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Dear reader,

If I were to speak to you of Plum Rock, Molly Blob, Squinter Pip, and the Easter Man Giant, what would come to mind?

Perhaps you might imagine the cast in a magical children’s story. These are in fact older names for four of our British wild flowers – those most commonly referred to nowadays as cowslip, marsh marigold, herb Robert, and common bistort.

Many of the older names for our wild flowers are imbued with affection, as though the plants were once seen and greeted as wayside familiars rather than simply labelled.

‘Good morning, Squinter Pip!’ I can imagine an eighteenth century milkmaid calling as she strolled by a patch of herb Robert.

Some historic names for wildflowers are specific to a region of Britain, and a number of plants have been known by dozens of different titles depending on where you were in the country. The flower known commonly as herb Robert, for example, might have been greeted with names as various as Knives and Forks, Death Come Quickly, Dragon’s Blood, Stinking Bob, and Little Bachelor’s Buttons. In fact, this fragrant, shallow-rooted geranium has been known by over a hundred different names in the British Isles alone!

We know this thanks to the work of British naturalist Geoffrey Grigson, who set about collecting historic and regional names for our wildflowers alongside the associated folklore for his 1955 book, The Englishman’s Flora.

These historic names can be keys that unlock a deeper understanding of our native plants, highlighting aspects of their physical features, or hinting at folklore and lost uses.

Herb Robert, for example, produces pairs of long, pointy seed pods in the late summer and autumn. These pairs of pods are perhaps reminiscent of tiny sets of cutlery - Knives and Forks!

The vibrant red stems of the herb Robert plant have led it to be associated with blood, and the juice of this astringent herb does indeed have wound healing properties when applied to small cuts as a poultice. The plant’s connection to the blood of dragons in particular, however, remains a mystery.

As for the name Death Come Quickly, to understand a possible association between herb Robert and death, we have to dig a little deeper into the plant’s folk uses. Foliage with strong smells (often a natural defence against insect predation) were once used in funerary rites to keep flies away. As I mentioned in a previous letter, this is true of the leaves of the elder tree, so might it also have been true of old Stinking Bob, herb Robert?

Often playful and creative, these older names also bring alive the imaginations of the past people who conceived them. I would love to know why someone settled on Molly Blob as the right name for the flower we now know as marsh marigold, and why this particular name caught on.

The path edges and meadows here in North East England are currently decorated with a variety of predominantly yellow flowers. First to bloom in late March and early April, these yellow ones come like thousands of tiny suns, celebrating the return of their celestial mother.

There is colt’s foot, which bolts from the ground flower-first, as though having left its leaves behind in its eagerness to bloom. When the leaves do appear a bit later, they are roughly the shape and size of a colt’s hoof, which is where the flower’s name comes from.

The dandelions (a name from the French, ‘dent de lion’, meaning lion’s teeth – another name honouring the plant’s leaf shape) are magnificent yellow manes, each head a composite of up to two hundred florets.

Sun worshippers both, colt’s foot and dandelion close their flowers each evening, opening again with the morning light.

Lesser celandine dresses the bare soil beneath hedgerows in glossy yellow and green, its many flowers like buttered stars. ‘Celandine’ is derived from the Greek word meaning ‘swallow’, the flowers so named because they appear at roughly the same time of year as the swallows return from migration.

Cowslips, perhaps my favourite of all spring blooms, gift the dull winter meadows with bunches of bright flowers. Cowslips have been known by various names including Fairy Cups, Buckles, Plum Rocks, and Keys of Heaven. I enjoy thinking of them as celestial bunches of keys, opening the doorways to bright, balmy days, welcoming in summer’s ease.

Do you have a favourite wild flower name, or a favourite spring flower?

What wild gifts are currently appearing along the path edges and waysides around you?

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Dear reader,

I hope this letter reaches you.

That you might pull the salt-worn cork from the bottle,

pinch out the scroll of paper,

and read.

I am sorry that the ink is so faint.

Words have proven different here; restless and winged.

Perhaps you are wondering where I have been.

The truth is, I have been at sea,

drifting on a timeless ocean;

through emerald shallows and white-horse crests,

across shadowy depths where no sun reached.

Past and future were stitched together; a pouch of scaled salmon leather,

the ocean and everything upon it folded neatly inside.

My body has been the coracle boat,

bearing something precious from one world to another.

The boat’s skin stretched around ribs of hazel as inside,

a wren fluttered.

The little bird bore a whole universe inside its quick, tiny heart.

At times I feared that the wren, like my words, might fly away.

But the coracle was cosy,

lined with feathers of faith,

and so it stayed.

The night brought unfamiliar constellations;

red stars burning in frozen rivers of silver.

The moon was full almost every night and dreams were strange:

a horned god whispering an old Welsh name,

a pair of childhood shoes were swapped for fine, golden sandals that knew the steps to ancient dances.

A wind carried rootless islands across the waves towards me.

On one, a hermit lived in a doorless tower.

On another, trees bore fruit in the snowy depths of winter.

I stayed there for a while; picked ripe peaches covered in glittering frost,

curled into a great hollow at the base of an ash tree with mugwort for a pillow

and slept.

Retuning here, I wonder, how does this letter find you?

And when we meet around the fire, will you still recognise me?

My hair is stiff with otherworld salt,

my eyes a different colour.

I still have my left foot in one world, and my right foot in another.

Softly, softly, the wren flutters.

These hands are so much coarser than they were as I strike flint against iron pyrite to kindle our fire.

By the time you reach our wildwood it is dusk.

Taking the winding path through the birch trees, you follow the light of the leaping flames.

Singing reaches your ear, and there is the tap of a spoon against the rim of a cooking pot.

The air scented by woodsmoke and smouldering herbs.

My silhouette shape-shifts in the fire light.

You are invited to sit in the empty seat beside me.

Will you?

Settle on the soft sheep skin, and accept this cup of mugwort tea, warm against your palms.

The tea’s smell is sweet and aromatic, laced with a silvery scent that knows the moon.

You conjure the words to the song I am singing, and we join our voices together.

Rested on a hearth stone is a gift from the timeless sea, wrapped in brown paper.

You open it, and are surprised by what you find inside:

something you lost a long time ago, but which was very precious.

You hold this precious thing in your hands, and close your eyes to remember.

As the fire burns and stars come out, I ask you: what did you find inside the brown paper? And what stories have you brought back with you from your own, long winter?

I am leaning in to listen.

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“Grifola Frondosa!”

It sounds like a magic spell. But this is the scientific name for one of my favourite edible mushrooms, known here in England as hen of the woods. In Japanese, it is maitake, which translates as ‘dancing mushroom’, likely because of the beautiful, flowing shapes of this mushroom’s many fronds. Or maybe, due to an urge to dance that can take hold upon its discovery!1

Hen of the woods is considered gourmet, and each mushroom can be so big as to provide a feast. It is sometimes possible to find three, or even four fruiting bodies around the same tree: enough umami deliciousness for a banquet. How I dearly love to find such a little brood of ‘hens’ waiting for me in the woods. If I have a foraging course coming up, I will take one to show my students, and perhaps another to transform into an immune-supporting medicine. By simmering small pieces in the slow cooker for a day, I can produce a potent, medicinal liquid that supports my health through the winter.

Grifola frondosa… I whisper the name like a charm as I wander through the October woodland. The wind stirs oak branches, causing acorns to fall. They patter on the ground in a woody rain shower, tap, tap, tap, muffled by the carpet of fallen birch leaves. I love the sounds and colours of this time of year. The trees have such wisdom to share, as I wrote to you of in a previous letter. Boughs laden with berries are stirred by a restless wind. The wind also rouses something within me: the wild, wandering spirit that is somewhat sleepier during the summer.

As I go I sing, a little song offered to me by the land a couple of years back, about the winds of change, and autumn’s first fire. The pockets of my dress bulge with hazelnuts gathered along the path. It is a mast year for acorns and hazelnuts, so I am taking my chance to replenish stores of both (although it comes as a surprise to many, acorns are a nutritious and tasty food once properly processed.)

There is a gust of wind, and an acorn strikes me on the head! I laugh and look up to the open arms of the veteran oak tree, the knots on its trunk regarding me like a knobbly old face. Be present! the tree seems to urge. And so I agree - the best thing to do when given instruction by a dryad.

