Of Mountains and Canvas, of Baker Tents and the Welsh Robin Hood

The Yurt Cover mountain range

Been staring at mountains of canvas for some time now….

Yurt wall ridge

…which decided us it is time to go to the mountains in canvas. As you may know we currently live in Wales which happens to be very Wild and beautiful, especially around here.

On a Canvas delivery last week we were told about the Welsh Robin Hood – Twm Sion Cati so we decided we are going to start exploring at Dinas Hill.

Dinas Hill

His magical cave just happens to be just south of my favourite spot the Llyn brianne reservoir, and we quickly scaled the hill to the cave, and amazingly we found our names on the wall of fame: it is a Welsh secret that anyone who carves their name in that cave becomes…….. (not going yo tell you if you don’t know it already or it would not be a secret).

The Cave wall of fame

It  reminded me later on, when came to a waterfall, of the Journey to the Heart of the World by Ian Baker where he goes to seek the illusive mythical waterfall, but to get to it he has to follow a set of directives. The Tibetans believe that the landscape is the body of a goddess and her secret spots are “Beyuls“: (spots that are gateways, some are described like Paradise, some are places in other worlds), but in order to get to the waterfall he had first to go and visit the mountain top, and that also could not be done directly.

So circling around Dinas Hill made think about all that, the Body of the Welsh Goddess and her Wild spots. I am a great advocate of the power of the wild, in fact I secretly hope that religion will revert back to the days before gods, when mountains and valleys are where the powers are, powers before they solidified into personifications as mountain gods and goddesses – of rain and thunder) when naturalism was pure and power was pure and nature was pure……. ok enough, breath.

Waterfall

At the top of Devil’s Staircase

At the bottom of Devil’s Staircase

We went through forests and up and down the hills looking for a spot to pitch up that night and and ended up going of the road on one of the most off-road routes in wales: the Strata Florida 4×4 track.

This to me is the best part of Wales, where wild oaks and rough mountains come together, “where wild horses are in the face of the battle”

Wild Horses with face for a battle

It was getting dark, and we realised that our cute little 4×4 just defeated the most 4×4 worthy track and that in fact we don’t feel much for green laning, when with a sigh when we hit the the tarmac again and stopped bouncing. Why people call this fun defeats me with all the burning clutch smell, and fearing for the vehicle anatomy, like worrying about shock absorber bushes etc, , you know that picture of fording a river with your Defender, I mean seriously ?

Baker Tent

So anyhow… we took back to the lake, and,almost dark we quickly pitched up the tent, (the Land Rover Campfire Tent without the Land Rover) and went wooding in the dark and the rain, like good gypsies do.

Baker tent (campfire tent) by the lake

Fire Lit

Gypsy tipping tea

That night was lovely: the wildness of the place and darkness poured colour into my dreams and I felt energised sleeping there by the power of the wilds which was enhanced by fasting the whole day, and walking (and some intense 4x4ing) the Welsh Goddess.

Morning Coffee Yoffi

We woke up early to an amazing misty morning, with canvas banging in the rain and the wind, and our hearts feeing wild. It was like a scene from one of Bill Mason’s documentaries, and a grand victory for the Baker tent, which has proved itself the real tent of the wild. We were recently involved in a heated debate (ok actually it was only me that got heated) about the ups and downs of this fabulous open fire tent.

So no more Debate.

Opening the door

The 814 4×4 is now finally all sprayed up and we got the door cut and into place the other day.

The door opening

 

The door opened

 

The new door in the 814

When Symbols Come to Life

Winter Butterfly, a symbol coming to life

Waking up today to a blanket of snow was nice: it was hard to get out of bed, but a little flutter reminded me it is time. It just so happened that it was a winter butterfly, reminding me I need to make yet another pair of  felt boots, the nicest ones yet.

As they are to be a surprise to an illustrative breeze, you can’t have a look at them yet, but that butterfly sure reminded me of her, this is why –

The summer butterfly

Last summer saw the breeze and I in Cornish Tipi Holidays where she Illustrated to her heart’s desires (and beyond some of the heart desires).

So after a little bout with our 4×4 down to thepost office, I decided that seeing it was that kind of day, it is time to insulate Thor the 4×4 truck, which is now being turned over to our overland camper. To keep us warm in the flutter of symbolic (and real) wings.

So with the help of my sabre tooth tiger saw I quickly lay the panels in between the chassis runners.

