Let The Raven Call You Home
June's Newsletter
In May the creeping buttercups were so tall in the meadow that they hid the roe buck as he ate his breakfast. In the trees at the back, blackcap song has replaced the song thrush, who has now moved to the trees across the road, the little flock of starlings has grown this year and two magpies have moved into the big tree.
We watched the robin as she gathered last year’s fallen leaves and moss from the path by the garage, to make her nest in the ivy beside our bay window. It was better than TV as each evening as she brought bundles of nesting material, often bigger than her head, to create the architecture that would be her throne for the next fifteen days. A wonder that was well worth not being able to hang that washing line out for as the hook for it is in the aforementioned ivy bush.
Wonder is something I’ve been practicing sitting with a little more this month. I’m someone who likes to learn new things and to share those things even more and in the world we have built ourselves knowledge is at our finger tips: on the tiny communication boxes we carry in our pockets, on the larger box that we worship in the corner of the living room and in everything we do there is a striving for and even a need for knowledge. Information, frequently inaccurate and in various forms, is coming at us from all angles twenty four hours a day if we so wish.
I love learning and a huge part of what I do is about teaching others and helping them to connect with the knowledge of our ancestors and the surrounding landscape we live in, but sometimes we forget to just simply wonder. So in an attempt to quiet my mind and lessen the anxiety of not knowing, I’ve been asking myself the question, why do I need to know?
Am I running a workshop or writing an article that requires me to know that creeping buttercup grows to up to 50cm tall or is all I really need to know, what I observed: it hides an adult roe deer. Watching a film, do I need to know who that actor is or what other films I saw them in, when all I really need to know, is that they were good in that film and I enjoyed it.
Slowing down this month has meant I have more time to be focussed on the stories I’m telling, more time for reading and relaxing (something I’m not very good at), and crucially, more time to support my family. I have walked the lanes more, watched nature’s cycles and noticed more.
In these quiet moments my mind drifts back to a song called ‘The Lost words Blessing’ - an ear worm that won’t quit - and it has become my guiding light over the last month. The last line is ‘Let the raven call you home.’
In folklore the Raven represents prophecy and insight. They can also be a messenger from this world to the spirit world and back. Hugin and Munin, aka ‘Thought’ and ‘Memory’, from the Norse Mythology, are Odin’s ravens and they keep him informed of the comings and goings in the Midgard.
I can hear that raven but I can’t yet see which direction it is calling me in and so I will be using the rest of the summer to focus in on that call and work out where it’s calling me to?
June's stories are of the chalk streams and camp fires as I am providing four workshops for the Hampshire and Isle Of Wight Trust’s ‘Tales Of The Riverbank, Literary Festival’. You can find out more about that here. But what of the camp fire I hear you ask? Well I’ll be telling some stories around the campfire at a local village funday we’re organising. I’ve also picked up some consultancy work for June and July so, as always, there’s plenty to keep me occupied when I’m not telling tales.
This month, landing in inboxes for all, there will be the usual events, updates and ‘Stories From Lore’ will be back with Episode 7, Season 4 ‘Fleeing Food’. This will be the last episode for this season and Season 5 will be back in the late Autumn. I’m cooking up some plans for episode themes for Season 5 but if there is a particular theme you are interested in then just leave me a comment below and I can see what I can do.
I’ve been thinking about future paid content for the autumn, how to make it sustainable and listening to that raven’s call. My whole ethos with storytelling is to connect people to nature, heritage and the landscape so instead of creating extras for Stories From Lore I have instead decided to create a ‘Story Forecast’ each month.
The idea is to have a short podcast, exclusively for paid subscribers, that looks at the nature, landscape and heritage, relevant to that month, and makes story suggestions and way-marks you to those stories in books, online or ones I’ve recorded myself, in order to help you mark the seasons and weather the storms.
From October, The Story Forecast will be the only regular paid content and any other content I create for behind the scenes, or extra audio stories will be occasional and on an ad hoc basis.
In the meantime, wherever the raven calls you to this month, I hope June brings you joy. Read on to find out where I’m telling stories, and what my plant, book and podcast of the month are.
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The Wheel Turns
Litha, the longest day, the Summer Solstice, is this month and if you are a paid subscriber, you can find resources to help you celebrate via my seasonal resources page. Some highlights for Litha are a vlog in which I chat about stone circles and a downloadable celebration sheet with activities created by your’s truly and beautifully illustrated by
.I’ve included links to both, below.
There will also be another of my stories in my Stories Of The Sun and Moon series I am creating for Journey To The Village.
Plant Of The Month
Dog Rose
The dog rose in June rambles along the hedgerows, finds space and blooms. Its colloquial names include Bumble-berry in Wiltshire, Dog-Berries in Hampshire and my personal favourite Titty-bottles in Somerset - they’re a right lot there aren’t they? Itchy-Pips is another as the berries or hips, contain hairs that will give you a very itchy throat if you eat them and if extracted from the hip can be used to make itching powder. The vitamin C in rose hips have helped many through the centuries where proper nutrition was not always something that could be afforded. In folk medicine if you hang the berries in a necklace around your neck it’s another of those cures for whooping cough.
June’s Podcast :
I’ve been enjoying Series 2 of Chris McCausland’s ‘You Heard it Here First,’ in which contestant have to guess what various sounds are, listen to the audio from adverts to work out what they are advertising and work out what film is being watched from the audio description.
This gameshow was created by Chris McCausland and has been inspired by his experience as someone who is blind. I love audio and Chris’s humour, so the two combined make this highly entertaining as well as thought provoking.
Upcoming Events For June/July:
2nd, 8th, 23rd & 29th June - Creative Writing Workshops - Tales Of The Riverbank Literary Festival - More Information Here
17th June - Portsmouth Pupil Poet Laureate Celebration Event - Private event.
29th July and into August - Start of Summer Storytelling at Weald & Downland - More information here.
For more information and to book me for your event, visit my events page using the button below.
‘Stories Of the Sun’, Out Now! What The Readers Say:
Lovely review from fellow Substacker
Don’t forget you can now find all paid subscriber content in one place via the link below. Browse a back catalogue of nature writing, kitchen witching, audio stories and more.
Thank you for supporting this newsletter through April. Supporting my work in this way allows me to continue to find new stories and research the old ways, and I thank you from the bottom of my storytelling heart.
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June’s Read:
I loved this Agatha Christie style murder mystery with a range of diverse and interesting characters, centering around a garden full of poisonous plants and I’ll be reviewing the book in full later in the month.
