Some months back, Nik cleared a lot of debris (rocks, ivy, old tree trunks, etc,) from the remains of an old pig hut set just at the top of the Earth Heart land and a bit to the side of the cottage. That whole thing will have to come down eventually but clearing the overgrowth was the first step. Since then we’ve been waiting for the right weather to have a bonfire and dispose of the waste but it seemed like every time we were free… the rain came down! Finally, we decided that this weekend was make or break and though it was a little windier than might have been ideal, with the possibility of a shower or two, it was good enough to go for it on Saturday afternoon! 

As we were at the point furthest from the cottage and roughly where we plan for the bell tent to go, I was picturing the cosy canopy sheltering some of our future guests exactly where the fire was burning brightly and wishing for that warming energy to stay resident and fuel their time here. It was round about that point that Nik also caught a spark of an idea and suggested that the next day we build a shrine on the land to involve it more in the whole site and begin inviting the qualities of our principal figures of inspiration into the project. It doesn’t take much to get me excited about shrine building so I started thinking about it there and then! Although we’ve apparently both got to a point in our lives where nine o’clock seems like just the right bed time, thank you, we sat up until well after eleven warming our hearts on the fire of the land and bouncing creative ideas off each other, happily. As we eventually made our way back to our bed in the cottage, I couldn’t stop myself from gazing back at all that beauty. The crackling of the still dancing flames creating a symphony with the sound of water trickling off the hillside while the breeze gently tangled wispy clouds across a waxing crescent moon, framed in the outline of the old apple tree and held in the solid, earthy embrace of the land. 
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​The next morning, the sun was out once more and we were keen to get back down to the smouldering ashes! It didn’t take much more than a handful of sticks to rekindle the flames, which we kept going through out the day as we attended to a few other jobs that needed attention. By the afternoon, we had some time to get creative. I began the shrine building project while Nik made a start on realising one of our other ideas for the land that we’d chatted about quite a bit by the fire the night before. 

For the new shrine, I wanted to keep with one of our principles for the project, which is to bring in our new ideas with respect to what has gone before. In fact, we originally had the idea to call the project ‘Rhyddid’, a Welsh word for liberation to acknowledge but bring new values to the trapping history of our particular part of the valley. So, as the natural forager that I am (I think I might have a Womble in my ancestry), I began piecing together a base from some of the things left lying about by previous guardians of the land; a tyre made a good solid platform as well as providing a little cavity to stash an old number plate and some pieces of timber. A piece of wood from Nik’s old house boat made a surface to support a lovely sheet of rusty corrugated iron.