The Sabre tooth tiger of Spirits Intent

chalk lines

New Thaw by Thor panels quickly laid to rest

Yellow is the colour…

When the rain stops

When the Goddess of the rain turns her head away for a moment, we quietly (well usually not so quietly) start cleaning, preparing and taping the truck for spraying.

If we are really in her favour, we can yellow (golden, not daffodil or banana) a bit, before the next drops fall from the sky.

Only tightrope walkers spray paint vehicles outside, and only the blind ones do it in Wales.

The elves got some shoes

Elves in felt boots

Now all the elves have got their boots

Felt boots

The elfelt shoemaker

An elf came and made me the felt boots  I’ve always longed for,

here is how –

Now every body wants a pair of elfelt boots.

Meanwhile…some recent surprises

Wing mirror web

Parallel lines

Fire on the horizon

… and Carrotanatomy

The Open Fire Yurt

Open Fire Yurt with smoke cowl

This is our latest afghan yurt,  seen here with a smoke flap type wheel cover, to allow for the open fire whilst ensuring the rain does not enter.

Opening the Door

Yurt Fire Side

It has taken us a few years to research our theories about the double bend yurts of North Afghanistan. The conclusions are not conclusive enough, but it seems the high wheel profile is definitely the way to make  enough draw whilst allowing the wheel to be covered from the storms.

Due to the fact that our yurts are made from canvas, that can never “breath” as much as the felts of Asian yurts, there is still a lack of circulation like the type one gets from tipi linings.

But all in all it was fun sitting by the large fire sides, over the New Year, with the howling storms outside.

We later put our usual star cap cover on, and installed a wood burning stove so not to soot up the rafters and felt.

Stove exiting the double curved Yurt

You can see the double curves of the rafters here too.

The best looking Yurt in the West (and the East and the North……. and the South)

This is what it looks like now, out by the little stream.

Mercedes 1820 4×4 de-craning

We have had this truck for some years now and have traveled quite intensively in it.

Mercedes 1820 4×4 with unimog U1300L friend

Making yurt covers at the side of road by Elfi valley

Preparing for the feast of fools

When we built it up I decided that having an 18 ton truck just as a camper is overkill, and felt that a truck should earn its keep, and having a few ton extra capacity to play with, I decided to put a crane at the back of the box, as we already mentioned before, we don’t mind committing vehicular atrocities.

So although extending the chassis was already taxing the Mercedes body building manuals some, I did put a 3.5 ton palfinger crane behind the camper unit.

We had this vision at the time to make a two storey yurt, so we built the truck with that in mind.

Lifting the two storey yurt upper deck

Putting the spiral staircase in place

We have now found a buyer for it and, as having a yard full of newer trucks (and newer visions), deemed it a good moment move it onwards.

The new owner decided he does not need the crane so today we finally got to de-crane it for him.

Lifting the palfinger with the palfinger

In the air

And here it is de-craned

1820 4X4 De-craned

Group Consciousness and Yurtopolis (or Yurt-on-top-polis)

As we have finally got to welding the last levels of zome connectors, I have been looking into how to weave group consciousness work with architecture, or more to the point of how to use the zodiac tent for that type of group work.

Let’s take a step back though, and introduce group consciousness work again, referring to a field of work that is very much our everyday reality, but i guess is unknown to most.

We had the fortune (or misfortune) of being drafted into a very peculiar state of affairs. Everybody knows about consciousness work and even some types of awareness enhancement, but few of us have ever ventured into it with others- en mass, I mean consciousness work or (almost everything) is done by all of us as separate beings.

At the level of everyday life, it meant to us that we became finely in-tuned to a group of others, firstly those that live with us – it’s like we are one unit, at times it’s not clear where one starts and the others end.

But it’s even louder as a phenomenon with those group members that are a part but don’t live with us (are apart from us), as we are aware of them as us even if they are at the other side of the world.

I guess usually the natural instinct is to avoid that level of conductivity with others, because ….

…well what is the point of experiencing another’s feeling and thoughts as your own?
Waking up in the middle of the night because someone you are sharing the group body with, is going through it at the other side of the world, or being in love when they are?

When we were drafted into this work 17 years or so ago, the boundaries (of the connectivity field, or the shared space) were established outside our immediate living situation, meaning that we could feel anyone in that space as if we were them, at times even hear their thoughts!, but as soon as they were out they were OUT. That applied to group members to a lesser extent too.  The largest space I recall being held is 4km, but usually it was the space around us, where the trucks where parked or where we lived.

