Hive Friends, Lake Camping, Freedom and Living In Gift

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clareartista1.9 K3 months agoPeakD8 min read

halo in the morning dew; most prolific at the edge of the lake!

Hallo dearest friends!

note: all photos taken by me, around the Lago Di Matese, in the Matese mountain range in Italy: follow me for a picture blog I'll be sharing on that soon, in the Worldmappin community!

After a beautiful day, night and morning with my dear Hive soulbrother and soulsister, we descended the mountain looking for benzina and caffe’, then parted ways…. Now I’m parked at the side of the road just outside of the (paid - boo!) camping park, and am taking time to digest all that is alchemising around me right now.

footsteps in the dew from the tent, on my morning walk...

There is a soft cool breeze through low beech trees, across a stretch of a kind of wild lawn, over some hillocks of bracken. I am seated on a grassy edging, leaning against my car, with a royale, fuschia-coloured cushion under me and a flowery blue sheet protecting me from my car’s rather dusty summer attire. I feel satiated by a really nicely-made tepid caffe’ latte back in Pietraroja, and am feeling into what I need most from this precious day by myself, up the mountain.

huge marsh-grass, which I'm thinking would be amazing for basket-making

What I need the very most, of course...... is to live up here! No beating around the cespuglio: I need the space to breathe, move and think more clearly, so that I can fully express what is coming through me in these incredible times.

grass pressed flat with the morning dew

There is no compromising what is pleasure-fully-necessary these days: increasingly I can feel the strongest undercurrent in everything - of This Must Be Said, and Go Here Now - Now!.
One by one and two by two, I’m bumping into folks that feel to be my actual family, tribe, people: like those of us who are meeting through Hive – years after tentatively commenting on each others’ posts, testing the waters as it were, then reaching out more directly…. finally planning actual meetings.

It is gloriously extraordinary to connect with folks like this – LIKE MYSELF!! - who are having overlapping depth and meaning roaring into their lives, and who similarly have a deep-rooted need for affirmation that we are not alone in our perpetually-more-mystical experiences in life.
I sense that our bloodtribes are being magnetised back together, having been separated for so very many generations by patriarchal marriage structures, economic and educational demands that made us all move from where we grew up, and the foggy insanity of urban contamination of our collective imaginal realm - which is meant to be naturally organic and harmonious.
If we weren’t stretched so thin across this planet, and separated by certifications and family names, we’d have more naturally-aligned symbols of our family tree, our past(s), our identity(/ies). But even without the crystal clarity of our right existence behind us, we can find it (alone or together) through communing in Nature.

one of my favourite camping spots ever, under a willow tree and next to this immense strip of mint in flower!

Revelational times.

I’m reminded again that conversations like those that we’re having (with folks who seem like long-lost family) are all the medicine that we need; the interweaving of like-minded threads the same shade of thinking, woven into a rainbow of realisations: a great waterfall of recognition pouring down and up through us.

super-minty footsteps

I can hear thunder and see great heavy grey clouds marching up over the mountain to the north… I had better be careful to not have my drying-out tent and my laptop outside of the car when the deluge gets here!

My holidaying-working space is suddenly much neater, inside the vehicle.

sunset the night before I camped

Even the weather these days is defying predictions or labelling: one unusual elemental moment to the next the heat, the light, the precipitation, clouds and air movements – all move dramatically from one unexpected flourish to another.
And we adapt underneath. Perhaps we're happy that something tangible is ‘finally’ happening! The elements at least are reflecting our own inner alchemy, dancing energies and somersaulting sensations.

the lake valley was full of fog in the morning - soooo impressive!!

Aye, the only sense that can be made of these times, is talking it out with feeling; with reciprocity and loving kindness, patience to give each of us our storytelling space and returning the richness through mirrored memories, anecdotes and funny moments from the crazy unfoldings going on in recent times. The sanity that unfolds from just meeting and chatting lightly, lovingly – these are the most fulfilling of interactions that I’ve come across in all of my life. And they get better and better: the conversations hit the spot more and more often, and the heartfelt-ness between us – whether we’re relatively formal colleagues, neighbours, new friends, or folks we’re meeting for the very first time – every dialogue seems to be more mystical and satiating.

the phone camera does not do these bright lavender-blue thistles justice...

We ask a lot of overlapping questions, about what we are ‘meant to be doing’ right now; what is our individual, or our collective, purpose/ dharma/ mission/ vision/ new world? What would we like it to be? Are we going to lean into and to take the brave affirmative right action necessary, towards a future which is greatly different to this one?

shade from the tree was very welcome in the late morning

Another quiet adventure morphs into a new one, another mystical day descends into evening, another cycle of overstimulation-then-solitude-and-sleep is lived, another phase blends into the next. I am left with the treasure of good vibes and powerful photographs of the past 24 hours – the imagery anchors me back in the feelings, and helps me to hold onto the riches just another few hours, as fresh as if I were still standing barefoot by the Matese lake.

such a glorious space to spend some days in

I want all my moments to be like this: not memories or photos even, but the most lush of living times, shared with others who know as well as I do that this is what we are supposed to be living. Not in our ‘retirement’, not just at the weekend and meagre holidays per annum; most certainly not when someone else ‘authorises’ us crumbs of free time! Every single morning, noon and night that we are alive! That is all: just, everything.

sunrise the day after camping

When I get together with these soulbrothers and soulsisters, the rainbow- and cosmic-tribes-folks, when we witness each others’ needs and visions, the new seems to loom spontaneously out of the ether. There is no business plan, or investment needed – we are simply guided to take one methodical step after another towards what we Feel Is Right. Without haste, with grace and dignity: our inheritance - all of this! - is Ours, not 'theirs'.

quite pointy the thistles...

The downpour starts in seriousness; rain PLUS massive lumps of ice. I am almost worried my windscreen will break! A burst of lightning close overhead, which makes an explosion more than a crack, making me wonder what it hit. It is very dark and almost like nighttime. The hail is noisy on the car roof and windows. Large ice lumps sitting in the windscreen wipers.

what a view to open the tent flap to at dawn...

The tiny slit in my open side windows lets in a wee spray which is refreshing, as only 20 minutes ago I was sweating even with bare arms and feet. The rain comes in waves and the darkness seems to deepen. I hear dripping from trees to car, from windscreen into front bonnet. What a gift of a moment on a scorchio August day, and I’m hoping that the moisture and cool will also arrive in Guardia – that way I can head home and not be concerned about insufferable levels of heat there.

the early hours were proper chilly and damp, but the sun soon tore that atmosphere up and made it a whole other reality