Presence goes hand in hand with mushroom foraging. The opening of the senses can be an invitation for fungi to appear. I tend to like mushroom hunting alone for this reason. Through the woods I go with careful steps, honing a wider gaze, deepening my breaths, as well as my noticing. Being alone allows me to follow the flow of my intuition, sometimes veering off course towards a spot that draws me.

Although I hope to find a hen of the woods, I am curious about what else I might discover. Over my years of mushroom hunting, and teaching fungi identification, I have come to understand that mushrooms are not predictable. There is a sense of them appearing when they wish to, as though we were engaged in an inter-species game of hide and seek. Often, my search for one species will lead me to the discovery of another.

Knowing just where to look is, of course, helpful, and one of the seemingly ‘extra sensory’ skills that can develop after years of practice. I might instinctually drift towards a place that turns out to be very fruitful. Patterns in the landscape no doubt contribute: the arrangement of a stream below a mossy hillock, chunky oak trees, dappled light.

Certainly, an area with veteran oak trees is hen of the woods territory. This habitat is also where beefsteak mushrooms tend to grow, and I will sometimes find one of these wonderfully weird mushroom whilst out looking for a hen.

But on this occasion, my meandering leads me to discover something else entirely: wood hedgehogs! I am very excited, as these are also amongst my favourite edible species, firm in texture and so very tasty. They are known as ‘hedgehogs’ because of the little spines under their caps where other mushrooms might have gills, or pores. Peach in colour, these pretty little fungi delight me. Into my basket they go!

I wrote to you previously of the connection between mushrooms and the mythical beings of British folklore. A connection evident not only in the stories themselves, but in the names given to fungi, and in other language used to describe them.

Animals likewise often feature in mushroom language. Along with the hen of the woods and wood hedgehog, there is the deer shield, hare’s foot ink cap, magpie inkcap, dead mole’s fingers, turkey tail, and of course that general term used to describe larger fungi, toad stool.

Even in the scientific names there are animal associations, some of them wonderfully comic. Lycoperdon is the scientific name for the genus commonly known as puffball, from the Greek meaning ‘wolf’s flatulence’. Indeed, when these mushrooms are fully mature, a hole forms in the top and out puffs a cloud of green spores!

The shapes, colours, and behaviours of mushrooms, along with their ephemeral nature, lead them to embody something of the animal that has evidently been observed by people throughout history. In an evolutionary sense, the link between fungi and animals is also apparent: fungi cannot make their own food from sunlight, and so must seek out and digest nourishment, just as animals do. They also store energy as glycogen, and their cell walls are made of chitin, the substance that is the building block of crab shells and beetle bodies.

Low and behold, my wandering leads me, eventually, to a hen of the woods! It is so big that it doesn’t fit in my basket, and I have to carry it home in my arms. The mushroom is weighty, and undoubtedly feels very much like an animal. I find myself speaking aloud to it on our journey home (not the first time I have spoken to a mushroom, and likely not the last!)

Have you been spotting any fungi in the woods around you? Which species, if any, do you have a fondness for, or are you drawn to? I would love to hear back.

With warmest wishes,

Sophie

I sit here with tears flowing and a candle steadily burning. This morning I learnt that the magical person, teacher, author, Manchán Magan, has passed on. He was fifty-five years old, and spoke of his rare cancer and lifelong connection to the otherworld in a recent RTÉ radio interview.

I have been attempting to alter my perception of time as I get older, bending the lines of it around into circles. Considering how trees, fungi, and water embody time differently: the radial growth of mycelium that creates fairy rings of mushrooms; age rings within trees; the circular ripples on water’s surface, known as capillary waves. In each case, circles radiate out from central points of inception, becoming larger over time: two spores creating mycelium, the shoot sprouting from a seed, something – a raindrop, or a hazelnut, let’s say – falling into a still pool of water and causing the ripples to spread.

In this way, each moment or experience might become a point of inception, and the map of life comes to look very different to a line. Imagine a pool with rain falling upon it, the rings from each capillary wave overlapping, each connected to, and in relation to the next. Perhaps hazel nuts fall from the trees above the pool, too, creating even more of an impact than the raindrops. Particular points of inception – people we meet, or significant experiences –might be these hazelnuts, their circles rippling far and deep.

It feels apt that on the one, and only, day I spent learning from, listening to, and speaking with Manchán Magan in person, I wrote in my notes ‘need to start thinking in a cyclical way.’

This was during the nine-month-long Wild Awakening programme in County Meath, Ireland back in 2020. I was recovering from the impact of a very early stage cancer diagnosis myself and, having received greater understanding of the brevity of life, had travelled to Ireland to fulfil two long-held dreams: to learn from a teacher whose work I greatly admired – Lucy Ní hAodhagáin – and to be the first in my family to travel back to Ireland since my great grandparents left in the early 1900s.

As we worked the eel skins we had been tanning as part of the course, Manchán – his face bright, kind, and lively beneath his sun hat – spoke to our group of Gaeilge, the Irish language. About the connection between language and land; about the nuanced, poetic ways to speak of light, landscape, and water; about the ancient connections between Irish and Indian mythology; and about the decolonisation of language.

We moved to different points around the landscape, standing for a time on a bridge crossing a tributary of the River Boyne, sitting later around the fire sharing arán agus im (bread and butter), which Lucy had baked over the fire.

I was so moved and changed by this experience. I wrote in my notes ‘this learning, these words, ideas, are lighting me up, forming new pathways, making me feel so much less lonely in how I see the world.’

This day, for me, was a significant point of inception that continues to spread its radial ripples through my life. On the way home, I wrote a poem inspired by all the things Manchán had shared with us. It felt honest and alive, full of the grief, wonder and magic I had felt that day. After a bit of debating as to whether it was appropriate, I decided to share the poem with Manchán by email, thanking him for everything he had offered.

Manchán replied to me almost instantly,

Sophie,

Mo mhíle buíochas for sharing the poem, Gaeilge. It’s really as much an incantation as a poem. A powerful piece of writing.

It stirs up deep feelings and knowings.

Do keep writing.

Manchán

I was blown away by the generosity of this response, a gift of words and encouragement that, just like that day spent with Manchán in Ireland, was a point of inception that has spread ripples through my life. I decided to submit the poem to a magazine, Clarion, and it became the first piece of my creative writing ever to feature in a print publication.

In honour of Manchán, I share the poem with you here. May he travel with ease and love into the next circle of his journey, as the ripples of his impact continue to spread far and deep in this reality.

Gaeilge

The one who comes to your door

is dripping seawater

from ears and mouth,

has been in the ocean for so long

that they are part otter –

feet webbed between padded toes,

part seal –

encased in a soft barrel of blubber.

You drape a blanket over briny shoulders,

invite them to sit beside the fire

although you are terrified of what they might say,

of what they might do,

since it was one of your own

(was it?)

who drove them into the water.

In the firelight, you see how their eyes

are filled with glittering stones.

How each of the hairs on their chin

is a delicately unfolding fern.

You try not to stare

as they pick cockles from their ears,

pull tangles of kelp

from throat.

When an eel slips from a sleeve

you are unsurprised.

The eel slithers along the floor,

snake-wise

to swim, singing, into the fire.

A blister of eel fat spits from the flames

and bites your hand.

You suck on it greedily without thinking,

having not realised your hunger.

Having not realised the hunger of lifetimes

since the young solider

fled in terror

from the féar gortach.

Eyes stinging with eel smoke

you see that the visitor is drying out.

That they do not begrudge you the lick of fat

but neither did they come here to bring it to you.

That the house you are in is in fact their house

and it is you who is the visitor.

Rising on newly grown feet

they take off the skin of the seal,

and turn it inside out.

The reverse is earth, mountain and cairn.

Veins trickle silver

towards dark holes

filled with lobster.

On a mountain top

an old woman drops stones from her apron.

In a dark pit

a young woman weeps into a broken cup.

You weep with her.

Small, now, as you need to be

you crawl along the ridge of a dark peat bog,

Slither into a stream,

silver belly singing over sunken bones.

You emerge at the edge of a ruined forest,

see how ancient trees

have been dragged out by the roots.

See how, in a circle of stones

a lone sapling rises,

crowned by a single, tender leaf.

How - kissed by a particular kind of light -

the leaf blisters gold.

The ground shakes.

You hold tight to the furrowed trunk of a fallen elder

as down from the mountain comes the old woman,

up from the pit comes the young woman,

out from the water come a thousand elvers

to feast upon the leaf.

