Five Minutes to Draw Your Destiny! -- Devon, England

Friday morning is the weekly meeting around abnormal Aetherius House. At nine-thirty on the nose, Darrell, Michael, Harriet and I gather around the coffee table in the living room and discuss the upcoming week's activities and how we're feeling.

This usually starts with drawing.

Drawing our destinies.

Harriet passed out pads of paper and piles the coffee table high with markers, crayons and colored pencils.

"Right, you have until a quarter to to draw your destinies. Draw what you're feeling now and what you'd like to be feeling. Sometimes it can be helpful to use your non-dominant hand to write out words."

Darrell shrugged his shoulders and grabbed a crayon. Maud kept a tactfully blank expression and picked a pencil.

Michael was late for his destiny. He was too busy making a green smoothie out of flax oil, almond milk, spinach, ginger and garlic in the kitchen.

"It's all good," Harriet said cheerily. "Michael is always drawing his destiny," she gestured to the pad of brightly colored pages resting on the hearth.

Stephen wandered in five minutes later. 

"Ah, Stephen! There you are. We're drawing our destinies! You have five minutes."

"Right," Stephen's grey head bobbed up and down. "I'll just make meself a sandwich."

"And why don't you have a cuppa?" Stephen suggested.

"That sounds good. Think I'll have meself a cuppa."

He returned to the living room with a veggie sandwich, hippie tea and a mere two minutes remaining to draw out his destiny.

"Right, that's time," my host noted the clock as I applied the finishing touches to blossoming trees with roots going nowhere floating above a map that had so many destinations there was hardly any room to drive between.

After drawings had been shared and pencils had been put away, Maud and I stuffed my bag full of fruit, nuts and cheese, pulled on our boots and opened the door into absolutely brilliant sunshine.

"You'll have good weather today," Stephen had commented during the meeting. "Warm wind's coming up from Spain. You got lucky, you did."

We got so, so lucky.

Moorland partridge.

This is Exmoor National Park. When I first read that Aetherius House was situated between the ocean and this national park, images of sand and forests came to mind. Then I arrived and discovered sticks and grass and rocks. Sticks and grass and rocks are wonderful things, but they weren't quite what I was expecting. No expectations, Bourget. Even about things that seem so obvious to you. Especially about things that seem so obvious.

 Exmoor is 55 km of coastal moorland covered in peat, heather, lichen and rare Exmoor ponies.

And sheep. Always sheep.

Whenever the sun actually shines in England, you must take the time to look at it.

Walking through the moorlands, we could hear the sound of seeping water. Not trickling, running or flowing. Slowly seeping, murmuring through the muddy soil on its way to the sea. The earth is so dry in Colorado that the water cascades over the surface. Devonian hills are like supersaturated sponges and ooze mud and life underneath my feet.

We hiked slowly and steadily uphill for two hours. Maud had burst blisters the size of quarters on her Achilles tendons and I struggled to recover from my inactivity in Istanbul... but somehow, every moment was beautiful. Even the moments wherein I had to stop, hold my sides and catch my breath. 

Because the scenery would have taken it away anyway.

We ate our lunch of Dutch cheese and gluten-free crackers and drank mini-bottles of wine in the mud. Maud talked about her upcoming trip to China and I waxed on about the virtues of hitchhiking. We discovered that I'm far too sensitive for typical Dutch humor and reached a sort of compromise wherein Maud apologizes after her merciless teasing (which is how they show affection in Holland. Maud loves me very much).

We took our time on the walk back. Sinking into the mud squishing, squeezing, oozing under our toes. Listening to the wind whispering through the grasses.

Everything feels so alive here. What a dynamic piece of place. This is where I find my energy. This is where I find my peace. This is where I find my connection. 

Maybe it's all of Harriet's Mars Jesus energy. The Devonian rocks and hills are absolutely sodden with alien powers. Sodden, I say. 

After a brief (but magical) nap in a hammock tree, we recommenced our leisurely journey to Combe Martin. And happened to chance upon Exmoor ponies. 

Exmoor ponies has been roaming around Great Britain for the past 50,000 years, but their numbers have been dramatically reduced since WWII. Apparently, trigger happy soldiers found these timid, scruffy animals to be well-suited for target practice and thieves mightily enjoyed the taste of semi-feral horseflesh. There are now between 100 and 300 breeding mares remaining and the ponies are listed as "critical status" on the Equus Survival Trust.

I believe this is a crossbreed. Purebred Exmoor ponies are smaller and significantly less white.

 We strolled into Combe Martin at about half four, thighs aching, calves burning, hearts and souls deeply satisfied. As we still had two and a half hours until dinner, we decided to while away one of those hours drinking scrumpy by the beach. We watched children scamper through tide pools and labs splashing after them, tongues lolling and tails wagging in furious delight. We watched parents half-heartedly try to control their boisterous children and fail miserably. We watched the sun's dying rays glimmer, glisten on the gently rippling Atlantic. 

We returned to Aetherius House at about six o'clock, fully refreshed and ready to confront the madness (with an open mind) of "transition town tv night".  Harriet offers different social/environmental films every Friday evening, projected on a sheet draped over the living room cabinet. Guests bring veggie dishes and ideas for a more sustainable future. They eat their veggies, discuss the wondrous power of the acai berry, bounce a few ideas around and then start the film. 

This week's quasi-documentary was called, "The Age of Stupid." It was a dreadfully depressing (but in a mostly straightforward, scientific way) film analyzing just how close humanity is to pushing itself into extinction. 

The Age of Stupid did feel manipulative and a bit Armageddon-esque -- but I decided that I'm fine with being manipulated into treating the earth more mindfully.

What could I do differently? I wondered as I followed Maud up the stairs. I'm already living a very minimalistic life. I don't drive a car. I do eat meat, but it's usually grass-fed and organic. I generally volunteer with people who live sustainable lifestyles... PLANES. I'm always flying. At least four times a year. Could I eliminate flying from my life and still be able to move?

...

Absolutely. And I'll be able to move so much better. I'll have to think harder, trust more and develop superhuman patience. I'll take buses and I'll hitchhike and I'll volunteer on boats. I won't let life pass me by on fast forward. I won't look down from way up high and see a world I can't reach out and touch.