young, it was now ‘therapy’, a place I went to feel better and get a bit of exercise. How sterile this has made my friend. I appreciate everything nature contributed to my recovery but I have lost that abandon I used to feel in nature. The woods were a place to hide and climb and discover lost worlds, now they are a sensible stroll through and then back home before I get too tired. This is not how I want to exist in the outdoors, not at all.
I also find being outside confronts me, it reminds me what I lost, what I lack, so I don’t take the time to be ‘in’ it. How heartbreaking this is for me, for the child within who would wile away the hours wandering through pathways and along hedgerows, talking to birds and jumping across streams. It made me realise I need to find my magic again.
Whilst sitting wall staring through recovery I would often get notions, notions that were far beyond my capabilities. Notions were a blessing and a curse, they were a nod to hope, to rising again, but also a frustrating smack in the chops of my reality and how it was tying me down. I had a notion last year to do a pilgrimage, I wanted to just walk to some undefined location and see if I could find bits of me that I had lost along the way. The idea of setting off (like The Fool) with my rucksack, some sturdy boots and a map was one that enthralled me. Reality told me, I couldn’t just go for days and hope for the best, it had to be carefully planned, with lots of rest and time. There were lots of St Patrick walks around here but these hold no interest for me, I am not concerned with the cultural colonisation that St Patrick brought (why Ireland celebrate this terrible man I have no idea, but this is a whole other post for another time). I just couldn’t find what I was looking for, things were either too long, too far or too remote.
So that itch remained unscratched until I read ‘Listen to the land speak’ by Manchán Magan. In this book he has a chapter on Oweynagat where he talks about his yearning to undergo a rite of passage, a journey of inner discovery and he travelled as far as the Himalayas to find it, little knowing that on his own doorstep in Ireland there was such a place. I’ve known about Uaimh na gCat (Cave of the cats) for a while, the famed home of the mighty Morrigan, a place of spiritual and emotional transmutation and this is where I got excited, I’m going on holiday in June to Sligo and will be a mere half an hour away from Rathcrogan where the cave sits. So this will be my pilgrimage this year, I will be entering the cave to shed skin, to look into the abyss, to lose and find myself. I’m no longer afraid of the dark, it’s time to find the mirror and stare myself in the face again.
The Hermits Grove 