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Dear reader,

I walk along this wild, northern beach

in mid September

and think of time,

and of treasure,

as the receding tide delivers a scatter

of ancient pebbles in every colour

to the sand.

Such colours!

Conjured in the cauldron of the moment

from the salt and water, light and weather:

Tangerine quartz

Rose-veined magenta

The powder blue of a jay’s feather.

I find frosted gems of sea glass, too;

Forged from molten sand centuries ago

and crafted anew –

Sharp edges turned smooth

beneath soft, salt lick

and the slow, silver lighthouse

of the moon.

These beach colours are treasures that cannot be kept,

or carried home.

They will slip through the seam of a pocket

leaving only a ghost

in their place,

existing solely

in the moment’s bright alchemy,

with its spell of:

Lacquered light and salty waves!

Molten sand and tide’s dream!

Attention –

deep as a midnight sea.

Gleaned

in this moment,

by me.

Amongst the pebbles

is a glittering truth:

how life’s greatest treasure

cannot be hoarded

or saved for later.

How each fleeting beauty

invites our intention

once and only.

Now.

I hope you enjoyed this little window into my wander on a wild, northern beach.

What colours has the world offered you lately?

What treasures?

As always, I would love to hear back from you.

With warmest wishes,

Sophie

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Dear reader,

It is dusk here. Hundreds of moths flit to the honeysuckle flowers outside the window, drawn by the sweet scent. I watch from my seat on the other side of the glass, thrilled to see so many moths of all sizes arrive. Some are fine as a fledgling’s feather. Others, large as butterflies. The moths congregate around the happy tangle of honeysuckle that has climbed the trunk of the cherry tree in the garden.

Honeysuckle - or woodbine - is an ancient dweller of these northern woods. A plant of many stems, it twists around trees and ‘binds’. After a time, this twisting and binding can create a spiral groove on a branch. As I mentioned in a previous letter, I seek out these spiral sticks as they make excellent magic wands and staffs.

It is too dark to make out the patterns and colours on the moths’ wings, but I wonder if there might be pink and green elephant hawk moths out there, or yellow brimstones.

The moths occasionally tap against the window, perhaps mistaking my lamplight for the moon. The sound is so specific: dusted moth wing tapping gently against glass. Different from the daytime dunt of a bumblebee.

The smell of the honeysuckle drifts, reaching me through the open window. This scent becomes stronger at the liminal time between day and night, courting the moths who have been resting in secret places during the day. I imagine that I have a view onto an ancient ceremony: moths drawn to worship at the altar of sweetness between day and night; the garden at dusk, their temple.

Thoughts of altars and temples put me in mind of one of my favourite poems, In Contemplation at McCoy Creek by Ursula K. Le Guin. I take the poetry book from my bookshelf, and read:

Seeking the sense within the world, I guessed:

To be there in the sacred place,

the temple. To witness fully, and be thus

the altar of the thing witnessed.

And later in the poem:

Time is the Temple–Time itself and Space–

observed, marked out, to make the sacred place

on the four-quartered sky, the inwalled ground.

This poem altered my way of seeing the world as all the best poems do. I love the concept that, by witnessing fully, I myself might become an altar within the temple of Time and Space.

Previously I had mainly thought of an altar as a collection of objects imbued with meaning, placed together with intention as a way to connect with the sacred. Special objects such as a deer antler, artist’s bracket mushroom, fox’s tooth, jay’s feather, hag stone, murex shell, bundle of bog myrtle, candle, and tiny bone have recently adorned my altar.

If I think of myself as a altar then, what am I adorning this altar with? Clothes take on a new meaning, as do jewellery and tattoos, symbols, colours and scents. The concept also raises the question: how am I showing up to this temple that is ‘Time itself, and Space’? With reverence and attention I hope, but just like a physical altar gathers dust and cobwebs, my awareness sometimes needs tending. How best can I court the sacred, as the honeysuckle courts the moth?

The deep perspective shift offered by the poem stays with me as I continue to look from the window. There are altars within altars: me at the window; the moths at the honeysuckle. The poem is an altar too, each word carefully selected by Ursula K. Le Guin and arranged on the page within the ‘temple’ of a particular time and place. In giving the poem my deep attention, and sharing these thoughts with you, I hope to tend to this altar.

Ending here, I would love to know, what does the idea of the ‘altar’ mean to you?

If you are an altar, with what might you adorn yourself? And what does it mean to ‘tend’?

With warmest wishes,

Sophie

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Dear reader,

It is good to be back after a short break away. During this time, I’ve been working hard on a novel, and am delighted to report that I now have a very thoughtful and brilliant literary agent. The book is an epic fantasy - the first in a series - and I am feeling really proud of it. Perhaps I could share more about this book, and the long journey to finding an agent, over the months to come. If this is something you would be interested in, do let me know by leaving a note in return.

Aside from that, I have so many thoughts sparking away in my imagination today and am keen to share these with you. So, here goes!

A few years ago, I was wandering around an exhibition of community artwork on the Outer Hebridean isle of Lewis.

When I asked a local man about the exhibition, he explained that, every week during the pandemic, a creative prompt had been shared with the islanders. Hundreds of community members created drawings and paintings inspired by that prompt, and the exhibition showcased their work.

‘The hardest prompt was to design a fantasy sea creature,’ he told me. ‘It really was difficult to come up with anything more remarkable than what’s already out there.’

From the harp sponge to the anglerfish, the bloodybelly comb jelly to the yeti crab, the creatures of the oceans are so bizarre and beautiful, so otherworldly, that they surpass any hybrid creation our imaginations could conjure up.

And yet, we increasingly turn away from the natural world in our search for enchantment and wonder, even as many unique creatures hover on the brink of extinction. Meanwhile, fantasy realms created for TV, film, and gaming are increasingly where we look for enchantment. Worlds where there are an array of mythical creatures. What would it be like to live in a place where dragons existed?

I am a great lover of fantasy fiction (and dragons!). I write it, and read it, and think that the ability for a story to evoke feelings of awe and wonder is a magic of its own.

But I also light up in nature. Seeing a hedgehog, or a tiny goldcrest, can leave me grinning with glee. Watching a dolphin calf swim alongside its mother has filled my heart so full of wonder that I have been brought to tears.

‘I love your childlike joy,’ someone close to me has said about how I react to beauty in nature. These reactions are something I step into more and more. They were absent for a long while - particularly during the periods of depression I experienced in my late teens and twenties, when I felt like an isolated being adrift in this world, disconnected and scared. At that time very little, except for mind-altering substances, could rouse any sense of enchantment in me.

But I was lucky enough to meet certain people, and be given certain opportunities in life, that guided me back to connection and belonging. These are some of the things I am most grateful for, and to which I owe my life. A life that is guaranteed to end at some point, so why not be open to wonder and awe when it comes along?

Growing up, I was generally encouraged to lean towards a rational, scientific sort of appreciation for things. Admiring a bird of prey wheeling in the sky above is all very well, but hopping about with excitement, or being brought to tears by the experience, would be considered over the top.

Science can be such a powerful and awe-inducing system to discover and describe the world, but I wonder if our tendency to view experience solely through its lens can sometimes strip away enchantment.

I think of the writings of the brilliant botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer who in her book, Braiding Sweetgrass, describes science as having become an ‘intellectual monoculture’. Kimmerer writes of envisioning a time when this monoculture might be replaced with ‘a polyculture of complementary knowledges,’ including that of an animistic worldview.

If I could choose one word in the English language that is capable of killing the magic in something, it would probably be the word ‘just’. I increasingly try to avoid it as when describing what I’m seeing, although I sometimes forget!

The mythical sea monster known as the Kraken is, for example, ‘just’ a squid with abyssal gigantism. Humans even photographed one in its natural habitat for the first time in 2004. Down in the abyss, a brightly flashing camera took over 500 photos as the creature struggled to break free of the baited lure that had been set for it. Four hours later, it finally escaped, leaving one of its colossal tentacles impaled on the lure. At the time, this struck me as disturbingly symbolic.

On an island where humans are increasingly disconnected from the land and waters, and where wild places are shrinking, perhaps the lack of embodied, visceral, personal encounters with other-than-human beings also endangers enchantment.

I’ll never forget the day I first saw an emperor moth, although I didn’t have the name for it at the time. We had been hiking through the boggy Hoofstone Heights, just east of Burnley. I was wearing a favourite pair of earrings and, at some point, realised that I had lost one of them to the bog. Remembering that Celtic peoples made offerings of precious items to water deities, I considered the lost earring an offering and, when we came to a humpbacked stone bridge with a stream running beneath it, decided to offer the other earring to the stream.