These days the connectivity field is bound by another type of living situation and the criteria is different, but we will get to that later hopefully.

All of that ‘feeling others’ business and telepathically viewing them, is nothing in comparison to the depths that we uncovered in our-selves and in our direct group. (The criteria of ‘membership’ of this group is a whole other magical story).
You can sit in one living space and have the others on broadcast, knowing exactly where they are at,
physically, mentally and ho ho ho …. Emotionally. The thing is it often happens that you feel things as if they are ‘you’, whatever that means, and the challenge if to distinguish the subtle differences in flavour, to know who it is. Ultimately, the ‘who’s doing what’ level is not so interesting, other than to understand what’s happening. It is all just energy after all.

BUT…. real advantages of this type of shared awareness and telepathy or even sharing feelings is nothing in comparison, with its deeper elements. (Although some aspects of it are quite entertaining, like when a friend of mine used conscious cooking as a means to slip a love potion into her Italian sweetheart’s coffee ……. and he then fell madly in love with her).

The real jewel is in the capacity of a group to form a greater field of consciousness, one that has awareness of its own, independent of the participants (although intrinsically and energetically made after each one of the members).

We came to call that the Group Mind  (mind of its own). I always explain it to others like a tribal god, some people after all are religious.

You can take for example the biblical story of crossing the desert, where a whole nomadic nation was made to uphold their tribal god, and in return…….He (should I say it?) manifested in their midst as a phenomenon, the pillar of fire and of smoke, a being that led them on their journeys, and told them what to do, guiding them, I would argue that he was made out of their shared awareness, an awareness they where groomed to uphold to create it.

This type of experience is not only the stuff of religious legends (although some believe they are not legends after all). It happens in tribal society, like when a tribe reaches a trance together and some form of miraculous entity is born in ceremonies like a sweat lodge, or peyote ceremony when voices or things will be heard (or even seen) by the whole group, or where the “spirit” inherent in the herb is manifest as a “god” or teacher. SO alhough I believe there are powers at large inherent in power plants too, it is the phenomena of shared awareness that brings it forth as a mass, that we are looking into here.

In other ways it still does happen in or everyday. On the battlefield for example, sometimes a story comes out of another type of awareness leading a group of soldiers, a battalion, a patrol, to perform miracle feats of awareness. In fact, there is not one war that has been fought that had none such stories. I guess it’s because of the dedication and intensity of experience, but more so its the shared spirit.

We are not here to re-search these magical moments of group mind manifestation, but simply tried to find where anyone could look them up, not only in the magical legends of our ancestors, but here and now. I am forever intrigued by that stuff; when something else comes out the greater us.

So …. Well done for keeping up with this thread as it has taken some to read I guess, maybe not as much as it took to write, but all the same well done.

If you recall 100 years ago at the beginning of this very Blog entry, I said that what interests me these last days is how to create a merge between this type of work (enhancing group mind and body experiences) and nomadic architecture.

We started visioning possible uses for the Zodiac Tent as a group-conscious workshop space which goes like this-

There will be 12 surrounding zodiacal yurts, for the group members which will be on rails, but at some distance from the central space at the start of a workshop.

This is representing the individual who is called to experience group work but is not yet connected. As the work begins (and anyone who has been part of life coaching or group mediation workshop, or any similar type of group workshop knows the energy rises to some intense heights), the yurts will be pulled towards the main tent (the zome) on their individual (train) tracks.

The yurts can maybe come closer in every day, and maybe some yurts will need more time to come in and lock into the centre, representing the occupants’ inner process speeds.

At some point the yurts will all be joined in a circle, which is partially immersed into the collective tent which will be the trance moment, where the workshop goers will experience (hopefully) the totality of group mind, and for a moment, that seemingly ancient stuff of legends is going to be manifest in their lives.

As I was musing about all of that, I thought to myself would it not be something to make a 13th yurt representing the 13th sign Ophiuchus?, but also as a placement for that tribal godhead (as I said some people believe in God) and put that yurt right at the top where all the ribs of the zome connect?

If you have experienced some type of shared awareness, it will be easy and exciting to imagine how each workshop comer can experience embodying the group mind for a moment, becoming the oracle or the group mind representetive. (I was not going to call it godhead a 3rd time).

I then thought it would be nice to have a central pilar to represent the axis Mundi, or the world tree, as we earlier explored. The advantage is also that it  can become a spiral staircase which doubles up as a pillar for the central yurt on top in the air.

And finally …… a picture is worth a thousand (almost) words: