When the sun rises above the mound at the back of my house it feels like it is coming from the “other side.” It floods into my garden setting it alight and transforming it into a pagan paradise.
Brack Mound is mostly man-made and is certainly one thousand years old if not a lot older. It has always spoken to me of a wilder world than I generally encounter on the streets of Lewes, the small country town where I live.
Until this year the custodians of the mound, the Sussex Archaeological Society, have sent two men with chain saw to keep down the growth so that we, the mound’s immediate neighbours are not over-grown by its energetic attempts to return to Nature, the bad god Pan or whoever you think is behind such surges of life.
Maybe it is an economy measure or maybe Pan swallowed up those men with saws but, this year, the mound has been left undisturbed and the natural world is fighting back.
I know that the taming process will have to return but, until it does, I feel like celebrating the increase in bird song, interesting butterflies and a variety of insects that I have not seen here before.
Later on today my own person with a saw is arriving to cut back the growth around my perimeter wall and a part of me, the non-horticultural part, feels guilty about this. I would feel worse about betraying Pan if I wasn’t really welcoming Apollo the sun god back into my life.