As I threw the small, silver hoop into the water, I saw a creature fly down - directly towards the place where the earring had disappeared - and land on the stream’s surface. I scrambled down the bank to rescue what I thought was a butterfly. What I scooped from the stream was one of the most beautiful creatures I had ever seen. Its wings reminded me of the Batik patterns I had made with wax and dye in school textile lessons. As I stared at it in wonder, the creature explored my arm with antennae like two tiny feathers, its body seemingly wrapped in a tiny fur coat.

This encounter began a lifelong enchantment with moths.

The moth, and the experience itself, are entangled in my memory, and if our memories make us who we are then the moth has, in a way, become a part of me.

Through experiences like these, I truly believe that a moth, or a hedgehog, or any wild being, can fulfil our yearning for enchantment. The emperor moth’s appearance at that very moment was infused with a mythic significance that tapped into a different kind of knowing. One that thrummed with a mystery beyond explanation.

The moth was, in a sense, my very own dragon!

But in a place where our wild edges are shrinking away, the opportunity for these surprise encounters is dwindling too. How can we create more space for them?

Because if we never have an encounter with a creature that lights up something in our personal universe, entangling with emotion and memory, then how would we notice, let alone care, if such creatures are, one day, gone?

A little invitation….

Imagine that, although you have forgotten, you entered this world from another one, passing through a magical portal. And that, although it seems so far off and abstract, one day you will leave this world again, travelling back through that same mysterious gate. When you return to the place of your origin, where the creatures of this realm are no more real than dragons are here, what, in this world, might have enchanted you most? What stories would you tell of it around the fire?

I would love for you to leave a note in return.

With warmest wishes,

Sophie

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Dear reader,

Deep in the wildwood, an ancient magic stirs.

In the primroses blooming on banks.

In the soft, spiny ‘roses’ on the larch tree.

Sap is rising from the roots of birches, whispering the silver, mineral spells to the buds that mean swell and open.

Mycelium works in the darkness of fallen branches, slowly digesting dead wood. These networks of fungal filaments gently transform brittle sticks into soft rot and soil.

The wild is full of wizardry.

Can I conjure a bright red mushroom from a fallen twig? The wild muses.

Yes, just watch me!

The subtle force behind this newly emerging life seems to speak, if I listen quietly.

And recently, when I looked deeply enough, its face (or perhaps one of its faces) was there, looking back at me.

Sitting by a stream in the wildwood, I picked a leaf of herb Robert, a plant that grows abundantly in this little valley.

As I twirled the herb Robert leaf in my fingers I saw, very clearly, a face! Eyes, nose, and mouth, in the leaf. Or rather, in the gaps between the leaflets.

Can you see?

I sat there in wonder, looking, and looking closer, seeing the herb Robert’s leaf as though for the first time.

Enchanted by this new discovery, I took a handful of leaves back to Hazel Cottage with me. There, at my desk, I had fun drawing faces in the gaps between the leaflets.

Here is one of my favourites.

This noticing got me thinking about the image of the Green Man, otherwise known as the foliate head; a motif that repeats again and again, albeit in different forms, in art and architecture across the world. The foliate head is an image of a human face peering from inside leaves, often with foliage sprouting directly from its mouth.

You may have seen this leafy being in books about British folklore or, in more recent times, as a carved wooden face adorning many a gift shop trinket. The motif has become something of a pagan icon that symbolises spring growth and rebirth, and the animate force behind all life.

Stone and wooden carvings of the foliate head abound in churches across Britain (lots of people have written about where and why, so I won’t go into that here!)

After my encounter with herb Robert and the foliate face I had seen inside the leaves, I began to research some of these historic depictions, and couldn’t help but see, in some instances, a familiar face looking back at me!

Here are the two side by side, just for fun.

I love these kinds of discoveries; when my imagination forms new connections, and there is a thrill in wondering - have I noticed something that other people have noticed throughout history?

It pleases me greatly to imagine, hundreds of years ago, someone sitting by the banks of a stream and twirling a herb Robert leaf in their fingers until… Ah! A face!

It’s not that I need a definitive answer. As with so much about past peoples, how they thought, and what was important them, I am happy in the mystery of never knowing for certain.

Yet it is fun to imagine that perhaps 13th-century French artist, Villard de Honnecourt, saw it too, and merrily committed what he had noticed to his famous sketchbook.

Or perhaps, as with the face in the negative space between leaflets, I am seeing things that aren’t *really* there. Well… it wouldn’t be the first time! And (I sincerely hope) not the last.

It felt like a gift to see this foliate face - something that represents the animate force behind all life - playfully looking back at me, then mirrored in leafy faces in holy places and sketchbooks.

I can find no references directly connecting herb Robert and the foliate head.

What do you, reader, think about all of this?

Have you ever noticed faces in leaves or trees, or had the sense that someone, or something, is looking back?

I would love for you to leave a note in return, if you have the time.

With warmest wishes,

Sophie

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Dear reader,

Today I would like to write to you of some animal familiars who frequent Hazel Cottage.

‘I can see why you don’t need a pet now!’ A friend said to me upon meeting the little vole who lives outside the back door.

The vole, who has made a very sweet nest for himself under a plank of wood using an old rubber glove (ideal for waterproofing the roof) and dried leaves, appears to be comfortable in my presence.

I am careful not to step on him when he runs around my feet! From these interactions I have learnt that a crab apple constitutes a sizeable feast for a vole, and that a good hiding place for such a prize is under a ball of dried grass.

No matter how I’m feeling, the sight of the vole always raises a smile. This is one of the things I love most about living close to the natural world - there is always some noticing or interaction that brings wonder and joy to the day.

It’s true that although I don’t have a pet, being surrounded by animals is one of the many beautiful parts of living in the woods. I mentioned in a previous letter that I have been woken up a couple of times by a robin in the kitchen. Here is this intrepid visitor, perched on a pan handle.

This same robin has come into the cabin several times through a small opening in the window. The first time it happened, I thought it was an accident, and helped the robin out through the door. The second time, when I was woken by the bird flitting about in the kitchen, I began to wonder… was the visit deliberate? Maybe the robin was looking for crumbs, or a bit of early morning excitement.

The robin is not the only bird to have venture in. I once found a blue tit in the living room and had to catch it in a tea-towel. This little visitor left a small poo on top of my piano.

A few times I have brought injured or stunned birds inside to recover as well. Here is a dunnock, who was revived after some time in my hat by the stove.

I like to think of these animals as wild ‘familiars’; creatures who come and go of their own accord, but with who I share a special kinship.

Sometimes encounters feel significant in a magical way, like the day I found three toads in the garden. I was planting hawthorn saplings at the time with the aim of strengthening the boundaries - both physical and otherworldly - around my little dwelling. Hawthorn being both a great hedging plant, and a magical tree of the fairies in Celtic lore, it was an obvious choice for a boundary hedge.

As I dug the holes for the saplings, I discovered toads in three different spots. With their sparkly, copper-coloured eyes, association with witches, and affinity with the underground, toads hold a special symbolism for me, and this was not the first time they had appeared at a significant moment. Their presence felt like a very powerful kind of boundary magic - a spell of toad and hawthorn to keep my dwelling safe.

Other animals are slightly more elusive. A hedgehog was living under the cabin last year; I saw it a few times in the wild grasses just beyond the gate when I returned at dusk. I’ve been wondering if the hedgehog is hibernating under there over the winter. I will keep an eye out for it over the coming weeks as the days get longer and warmer and hibernating creatures venture out once more.

April and May are always one of my favourite times of year at the cabin, when the animals are active and preparing to have their babies. Here’s hoping for some Hazel Cottage hoglets!

There are other animals who I sometimes catch a glimpse of from the window, or in the distance when I am out and about. I will write to you in a separate letter of what I have discovered when respectfully following prints, tracks, and trails through the woods.

Do you have any animal familiars, wild or domestic, where you live?

Or is there an animal who holds a particular symbolism for you?

I would love to hear about them.

With warmest wishes,

Sophie

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Dear reader,

It has been some weeks since my last letter, and I am happy to be back at my desk, putting pen to paper. Expect my letters more regularly again from now on.

How is your heart today? As you cross the threshold into our wildwood of deep imagination, find a small parcel wrapped in red paper hidden beneath a stone. Inside it is a glass bottle with a cork stopper - something for you. Consider the bottle’s contents to be an elixir of sorts.

