Ed. note: This piece is excerpted from The Volunteers, written by Carol Donaldson, published by the Summersdale imprint of Hachette UK Ltd., and reposted here with permission of the publishers.
Wassailing is an old pagan tradition: villagers would visit the orchards on Twelfth Night to drive out the devil by creating a bit of a din and to appease good spirits by making offerings to the tree to ensure a good harvest. The word “wassail” is thought to be old English for good health.
Today the orchard was empty. I selected the largest tree and reached into my bag for the remains of my lunch as the sun briefly burnt through the fog. I stuffed the bread crusts into a bowl-shaped hollow between the main branches and poured on the remains of my apple juice. Not quite the toast and cider that wassailing traditionally called for, but the best I could muster.
I took a deep breath. “Wassail,” I yelled. A few fieldfares chuck-chucked overhead. The yelling felt so good, I did it twice more, something about that holy trinity of threes.
“Wassail, wassail,” I yelled.
The short day was coming to a close already, the sun was going down and, for one instant, I felt that old connection with a long line of people who worked on the land and stood in orchards and yelled down the demons of winter in the hope of a bountiful new year.
After all, I worked the land, I was the protector of this orchard, and the volunteers and I were going to plant new trees, putting faith in the coming of spring and the future.
There is a connection with the earth you can only feel with working on it, working with it, getting your hands in the soil and tending it to produce for you without depleting it for all other creatures.
Some moments working in the woods over the last few months I had felt this, the peeling back of layers, the woodsmen of the past watching from the trees. No, that’s not quite right, not watching, not conscious of us but there all the same, working alongside us.
I had felt their shadows throughout that winter as we coppiced in the woods. They had been there as we bundled up the hazel poles to be used by hedge layers and the twigs into long sausages tied up with string called, officially, faggots. These had been used by our ancestors to light their bread ovens, but we were to use them that summer for river work.
The ancestors had been there as we created a holy blaze from bramble, and they breathed into the bonfire alongside Roy; the smell of the smoke held in their ghost hair and clothes, as it lingered in ours. They had moved among us as the afternoon progressed, understanding the bite of the cold, the chatter of the volunteers, the hot-ear-cold-ear effect of walking past the bonfire. These figures understood our tiredness, that particular brand of outdoor, airy dog-tiredness that came from a day working in the woods. They had followed us as we packed up our tools and headed back home.
The volunteers and I were part of the essential life of the English countryside as they had been. It was as if the Industrial Revolution had not yet happened, wolves had not yet been exterminated, we were still part of nature. It was in that feeling that a deep calmness came over me. Being human can be such a tiresome burden, and being a human who cares about nature, it was easy to feel frayed, wired and guilty in your very blood at what your species had done and is doing to the earth. However, in the woods, I felt part of the cycle of life, I was in harmony with it all, part of the dirt and the fire and nothing else. The self-doubt and to-do list ceased to matter.
