Penmaenmawr – January 28th 2010
I hadn’t planned to go to Penmaenmawr and visit the Druid’s Circle. Instead I had printed out a map to a dolmen on the Llyn Peninsula in the North West of Wales, and thought that the sea air might do me some good as I was nursing the throb of having had a wisdom tooth extracted the previous day. Salt air – should do me good – so I had picked a site that was new to me, and was right on the coast. Instead, I turned off at Penmaenmawr – call it a ‘divine wind’ – a kamikaze moment.
It was certainly blowing cold and strong by the time I had gently picked my way to the top of the hill. It’s a good half hour walk from the parking place, marked by two ‘chess-piece’ towers up the steep single-track road above the village. As I pulled my scarf tighter against the wind and readies my new ash staff for its first sacred site outing, I saw patches of snow still lying around. Winter was still here, even though Imbolc is around the corner. Initiating my staff, i.e. filling it with positive and useful energies, empowering it, and giving this ash staff my own energetic signature had become the order of the day in preparation for our Imbolc outing to Anglesey. In sight of that very island from Pemaenmawr seemed so intuitively right this day.
My new white ash staff was wonderful to walk with: sturdy, a good height and weight. The only down side was that I had waxed it, and wearing gloves they slipped around along the shaft so that I had to keep re-adjusting my grip. Just wait until the Spring, I kept thinking. On the way up I tried to fall into the usual walking trance that allows me to begin to connect with Nature. The steady footfall rhythm, the clunk of the staff, the beating of the wind, the distant cries of sheep and gulls all made a lullaby that allowed me to sink into the warmth of my Winter clothing and soon I was feeling the weak energies of Winter flowing around me from animals, and along the tracks that people walked.
On the way up I found a small branch from a gorse bush lying in a patch of snow on the main path. It seemed totally incongruous to its surroundings, and I couldn’t see any gorse bushes within sight of where it lay. I knew I should pick it up and take it with me, so I hooked its twisted twin twig form atop my y-shaped fork in the ash staff. I then carried it like Dick Whittington carrying his wares to London Town.
I passed the large standing stone in a field next to a lonely cottage where on my previous visit with Kal we had found negative energies and the sheep had chased us away from the stone. I decided to ignore it until I came back down. This visit had a purpose: to initiate my new staff, not to surround it with potentially harmful energies! I wandered on. As I neared the top I saw the familiar small ring cairn that marks, for me, the beginning of the sacred area above Penmaenmawr. I stood within the ring cairn and felt like I should be doing something cleansing, so I opened up to the wind and allowed it to tear away from me all the energies of the un-sacred places I inhabited as a human “down there” in the valleys and towns. My stuffed-up nostrils cleared, and I felt energetically neutral after a few moments of this, so I said a little thanks and used the nearby ‘erratic’ stones as markers to guide me to the Druid’s Circle. I never seem to want to walk along the main path to the circle, for some reason, and I never have yet, whatever the weather.
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