One sip evokes a memory of your favourite childhood shoes.

Two sips, something red in colour that you have cherished.

Three sips, and you remember a place that is special to you; a place imprinted forever on the deep snow of your memory.

Four sips, and you notice a large brown hare in the distance ahead. As it lopes away along the path away from the village, it seems to be inviting you to follow it.

Will you?

If you do, find that you are dressed in a cosy hat and your warmest coat, because a deep freeze is upon the land. Crystal kisses glitter on the steps of the old stile as you cross it to follow the hare. Along the path that leads towards the woods, stems and leaves are festooned in fur and feathers of crystal.

In the deep dream of frost, one thing imagines itself to be another: loam knows the ways of stone; water is sculpted into flutes of glass. Ice-mirrors shatter underfoot, and for this briefest yet most expansive of times, all boundaries are gone from the world, all mistakes forgiven.

The snow receives each of your footsteps in an ancient, creaking voice. It maps your journey, casting it in ice, making substance from absence of each footstep.

You notice tracks that do not belong to you, made by creatures other than human.

These tracks through the world dazzle with mystery. How tall did this creature stand and what colour was their fur? Where did they come from, and where were they going? How long ago did they take this same path as you?

In search of what did they pass through?

And how about you?

Venturing into the woods between hawthorn and oak, you will eventually see smoke rising from a chimney and, through the trees, a small wooden hut the colour of gingerbread. Approaching, you note the blanket of snow covering the hut’s slate roof. And look - there through the window you see me - sitting at my desk, writing you this letter!

I wave.

And you?

Here inside Hazel Cottage I watch you pass by, preparing this letter for you to find in the mailbox on your return journey. The fire is stoked, the kettle is on, and I have a blanket over my knees for extra warmth.

Life becomes smaller here in this time of deep winter: chopping kindling and stoking the fire, watching the weather change out of the window. Ice and frost bring a kind of deep time suspension that requires slowness and reflection - something I wrote to you of in my last letter. I will put on my coat soon and head out into the world to see if I can find your tracks, or the mysterious tracks of some other.

Will you leave anything in the mailbox for me to find when I post you this letter? As always, I would love to receive a message in return.

With warmest wishes,

Sophie

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Dear reader,

In the night, the ice came, and spread across the window in crystal vines.

Otherworldly ivy that creeps and climbs,

creating alchemy upon alchemy.

Because - I consider, as I stand before the window with my cup of tea -

just as liquid water transformed into ice

molten sand was quenched to make this glass —

each window pane once a flow of quartz, now frozen in deep-time suspension.

And just like that,

with a thought,

the world itself transforms;

window glass becomes a different kind of portal

through which I see

the magic of the everyday:

How the steam that rises from my mug of tea

is ethereal;

and the robin who perches on the hazel tree

a miracle.

When I go outside

I think of a line from Wild Geese by Mary Oliver:

“The world offers itself to your imagination.”

I open to this offering,

and, in return, give the gift of attention

so that I can see

how the nettle stem wears elven brooches,

edged and veined with frost.

And decaying leaves carry on their backs crystal kingdoms

that will rise and fall

in a single morning

as the sun, gold and low, warms the world

pouring apricot sweetness

over the snow;

over the many things that were so recently let go.

I hope you enjoyed this little window into my way of seeing.

What has the world offered to your imagination recently?

Have you been awed by any everyday magic?

As always, I invite you to leave me a note in return.

Warmest wishes,

Sophie

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Dear reader,

Today has been a lot of fun. I have been preparing the tools and materials needed to write, by hand, to my paid subscribers over the winter as promised. I am very grateful to this handful of generous people, who are helping to keep me in tea and writing paper, ink and candles.

Having gone down the path of a vocation that is purposeful (with no regrets on that front), it has not always been easy to afford the time and energy to write alongside it. Yet to write is to deepen further into my purpose as a whole, and so, it is no small thing to have support from these Substack readers, and from a local writing organisation that has done much in helping me to create All The Wild Magic.

Whilst writing this letter so far, I have been distracted by various occurrences out of the window: a grey squirrel carrying a small green apple in its mouth, a blackbird turning over fallen sycamore leaves in search of food, and two wrens, perhaps playing, perhaps trying to decide on a boundary, or likely something else entirely; it makes me happy to think of birds having their own secret worlds that we cannot map onto our own understanding.

Each time I have seen one of these things I have wondered whether to reach for my camera and try to capture it for you. But then I might miss what is actually happening!

Sometimes I am in two minds about whether to take pictures here at the hut in general. Doing so can take me out of the moment, and away from whatever has my attention.

But today, because my intention was, in fact, to take some pictures to include in this letter, I had good fun pottering about, arranging things nicely on my desk, feeling excited about the prospect of writing to people by hand this winter, and enjoying some of my most treasured objects - the trinkets that adorn my desk.

Some of the objects have come from charity shops and bric-a-brac stalls. Others have been gifted to me by the wild world, or by friends, over the years.

I am a bit of a magpie in charity shops and at market stalls; my eye is drawn to anything with hand-painted and accurate detail of native flora, fauna and fungi. Imagine my excitement, then, to discover the plate with the fly agaric mushrooms, dog rose hips, and mice upon it, pictured below! The price tag was just £2.50, making it all the more wonderful.

A discovery like that can really make my day, whatever else might be happening.

How about you - what small things can make your day?

I haven’t sent you many photographs of Hazel Cottage so far. My intention was for us to create our own version of the hut, inside the wildwood of our shared imaginations.

Today though, I thought I would just share this one detail, because I love my cranky old stove so much. This stove - which has always looked as though it is entirely capable of getting up in the night and walking away, yet never would because it is so dedicated and steadfast - heats the whole hut to a cosy temperature even in the depths of winter.

So there is a little glimpse, but I would love to know, when you picture Hazel Cottage, what do you see?

And if you could leave something on the doorstep to add to our little hut in the wildwood of deep imagination, what would it be?

I would love for you to post me a note back.

And, if you are drawn to support my writing financially, you can do so by becoming a paid subscriber. You will then receive a handwritten letter from me this winter, as a thank you for your support.

I also know that extra pennies are not always forthcoming, so I would like to give one person a year’s paid subscription and handwritten letter at no cost. If you would like this honorary subscription, please comment below, share this post on notes and tag me.

With warmest wishes,

Sophie

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Dear reader,

At this time of year, when the evenings darken and the leaves begin to fall, I am lucky enough to spend my time roaming about the woods, teaching people about mushrooms. Fungi are one of my biggest passions in life; beings both ancient and mysterious, beautiful and strange. They have been around on this earth since long before the first trees or flowers, and played a vital role in creating a world where trees and flowers could exist at all.

There are some ways in which fungi are like us: they digest their food using enzymes in order to get nourishment, for example.

But there are also ways in which fungi are so very other that we are only just beginning to understand them.

As with so much of the natural world, history hints at a more intuitive, relational way of understanding these beings. An understanding born from people’s deep entanglement with the land and its wild inhabitants (both of this world, and of the Other).

This deep entanglement between people and the wild may have been mostly severed in recent times, but through the names we still use for mushrooms, some threads remain, connecting us back to an older way of seeing.

From witches’ butter to fairy ring champignon, scarlet elf cup to dryad’s saddle, the British names for mushrooms brim with mythical associations. If we look to written records it seems that many of these names were assigned in recent centuries, yet some surely have much deeper origins.

The mushroom known as fairies’ ears on the Isle of Man, for example, is part of a deeply-rooted Celtic mythology on the island surrounding fairies and the elder tree. I wrote about this in a previous letter.

I have often wondered whether particular mushroom species and particular mythical beings, such as pixies, might have once been considered interchangeable, but there is no way of knowing if that was the case.

What can be understood is that mushrooms, with their myriad of shapes, colours and textures, appearing in the woods overnight as if by magic, have something of the Otherworld about them.

Whenever I see dryad’s saddle mushrooms, I can well imagine the dryad’s - tree spirits of Greek mythology - riding upon them through the wildwood after dark.

Appearing in the depths of winter when all else can be somewhat dreary and drab, scarlet elf cups evoke an elven banquet abandoned, the bright little cups left upon the mossy table, sometimes containing droplets of rain (or could it be elven mead?).

