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Growing up in Northern Ireland, Halloween was seen by many as the glorification of evil. Come, let’s probe the darkness for the sacred roots of this season and find meaningful ways to pause on this threshold.

Be careful, there are owls on the loose in this text…

At the hinge of the Celtic new year, I walk the boreen through hazel woodland and prepare to winter in the west.

If we look beneath the main text of our lives, we can find the subtext of small stories. They are the rituals that are hard to put into words because they become so integral to the fabric of our life that we hardly notice them. Here, I tell some of these small stories and a few that I have borrowed from dear friends in my community.

How the ripples of a revolution that began seven years ago will deliver us to the west of Ireland and how I will hear the silence I find there.

Robert walks his dog at night and strays from the path; Stephanie makes a decision from which she cannot return and Sebastián finds something he did not know he lacked. Three strangers, one dog and a campsite where people cross paths but do not know one another at all.

Notes from the road as we travel from the Cantabrian coast to the Glacial Cirques of Urbion to a National Park on the Mediterranean.

From ancient Brehon laws to modern research on swarming, how I am becoming a more instinctive beekeeper.

A journey from the Barmouth to the source of the River Bann as we navigate ancient mythology and the possibility of change ahead.

An invitation to subscribe to ‘Upstream,’ a collection of essays that map the landscape as I see it.