There are many ways that we as humans might impart a warning of danger, a plea to proceed with caution, or to stop altogether, from flashing road signs to steel walls adorned with razor wire, but how does nature tell us to respect her boundaries? What signs can we read, and who must heed them?

About and hour from London in the urban English town of Harlow, surrounded on all sides by industrial parks, chain-link fences, and a busy rail line that rattles the ground with every passing train, sits a small tree-surrounded hill once known as sacred by generations of people across multiple cultures.

Archaeological examinations and digging of the land have shown us that the hill first began to be used ceremonially about four thousand years ago, with a circular hollow in the ground, a pond barrow, for cremating and burying the dead.

On the twenty-minute pilgrimage from my home to the site, I brought with me my priestess’ tools of the day: a flask of cow’s milk and a bottle of spring water, a little pouch of dried native flowers, my frame drum, a sprig of fresh-picked yarrow from my abundant verge, and a plastic Tesco shopping bag.

I’d been to the site before just to see where it was amidst the factories with their smoke-belching chimneys and massive lorries speeding back and forth, previously horrified at the amount of rubbish littering the site, deposited by the wind and by those who would not be inconvenienced by the choice to leave no trace.

Armed with the shopping bag, my wife and I began our slow walk in the record-breaking English summer heat, a reality that weighed upon my back as we made the gentle climb up the temple hill along the well-worn path, picking up rubbish as we went. I did my best to express the joy I felt in beautifying the place, while also acknowledging its deep boundaries.

​The path to the temple site was bordered by the most thorough array of boundary-setting plants one could imagine, a dense foliage that could warn any person to stay well clear of the wild hedges and slopes and stick to the defined trails. 

​The land’s first line of defence was precious stinging nettle, which I very carefully navigated as I retrieved beer cans amidst their leaves, then the blackberry brambles with their fearsome thorns, and finally, the towering giant stalks of poison hemlock, the most finite and deadly warning that the landscape of England could provide me on my way to the temple site.

Was this sacred site always home to such fierce plants? Or was this only a development after her millennia of wounding? After the Bronze Age, the local Celtic tribe built a circular temple atop the hill, maintaining the land and the barrow. My mind wandered to what holy people may have tended to this forgotten site, images of priestesses and druids drifting across my imagination like the clouds of seeds that drifted through the air around us, tickling our rosy cheeks.

As we crested the hill, we were met with the inspiring sight of a sea of purple thistles, their spiny leaves waving across the temple site along the modern concrete boundaries laid by archaeologists to approximate the former walls of the Roman temple.

With the Roman occupation of Britain, the circular sacred hill of the ancient peoples and the Celtic tribe was razed and moulded into a tiered square. A stone temple with sharp, crisp edges was erected in the name of Minerva, goddess of war and wisdom.

I recalled Aquae Sulis in Bath, England, where the ancient Celtic goddess of healing, Sulis, was syncretised with Minerva, but here in Harlow we have no name for the goddess who may once have been honoured. Who was she? Could I find her name? Would we need to dream it back into collective consciousness? Perhaps she was the goddess Andraste, the unconquerable, patroness of Boudicca, who so bravely resisted the forces of destruction, injustice, and desecration in this very region.

I pondered this question as I approached the entrance, nettles growing from the cracks in the concrete temple steps. The land whispered to me, echoing ancient wisdom and English fairytales, “Pass through the nettles, come inside… Be bold, but not too bold…”

Taking a breath, I crept through the nettles, my sandaled feet brushing against their leaves and feeling nothing but their caress.

Looking to the left of the site, I saw the circular indent of the pond barrow, the resting place of the bones of the ancient people who also loved and tended the land there. After Roman occupation came the end of paganism in Britain and the site became disused and forsaken, the Goddess and the ancestors forgotten. The barrow was where the thistles were most abundant, a clear boundary for those who might wish to dig up the site again, a constant since the 18th century, whether to plunder the precious metals of ancient offerings or preserve history in the local museum.

I knelt down, my droplets of sweat disappearing instantly on the ground. I arranged the traditional offerings that the temple site would have known well in ages long past, offering milk, flowers, and yarrow, a healing plant known to heal and purify both bodily wounds and disturbed soil. Perhaps one day, the temple site will see a resurgence of wildflowers like yarrow that will heal and restore the land, but I deeply appreciated the beauty of the baneful plants, the thistles and the poisons, all shouting, “Stick to the path, let me heal and become holy again, respect me!”

What deep wisdom is there to behold here for myself, for the community, for the planet? What boundaries must we uphold for depleted soil to recover?

I lifted my frame drum to the sky, and I recalled a memory of seeing a group of women drummers leaving the temple site the last time I was there in the Spring. There was evidence of offerings and rituals left by locals who also knew the site as joyful and sacred, dotted around the site, suggesting that I was not alone in appreciating what was and what is. I played my drum for healing wounds, then for beauty, and finally, for joy, the rhythm bringing a smile to my face and ringing out with purity above the din of the lorries and the factories.

The parched soil eagerly accepted our offering of milk and spring water as I poured them out and the wind swept away all traces of the dried wildflowers. All that remained was the wilting yarrow, a furtive prayer that perhaps this beautiful place would continue to heal from her centuries of wounding.

On the walk out, as I reached for a piece of litter I had previously missed through the stalks of nettle, I felt the sting of her bite on my arms, “Be bold, but not too bold…” ✦

Nature Remembers
A Poem by My Wife, Margaret Lewis

Beyond the rivers of concrete
And capitalist castles
Where metal beasts move with a deafening rumble
Lies a sacred place, long forgotten

She held the bones of those who passed
She carried the hopes of those still living
She heard the words of those who prayed
And felt the thunder of a thousand footsteps

Now, she lies amongst the thistles
Those silent soldiers, with their purple blooms lifted to the sun
They cradle her with their roots
Protecting everything that once was
And everything that is
Because nature remembers
even if people forget