Stories about ‘fairy rings’ - the name given to mushrooms growing in a circle, remain common knowledge even today in some parts of Britain and Ireland. A person who steps within the ring will be compelled by the fairies to dance feverishly, or might risk disappearing altogether, drawn into the fairy Otherworld and never seen again without magical intervention.

These fairy rings can be ancient - there is one in Belfort, France that is more than 800 years old - and they are, theoretically, potentially, immortal - just like the fairies.

Yes, immortal!

Mycelium (the underground organism responsible for producing the appearance of a ring due to radial growth from a central point of inoculation) can continue to spread indefinitely provided it has food and a favourable environment.

By pleasing juxtaposition, the mushrooms themselves can be wondrously ephemeral (another word I love) - there one day and gone the next. Some mushrooms deliquesce, meaning to liquify via a process of auto-digestion. Fungi in the ink cap genus are the most prominent examples, the mushrooms transforming into piles of black, inky goo, sometimes overnight.

Mushrooms disrupt the everyday reality of us mere mortals in so many ways: by their potential for immortality and secret underground worlds; by their strangeness of form, colour and texture; by their sudden appearance, conjured as if by magic overnight and their habit of, just as quickly, disappearing.

As you may have heard or read (these ideas have recently spread through our own mycelial grapevines), mushrooms even pass messages between trees via underground networks, and are the great connectors of the wildwood.

But that is another story, perhaps for a future letter.

As always, I would love to hear from you. Do you have any favourite mushroom names, or know of any local stories that connect mushrooms to mythical beings in your part of the world?

With warmest wishes,

Sophie

Dear reader ,

Today is the day. For reasons known only amongst the trees, they are letting go of so many leaves. Drifts of them fall like snow through air without breeze. Tick, tick, they land, covering everything. Covering the mushrooms that I have been seeking on the slopes of the wood. Covering the garden around Hazel Cottage. I find them in my hair and in my hood. I wade through drifts, the snaking footpath around the hut now a dry leaf-river.

Here in the valley the cherry trees are wild and tall; their leaves sail like paper boats when they fall, pink with the memory of blossom and berry. The field maple leaves are different, eager; little yellow hands that print themselves upon the earth. Further into the woodland the beeches invite the land to rest after its high-spirited summer. Their russet quilt lies wide and neat, covering everything but the burn.

Wandering through this precious day I stop and think of lines from In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver.

"To live in this world

you must be able 
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and when the times comes to let it
go,
to let it go."

I look to the bare branches of some of the trees. The dark arms of the silver-barked birch are already open to the winter. In the summer the birches held on tight to their leaves through even the worst of storms. But when the time came, they let go so lightly, a gift of yellow diamonds fluttering to the earth.

I stand beneath a bare birch and open my arms to the sky, mirroring its shape. The wisdom of holding tightly and letting go lightly is almost,

almost,

but not quite,

within my reach.

How does the shared wisdom of trees and Mary Oliver land for you? Are the leaves falling where you are too?

With warmest autumn wishes,

Sophie

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Dear reader,

Today I write to you from the old desk at Hazel Cottage of something a little different: my recent visit to Ellan Vannin (the Isle of Man), where I sought to understand local lore and custom surrounding the elder tree.

I want to first acknowledge that many local people could write about this with greater understanding, but I hope that by bringing together historic sources, and by including personal experience of working with the elder tree, I might add something of interest to this deeply-rooted topic.

When I first visited Ellan Vannin in 2017 I studied a map of the island and noticed the word ‘tramman’ in numerous place names. I was excited to discover that tramman means ‘elder tree’ in the island’s Celtic language of Gaelg.

Place names include Glen Tramman (Elder Tree Valley), Booil Tramman (Elder Tree Fold), and simply Tramman, in the parish of Rushen, there meaning Place of the Elders. 1

I have long held reverence for this most magical of trees, which offers abundant gifts throughout the seasons: fragrant flowers for making delicious summer drinks; deep purple berries for a potent winter elixir; a jelly-like fungus that works well for chocolate coated mushrooms; and slender branches that, being hollow, are perfect for crafting various items, including beads and musical instruments. Flutes made from elder wood are said to summon the fairies, although I would be mindful of harvesting stems without careful consideration. More on this below.

The tree’s connection to Celtic fairy lore was something I had frequently read about in herbal and foraging books, but these references tended to be mostly one-line anecdotes, and I was keen to understand the deeper context. That the elder’s significance is still so clearly apparent and well documented on Ellan Vannin was therefore very exciting to me, and led to some fascinating conversations with local people, as well as fruitful searches in the island’s library archives.

A commonly held tradition on Ellan Vannin was the planting of a tramman tree at the entranceway to a homestead or against the wall of a dwelling for the purpose of

“protection against those deadly, if unseen enemies - bugganes, and other demoniacal fields - evil spirits who so often brought him, poor man, all his bad luck, and less often something worse.” 2

This planting of a tramman tree was also traditionally done on the day of a baby’s birth

“so they’d grow together, and as the years passed, they’d be measuring the li’l fella with the tramman. If the tree was strong then he’d be strong for all.” 3

Although I did not see many modern houses on the island with elder trees at the entranceway - and sadly even found them lacking in the historic village of Cregneash - I read that the tramman was once found ‘in every old cottage garden’ 4. The protective qualities of the elder are bound up with the belief that the mythical mooinjer veggey dwell within the trees.

Mooinjer veggey translates into English as ‘fairies’, or more directly as ‘little people’. It is important to note, however, that just like the fay of old English lore, these beings are understood to be something very different to the tiny winged creatures depicted in modern fairy stories.

Something of the nature of the mooinjer veggey is revealed by the following notes:

“the elder is, together with the rowan and the thorn, the most significant of trees. It protects the house and its vicinity because it is inhabited or frequented by the kind of fairies who were formerly understood (there seems reason to believe) to be the souls of the ancestors; " the Good People from the sunset land," as a Manxwoman calls them.”

And:

“They live in the tramman, not like birds among its branches, though that is where, and sometimes how, they show themselves, but inside its hollow stems, as though they were drawn up through its roots from the earth itself.”

Both from A Manx Scrapbook. 5

That these mooinjer veggey, or souls of ancestors, were believed to be drawn up from the ground and through the hollow stems of elder might explain why the elder tree was so associated with death as well as birth. The leaves in particular were an important feature in traditional funerary rights when, until fairly recently, it was common practice on Ellan Vannin for elder leaves to be laid or scattered upon a deceased person, as described here:

“When a soul was dispatched to join its buried kindred, a handful of the leaves (preferably, no doubt, gathered from the house-tree) was laid by its mortal framework with a vague proprietary sentiment, to help its identification in the other world and its consolidation with the collective body of those who awaited it.” 6

And:

“Poor people were buried coffinless, their bodies wrapped in a blanket and fastened to the bier with bands made of split osiers or briers. Sometimes a wattle coffin woven with similar material was used. The leaves of the magic trammon were strewn in the grave as a specific against evil influences and occasionally carved on the gravestone.” 7

I had read that elder leaves featured commonly on gravestones in the old church yard at Ballaugh, and now believe that the following motif, carved on several of those stones, represents six elder leaves arranged in a circle.

As well as the otherworldly significance of the leaves, I wonder at some practical purpose for their use in funerary rites, too. I have tried out various leaves as natural insect repellants, and elder leaves, crushed with a little water, are one of the best. I therefore wonder whether the laying of elder leaves or boughs upon the dead would also have kept flies and other insects at bay whilst funerary rites were carried out. Although I could not find a direct reference to this, I did find the following in a newspaper column about gardening, which reveals that elder leaves were at least used to keep away insects when it came to horticulture on the island. 8

With the tree being considered magical and protective, and often connected with a particular person upon whose birth it might have been planted, it was understandably thought very foolish to cut a tramman down. Various local accounts detail the ill luck that has befallen those who cut an elder despite warnings, and one such story is shared here by Bill Quine.

I found several other written examples of such incidents, one of which is of particular interest to me since it also references the jelly ear fungi.

“The old trammons at Ballakoig having been cut down, the fairies came every night to weep and lament. So many met that a fight ensued, and the following morning the people found the street strewn with fairies' thumbs." (Lioar Mann., i., 223.) " Fairies' ears "-cleayshyn hramman-is a fungus which grows on trammon-trees, and I presume their "thumbs" are of a similar vegetable nature.” 9

This same mushroom grows abundantly on elder trees here in England, where it is known as the ‘jelly ear’. That they are considered on the island to be the ears (or thumbs) of the fairies is most intriguing. Even before learning of this, I had a sense that the mushrooms were in some way ‘listening’ due to their uncannily ear-like shape. For this reason I am careful when speaking aloud in their presence.

