My Mum came by last week, and as I came out to meet her she greeted me with, “You look like you grew here!” She was referring to my being scruffily layered in swamp green with my fleece hanging open on a broken zip and my unbrushed hair a bird’s nest mess, trailing bale string and straw, splattered in mud, bog water and other suspicious stains, unwashed, probably smelling like a billy goat, pants tucked in and welly booted in classic, hill farmer style, looking something like the ragged, winter heather I’d just crawled out of, but I’ll take it.
A theme has been appearing in my reading lately, resonating with my own sense of—or lack of—and search for rootedness. Uprootedness? Of landlessness, rootlessness, by default or design, and a deep longing to belong, for the stability and permanence of place, of earth to ground and root into. And on claiming a sense of indigeneity by living sustainably and ecologically within and as part of a land-base; what it means to become indigenous to a place, to settle, to set roots, to become the land.
This month marks one full cycle of the sun since I began this Substack, so I thought to honour the occasion I would re-post my debut essay, on becoming land, sent out to thirty initial subscribers the first time, now to the hundreds of you who have joined since then. This first entry, written in the months before we sold our house, gave our stuff away and came home to the land, took me an inordinately long time to write, edit, scrap and rewrite (ahem, pluck up the courage to post) and reading back through it now I am fighting the urge to edit and correct again with the wisdom earned in the year that has passed—the year of growing into this land. It is an ode to the land that has cradled and consumed me, written with the calling still drumming at my soul. An ode to the land that called me home.
Thank you for reading and your continued support. To celebrate this milestone I’m giving 20% off all new subscriptions throughout November.