Through the Firefly Forest: I is for Idyll...
Do you dream of a secret refuge...?
This letter is part of my Through the Firefly Forest: The Creative Journey series, where I look at the gifts and challenges of the creative life (one alphabet letter at a time). Start here, at A is for Apple Tree…
The little house perched over the ravine seems to have grown out of the forest itself. So much so that at first, you mistake it for a large rock. Then you notice the doorway and windows, how they seem like a wise face watching you, waiting.
An old, gnarly oak leans over the house like a guardian, while below it a waterfall tumbles down the ravine into a stream. Yet it is not really a house at all but closer to a shack, just a cluster of rough stones covered in moss. Strangely though, there is no atmosphere of poverty or lack. Instead, everything feels peaceful and complete.
You approach the open doorway and call out ‘Hello?’ but there is no answer. But you’re curious, so you bend down and step inside.
You find yourself in a single room speckled by late afternoon sun. You take in the cleanly swept fireplace with the polished copper kettle hanging above and the simple chair beside it. In one corner is a narrow bed, in another, a simple table beneath a window. On the table is a stack of parchment, a raven feather quill, an ink pot, neat pile of books and bronze hourglass. Outside, a bird twitters and beyond is the gentle rush of the waterfall. A hint of wild hyacinth winds it way to you on the breeze.
Here is peace, you think. Found in the stripped-bareness of things, the solitude of things, the retreat from all things. You are not in a shack at all — you are in sanctuary.
And at this moment, you envy the person who lives here more than you would a king in a palace. For there is not a single thing here that it not needed and not a single thing needed that is not here.
But you don’t want to intrude on the privacy of the hermit, so you leave the little house and continue on with your journey through the Firefly Forest. Yet with every step, you can’t stop thinking of that retreat above the ravine. Like the hermit, you want to sit and listen to silence — and the words whispered beneath silence — for long enough to fill sheet upon sheet of paper. And after all, what’s stopping you from building your own hermitage out of stone, earth and grass?
Yet you know exactly what’s stopping you — carnivals and dancing, circuses and kissing, and all of the bright, lovely confetti of life. You can’t quite give that up yet. And yet you crave peace and solitude too, an escape from it all. How can you ever choose? This is what you wonder as you fall asleep beside your campfire, dreaming of the rush of a distant waterfall…
I have a writing desk at home. It is in a perfect spot overlooking a small river (albeit a city river). But it is nothing at all like the hermit’s table. Because right now it is covered in a stack of flower fairy biscuit tins, case of coloured pencils, rainbow bowl, laptop mic, trinket box in the shape of an owl (that my dad made me), lamp, bluebird kitchen timer, pair of gold-plated scissors, keepsake gig tickets, trio of essential oils, oil diffuser, 2022 year diary, overgrown plant, Easter egg…
Anyway, there isn’t a single inch of space for writing and it’s been like this for a while. And I honestly believe that the clutter and confusion of that desk reflects the clutter and confusion of my mind these past few months. I have been living in fear and turmoil, unable to create a retreat anywhere, inside or outside of myself.
And sometimes I long for a hermit’s haven, a mossy house above a waterfall. I long to escape the world of the internet, electricity bills and endless interruptions. But the problem is that you don’t get that kind of life overnight, if ever. And the problem is that even if I did get there, I’d soon be craving carnivals and candyfloss.
I see a forest den as a refuge from turmoil, yet the truth is that turmoil must be tamed in everyday life or else it will only follow you everywhere. You have to face it and you have to carve out a quiet space within it.
And as I gaze at my desk, I wonder — what’s stopping me from creating a hermitage right here, at least? I can clear away the clutter. I can make space for a notepad and a pen, a neat pile of books, can even get a bronze hourglass if I want to. I can listen to the silence and the words whispered beneath the silence and fill page after page. I don’t have to escape from the world, I just have to learn to dial down the noise. A retreat, of sorts, is always within my reach.
Maybe you have your own hermitage-in-waiting? A cluttered desk? A dusty keyboard? A drawing board? A sewing machine? A box room begging to be a pottery studio? A greenhouse? A garden shed? An attic? Make a hermitage wherever you can, even if it’s just a tiny table tucked away in a bedroom corner.
You don’t have to long for that mossy house above the stream, the solitude of the forest retreat. You can find your idyll in snatched spaces and stolen corners of the clock. It doesn’t have to be grand but you do have to grab it.
And when you have claimed your space, close your eyes and listen to the waterfall that isn’t there, smell the imaginary hyacinth, feel the heat of the invisible fire in the grate. You will return to the candyfloss and carnival world later. Right now, you can breathe and dream.
Happy Easter, everyone! I hope that you are devouring chocolate and reading a book that conjures up spring (for me it is the springtime chapter of T.H. White’s The Sword in the Stone: ‘He lay under the great bearskin and stared out of the window at the stars of spring, no longer frosty and metallic, but as if they had been new washed and had swollen with the moisture…’). Anyway, I got behind in writing these letters to you as life got in the way for a bit, but I’m glad to be back.
Do you have your own creative space? Is it tidy or cluttered? Fancy or humble? Send me a snapshot, I’d love to see it. And if you liked visiting The Hermitage, be sure to drop by the The Gingerbread Cottage too…
Finally, if you’re enjoying these letters then why not treat me to a mug of strong tea brewed in a copper kettle above a fireplace?
Images by Wes Hicks and Chelsea Shapouri via Unsplash.