I also ask permission from an elder tree before taking anything from it, since this is a historic tradition throughout Europe. I do not wish to displease whatever spirits might dwell in the wood!

And so I find myself wondering, what would the elder tree and its ears make of this letter? I hope that my words convey the wonder and gratitude I hold for this most magical of trees. Perhaps I will go to sit beneath the elder close to Hazel Cottage tomorrow and offer it (and any fairies who might dwell within it) a gift. What might be suitable? A song perhaps, or a poem.

I realise that this letter has become quite long, and if you have kept reading until this point, I thank you. There is so much more I could say about the tramman, but perhaps that is for another day.

I hope to hear from you. Does the elder tree hold specific importance to you, or in the place where you live? Do you have any anecdotes about its historical uses to share?

As always, I look forward to your reply.

With warmest wishes,

Sophie Underwood

Dear reader,

It is night as I write to you. Tawny owls quail either side of the hut, so close that I wonder if I’ll be able to see them when I look out of the window. But there are only the silhouettes of trees against the midnight-dark of the sky, their branches thick with shadow-leaves. Owl and night are as one.

This wildwood has as many moods as the ocean, but tonight it feels settled and content, the plants nurturing the potential of their seeds in the wild garden. The window is open and I can hear the burn (do you use this word where you are? Here it means stream) rushing to be with the big river. If I close my eyes the sound could be heavy rain. If I listen for long enough, I start to hear the water’s language and how it speaks in many voices, whispering deep-time mysteries of vast sky and ocean, eel and moon; and perhaps of the old water deities who were once revered here; prehistoric rock art at the northern end of this woodland is proof that people inhabited this little valley thousands of years ago, far before even the Roman’s arrived with their pantheon of gods.

I often wonder at the meaning of these ancient patterns, which are repeated on stones across the north east of England. The concentric circles are a particularly common motif. When I look at them I see a mirroring of certain natural forms; water ripples known scientifically as capillary waves; the concentric rings inside a King Alfred’s Cake mushroom (a fungi which would surely have been highly prized by ancient people, since it is possible to make and carry fire within it); and the circular bands of light created by the phenomenon known as a Brocken Spectre. That we can never truly know what these symbols on stone meant to ancient peoples is part of what I love about them. The hands that etched them into rock reach through time and gift us with mystery. To me, this makes our own reality all the more magical.

A large moth taps against the outside of the window as it is glamoured by the lamplight inside. Early in the summer moths were scarce, but I thankfully noticed more of them later in the season. Moths are creatures that have a special place in my heart. I love the mystery of them, too: how they have such beautifully patterned wings even though so many of them fly in the dark. Winged sailors of the midnight sea, navigating by moon and starlight, much maligned and even feared by some despite their delicate beauty. It seems that those people who named the moths shared my enchantment with them: the Hebrew character and the emperor, the pebble hook-tip and the white ermine, the brimstone and the large emerald. Here is a brimstone I found on the path a few weeks back; a treat to behold, since they typically fly at night.

I am drinking a cup of elderberry tea mixed with some local honey as I write, the perfect tonic for the first cold nights that bring the promise of bonfires and pumpkins, cinnamon and apples. The elder is one of my favourite trees, and my next letter will be all about my recent visit to the Isle of Man where I researched its extensive folklore. There, in the native language of Manx, the elder is known as the Tramman.

What might the woodland’s mycelium be conjuring in the dark of the night? I have seen the first toadstools appearing, including this blusher beside a birch tree at the entrance to the hut’s garden. Have you been noticing any mushrooms where you are?

The hour is late, and it is time for sleep. I would love to find a message from you waiting in the mailbox over the days to come. What seasonal changes are you noticing where you are? How, if at all, have ancient peoples left their mark around the place where you live? I look forward to hearing from you.

With warmest wishes,

Sophie

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Oh you of root and feather both, who n’er the earth doth touch

Dear reader,

Today I discovered a being of ancient folk magic outside Hazel Cottage and wanted to share this discovery with you. Long believed to hold special powers for the purposes of protection and divination, this being is something of a riddle; for although it has roots, it never touches the ground.

Are you familiar with the rowan tree? Also known as the witch wood or mountain ash, rowan has lived in these northern lands since the days of the ancient wildwood. Only tiny fragments of this first forest now remain (I write to you from one of them), but the rowan still thrives, even in the foothills of the mountains, and in rocky crags where few other trees can grow.

I am beginning to spy clusters of rowan berries through the trees as summer ripens, fairytale-red and intensely bright. In Greek mythology, rowan leaves were said to be the fallen feathers of a mighty eagle, and the berries drops of the eagle’s blood.

I have been reading about the rowan’s roots in Celtic and Norse mythology as well as Greek. It is a tree often associated with the Otherworld and the magical, perhaps in part due to a special ability that it possesses.

Which brings me to today’s discovery.

Rowan may grow without touching the ground at all, ‘flying’ between soil and sky.

These liminal trees are known as ‘flying rowans’, and are seeded by birds including thrushes and redwings who eat the rowan’s berries, then deposit seeds in high up places. The little pip may end up anywhere; on the branch of another tree, or in the crevice of a rock. All it needs is a little water and nourishment to put down its roots.

And so the rowan sapling grows, sometimes into a sizeable tree ‘flying’ atop another. Imagine my delight, then, to find such a tree growing right outside Hazel Cottage! This tiny sapling has found its roots in the rotting, moss-covered wood of an old bench.

I had planned to dismantle the bench this summer, but will not be doing so anymore. A flying rowan is considered a powerful being indeed and is surely potent boundary magic. I have been reading about how wood from such a tree was much sought-after and used for making magical objects; favoured for inscribing Norse rune staves upon, and for the crafting of protective amulets. Twigs of flying rowan tied with red thread were said to ward off enchantment or maleficent magic. Perhaps one day when this tiny tree becomes large enough I will ask it for a twig or two for this purpose.

For now, the tiny rowan will fly and hopefully thrive. I shall be keeping a close eye on it!

Do you know of any stories about the rowan or the flying rowan? Is this a tree that lives in your part of the world? As always, I look forward to hearing from you.

With warmest wishes,

Sophie

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Dear reader,

I have been thinking about the magic imbued in the act of naming, and about how a name might be chosen. Names are such powerful things, the word roots often reaching deep into history.

Have you ever wondered how far back a name goes, or when it was first uttered?

I have been considering how a name and its subject become bound together. Spell-bound, you might say.

I often get this sense with plants: the word ‘rose’, for example, has a delicate softness about it, compared to the word ‘rowan’ which is more hardy and forthright. Is this indeed due to some quality of the word itself, or is rather that the plant’s qualities become inextricably bound to the word?

Perhaps a subtle combination of both.

Speaking of inextricable bindings, in a previous correspondence I touched on the subject of practicing magic.

There I invited you to think of magic as:

The power inherent in a strong and clear intention, which can be amplified by repetition.

In this way, the act of naming can hold powerful magic within it.

There is the name itself (the ‘spelling’) and the intention behind the name, which is renewed with each utterance (the ‘spell’).

Spell: Middle English: To mean or to signify (which later came to mean the ‘action of reading, letter by letter’)

Spell: Germanic: a story or saying ( later recorded as a ‘saying with magical intent’)

In naming the hut from which I write to you I therefore intended to put something of a ‘spell’ upon the place, and so it was important to get the name right. What spell(ing) might bestow protection and guardianship upon this little dwelling?

The first question was what the land had to say about it, and so I listened carefully, and watched, and waited.

A number of ideas came and went, inspired by the birds who visited and the wild weeds that sprung up in the garden. Meanwhile the hazel trees around the hut fluttered their large round leaves, and glimmered their silver-brown bark. When a tree beckons me, I have found that it is wise to take heed. And so I began to pay deep attention to Hazel and consider it as the namesake for the hut.

To my eye, there is a sense of balance and containment to this word, with a straight pole supporting it at either end. This mirrors how hazel wood has long been used for building and boundaries. A strong, sturdy name for a dwelling, then?

The central shape of the ‘z’ in the word also has an interesting association to me, reminiscent of that twist made when honeysuckle wraps around a pole of hazel.

