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To go straight down the page to my short, poetic 'view', click: Porlock Pics for a busy person. Here's a pic of the Vale and bay. I look forward to learning how wrap the text properly, and to add more pics for you!

Porlock, in the lap of Exmoor, is a fantastic stage from which to view and explore LIFEPOWER. It is a live country village. Here and from here we can directly experience Nature's elementals, which I felt so bereft of while living in City (London). Thus, I am helped to feel, to know my aliveness, to remember and give thanks to that which gives me my life in this Earthly dimension.

Here I can see and smell the sea, remembering the profundity of tide, and of flow and cycle as fundamental aspects of life. I can watch and listen to water in its streaming, view and gape at the great splash of stars**. The air I breathe is as nutritious and delicious as other forms of food. And here is my precious Rainbow Healing Garden, among my most beloved teachers, which also helps me to teach others. **Exmoor National Park has been designated the first International Dark Sky Reserve in Europe!

Porlock is a friendly place. We don't have 'outsiders'. We do have visitors and residents. Though especially a walkers' haven and heaven, there are many delights for a wide range of interests. Yes, this is my plug for Porlock tourism, not the least because visitors help to keep the village alive. The place has a delightful spirit, and other things intangible, a synergy of nature, geography and humanity that understandably impels people to return again and again. To love and care for this area. And our bees make exquisite honey!

I have a deep hope that those who are lovers of city living will come here, and refresh their direct awareness of the vastness, variety and essentials of life; and will return to city and suburb with a desire to figure out how to bring the full panoply of Nature back into City. Like gardens on tower block roofs - wow! Thank you! There are more and more such wonderful projects of rejuvenation, restoring joy, reverence, and respect of life's need for diversity of expression.

PORLOCK POETIC PICS FOR A BUSY PERSON Up the long slope after Minehead, at the top, suddenly, vast vista: wide vale stretched out below the rising first great hills of Exmoor: huge rounded beings with crevices full of trees. Every time of every day they look different - light- water- season, sometimes so sharp you could count leaves miles away over there, or fuzzy with English damp air, or black curving lines against starry sky. . . and

~~~ air so sweet and clear and delicious each breath drinks it in, the first and best food
~~~ a city woman come to help with the garden, walking up the lane, eyes wide and jaw dropping, "I have never seen anywhere like this before, all those hills covered in all those trees!" We remember how right it is to weep at beauty
~~~ village still alive, butcher, baker, not one but two grocers who usually have the grace and make the time to pause to exchange at least a few human words
~~~ the 'A' road winding around, passing pubs and shops and ye olde church, thatched cotts so cute you want to pinch their chubby cheeks
~~~ when the wind comes from the other way, you can smell the sea, peeps of it seen through gaps here and there, and on the most magic days heard too
~~~ humming in the summer with visitors from all over the world; slow and quiet in the resting winter months
~~~ who all, and me too, thrill to driving up the Great Porlock Hill, 4 in 1 and hair pin bends to the top of the world (my British Himalayas) and looking across the Bristol Channel to Wales, then turn and walking out into heather paths where it can be loud in summer with the business of bees,

Here it is so easy to see and smell and hear and touch Life still lives, and remember my own livingness, remember that I am Earth.

© Cynthia Alves, 2005 / 2008

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