Mushroom Photos!

Over the last autumn there has been some incredible fungi in the woods.

Dreams

I don’t like the term ‘bucket list’. Therefore I have not titled this post so, and it will most likely refer to the things I would like to do in my life. Knowing me, it could end up being a post about how much I love nature. Usually my posts gravitate towards that topic.
My dreams are fluid. At the moment I feel so strongly that I would love to do these things but really, in a few years, they might be different. I’m very open to change 🙂 They are also very much not in order, because, let’s be honest, my brain will simply not come up with them all in order and prioritize them perfectly.

1. To be content with whatever happens (even if it’s not happy, not good, just let it happen). Not think that just because I have little money that I cannot be happy.

2. Travel. I want to wander the world, not as a ‘holiday’ as such but to immerse myself in other cultures, experience the natural world fully, spend time with indigenous cultures and get to really know the places I go. Learn lots of languages.

3. Live on my own in the wild for four seasons. This is something I’ve always dreamed of, I don’t know if it’ll ever happen, but even if not for a whole year for some weeks at a time.

4. Learn natural/native skills. I dream of learning to track, to gather wild food, to know how to live completely off the land. It relates to 3 a lot! I also would love to learn about permaculture, building structures, pretty much anything in that area.

5. Write a novel. Even if it’s not published, the experience is something I’d love.

6. Get completely familiar with a camera and make a film (most likely with the DSLR I’m planning to spend my savings on this christmas/solstice), Experiment with different types and styles of photography.

7. Record an album. (Write a wealth of songs first, obviously)

8. Get really good at guitar, piano,cello, and/or voice. I would love to be proficient in at least one instrument!

9. Live in a self sustainable community for a while.

10. Experiment in different types of art.

11. Become an environmental/human rights activist.

12. Live in a tree.

13. Build my own house.

14. Discover more about Irish myths, culture, pre-christian religion, and language.

15. Become fluent in French (And some other languages preferably)

16. Learn how to track really well.

17. Visit every continent in the world.

18. Set up something awesome.

19. If I have kids, unschool them, spend all our time in the woods, and travel the world with them.

20. Make the world a better place!

21. Love life.

22. Be crazy.

23. Grow my hair really long (Random but it’ll probably happen anyway…)

24. Be mindful.

25. Spend many, many nights singing around a fire in the forest…

Daily rambles

I’ve probably often mentioned this, but one of the greatest benefits of unschooling is that I get to spend at least two hours in the place I love the most, the mountains. (Well… Hills. But I consider them mountains, not having ever lived in a country where mountains are actually mountains.)
I live in the city, sadly, but I am blessed by the fact that with just a few minutes in the car I can be in the forest.
You’ve probably guessed just by the name of this blog that yes, I am a tree hugging hippie in many respects. You have guessed correctly.
We usually go on the same walk, but the benefit of that is that you begin to see things more clearly, because you know the area so well. I could probably find my way around the valley with my eyes closed at this stage! The trees where we walk are mostly sitka spruce, a beech wood, and a mixed wood where there are beech, sitka spruce and a sprinkling of ash at the edge. There’s an abundance of hawthorn to the north closer to the farmer’s land, a beautiful elder (elderberry) tree in the ash area, one or two budleia along the first path, birch, sweet chestnut, larch near the car park and a ragged mixture of gorse, heather, moss, and reeds in the area where the spruce were felled some time ago. It’s incredible to watch how that entire area sprang back after being cut, from being piles of grey, bare branches to a flourishing habitat filled with birds and deer. For plants, there is a lot of rosebay willowherb, heather and gorse, foxglove, nettles, coltsfoot, rushes, bracken, countless amounts. There’s plenty of fungi but I am sadly not at all familiar with their names, apart from sulfur tuft (There is a LOT of that around) and fly agaric.
The animal life is also alive, with deer constantly around, fox tracks, ravens, woodpigeons, chaffinches, robins, coal tits, jays, etc. Just this morning we were going up into the beech wood when the chaffinches we had spotted for the last few days were even more lively than usual. We sat quietly for a while and watched them feeding on (We think) the beech mast all over the ground. I’d say there were between 20-40 of them. As we reached the top of the beech wood there were two jays flying between the branches overhead.
There are a thousand stories I could tell about those forests, and I don’t think my keyboard would hold up if I tried to recount them all, so for now I’ll head onwards to other, less computer based activities.
By that I mean carving a handle for my (proudly hand smithed) knife. That’s what it will probably mean for the next week or so until I finish it. Or knitting. I’m knitting a lot lately too.

Peace,
Amy