If you have never seen this union, I invite you to look out for it next time you are in a hazel wood. The honeysuckle winds around the pole and the pole continues to grow inside this new binding. Over the years the hazel becomes shaped by it. Spell-bound by honeysuckle, you might say.

Beside my desk I have two beloved hazel staffs, the first with the spiral groove made by honeysuckle; the second forked, creating a perfect nook for the thumb when used as a walking stick.

By making staffs of hazel I connect myself to a lineage. Walking sticks and shepherd’s crooks have long been made from these beautifully straight, strong poles. In Celtic folklore hazel is said to be the preferred wood for a wizard (or Druid) staff.

These trees were believed to have magical qualities. They were the guardians of knowledge, and bringers of poetic inspiration. In Irish mythology the hazel stands beside the sacred Well of Wisdom.

That hazel came to have such a sacred place within ancient lore seems fitting to me. How precious hazel would have been to those first people who came north to these lands after the ice receded thousands of years ago. What a gift the nuts, providing so much nourishment, must have been. Not only were they an abundant food, but they could also be stored over winter thanks to the shells, and roasted in the fire embers to enhance their sweetness (I recently very much enjoyed seeing a little pile of ten-thousand-year-old charred hazel nut shells on display in a museum.)

I like to imagine that people of old must also have noticed the beautiful shape created by the union of hazel and honeysuckle, and that they would also have favoured poles shaped in this way for their staffs, both magical and otherwise.

So it was, considering all of this, that the name Hazel Cottage was decided upon: a spell of strength, flexibility, ancient magic, wisdom, poetic inspiration, nourishment & sweetness.

I cannot now imagine calling this cosy hut by any other name.

I am just now distracted by the sight of a blackbird plucking a tiny cherry from a wild cherry tree outside. I love moments like this, which have some mythic quality to them beyond the everyday: the black bird with the deep red cherry clasped in its orange beak.

On that note, I will end this letter here. But I would love to know, which names have a particular resonance for you, and how did you come to choose them?

Also, is there anything that I have touched on so far that you would like to know more about?

As always, I look forward to hearing from you.

With warmest wishes,

Sophie

It is six in the morning here. Time to get the kettle whistling and the curtains open. The wrens have already been singing loudly since sun up, and I am probably the last creature in the woods to wake and start the day. In the teapot today go rose petals, gathered from around the hut after they were scattered by yesterday’s wind and rain.

There out of the window are two baby wrens! Sitting on the higgledy-piggledy fence around the hut’s garden, half hidden by the large green coins of hazel leaves. The fledglings shuffle about beside each other, staying close as though still inside the confines of a nest rather than out in the big world. Wide-beaked and fidgety, the are puffed up with downy fluff, but when they open their tiny wings they show fully formed feathers, already decorated with the wren’s salt-and-pepper speckles. One fledgling drops to the ground, and I am poised to rush outside and give it a hand back to safety - but it scurries up the wonky fencepost again to sit beside its sibling, quick as a mouse.

Speaking of mice, I saw something especially delightful this week: a mouse at the top of a common hogweed stem, nibbling off the flower buds for supper. After I had taken this photograph, I watched him climb down the stem with the floret in his mouth.

The world is awash with green and is lush from yesterday’s rain; bright buttons of buttercup scattered through a merry tangle of wild grass and ‘weeds’. Open palmed, the trees and plants receive the sunlight of the longest summer day. Tiny apples that are forming on the apple tree have begun to blush skywards.

The foxgloves are so present this year! So very tall; some taller than me. The tapering arrangement of the flowers puts me in mind of wizards’ hats. And what with a number of the plants being human-height, it is as though the garden is populated with purple-hatted wizards, their furred-palms open to reveal the greatest magic trick of all; turning sunlight into flowers and food for the bees. An intrepid bumbler disappears inside one of the purple thimbles. These wizards also know the secret to slowing the human heart, wisdom that can be both healing in the form of digoxin, or dangerous if the leaves are imbibed accidentally (I learnt about the eerie effects of this from a man in the local bakery, but that is another story.)

Wrens sing and sing, and there on the apple tree is a familiar robin; the one who sometimes comes inside the hut through a very small gap in the window (a few weeks ago I found him perched on top of the kettle at 5 am. I have a photo of that somewhere- I’ll include it in my next correspondence).

These animals have become my kin; the birds who sing their hearts out from perches in all directions; the hedgehog who snuffles behind the compost bin; the badgers who dig up pig nuts from the wild meadow around the hut in the night; the toads who hibernate around the garden boundary over winter (I discovered three toads when planting some new hawthorn saplings, which seemed like a very good sign in terms of boundary magic. The toads were gently returned to their underground beds.)

Almost time to end this letter and head out for a wander. The rose tea is delicious. It conjures memories of summer’s past; washing the soil from my younger hands with rose scented soap; holding the soft hands of an elder who loved her garden. As well as a gentle holding, rose can also sometimes bring nostalgia, or sadness. Do you have roses in your garden? If so, what does the smell evoke for you?

As always, I would be delighted to hear back from you. Will you leave a message for me here in the mailbox?

With solstice blessings,

Sophie

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Would you care to take a seat on the mossy knoll beside the mailbox? The knoll is dried by the day’s sun, and soft; a mound overgrow with star moss. Have a look under the shade of the ferns beside it and find a bottle of rose and elderflower soda, left there for you.[1]

The soda is made from petals of the wild rose and creamy umbels of elderflower, brewed for a week with spring water and honey. If your heart needs tending today, the rose will tend to you.

Dog rose is an ally of mine, and grows abundantly in the northern English wildwood where I live. It has delicate, pale pink petals that can blow away in a strong wind. It also has thick, arching stems with thorns sharp as fox’s teeth. This is not the many-petal rose of the cultivated garden, but the ancient rose of Celtic legend; one that finds a way to thrive and flower even in the densest of thickets, and whose thorns can easily draw blood.

When I first arrived here at Hazel Cottage my heart and body were in need of tending (as we get to know each other, I will tell you more about this) and I found that I was drawn to sit in a natural arbour deep in the wood. The arbour was made of tangled hawthorn and arching rose stems, some dead and some living. On the woodland floor around it grew purple dog violets and aromatic ground ivy. There, protected by thorns on all sides, I felt safe.

Sometimes real, physical boundaries like the protection of a thorny arbour are needed. There is power in knowing that no one can sneak up behind you [2]. But what about when you need boundaries of a different kind?

In my first days at Hazel Cottage I felt welcomed by the deep enchantment of the place. It seemed clear that I had arrived here for a reason, and that the land itself had beckoned me. I had work to do, but ancient and wild places can be complicated; they are often a cauldron that swirls with many presences, human and non-human; physical and non-physical; each with its own direction of travel and intention. Locks and keys are all very well, as are hedges, gates and thorns, but sometimes protection of a different kind is needed, and this is where boundary magic comes in.

The word ‘magic’ can mean many things, and I hope to write to you about it in depth, but for now, I invite you to simply think of it as the power inherent in a strong and clear intention, which can be amplified by repetition and renewal, and by asking others for help.

Here at Hazel Cottage I walked the boundary of the little garden in those first days and muttered whatever words came to mind. As I went, certain phrases began to stick, to strengthen and to rhyme, and these I repeated until they became a charm of sorts. The words were dense with my intention to keep harm without and love within. I made offerings to the trees on the boundary: small green stones from the Scottish island of Iona. I stated an intention to live alongside the trees in reciprocity. This was my boundary magic, and it helped me to feel safe. When I am away from the hut I imagine this magic as a glimmering and impenetrable net, strong and finely woven.

Since those first days I’ve renewed this magic many times whenever I’ve felt the need to: during a huge storm when the woods were loud as an ocean; when planting a thorn or plum tree to make the physical hedge thicker.

So, as we meet here in this wildwood of deep imagination, how will we perform some boundary magic to keep these stories and exchanges protected? To ask that our meeting place only be found by those with sound intention? Your words and offerings are most welcome, and I would be delighted to know what they are; please do write back to me.

Here at the hut I close my eyes and imagine planting a dream rose at the boundary, beside the stone stile; one that will spread and sprawl over time until we can eventually make medicine from the flowers.

With warmest wishes,

Sophie

[1]In these correspondences, my intention is that we will conjure things together in this place of deep imagination, and that they will, in that mysterious way of the things inside dreams and stories, come to exist in a place beyond the tangible.

[2] In the woods there are others ways to know when you are not alone too, which I will write to you about at a future time.