‘Hygge’ Life

Aloha, those who loyally follow here or those who have stumbled upon this post through the tangle of the internet… I am going to be offering something different over the course of the next months while the solar seasons are nourishing abundance and the sacred work is being done here at the nest. My partner and I try to live closely to an organic, traditional homesteading, wild foraging lifestyle as possible so that is what I shall be writing about here in the ‘Hygge’ posts. This is a word from the Scandinavian regions, primarily Denmark, Norway and Sweden which doesn’t have a direct meaning, but relates to a certain set of feelings the people have towards culture, social life, the comforts of home, and well being. It is a concept we live for, and about in most aspects of life, in the way we approach our work, our love, our shared space, and the pace we make through the day. I have found it describe in jest as

“Hygge (“heu-gah”). The art of building sanctuary and community, of inviting closeness and paying attention to what makes us feel open hearted and alive. To create well-being, connection and warmth. A feeling of belonging to the moment and to each other. Celebrating the everyday. Hygge happens when we commit to the pleasure of the present moment in its simplicity. Its there in the small rituals and gestures we undertake to give everyday life value and meaning, that comfort us, make us feel at home, rooted and generous. Hygge is a kind of enchantment – a way of stirring the senses, the heart and the imagination, of acknowledging the sacred in the secular – a way of giving something ordinary a special context, spirit and warmth, taking time to make it extraordinary. Hygge is about appreciation. It’s about how we give and receive. Hygge is about being not having.”

It’s a burning fire and woven wool sweaters on a cold wet day, it’s wild picked berries from a lush forest, or hot cacao in winter, it’s the closeness of your lover, or your cats, and sun bathing in the nude on a sandy ocean beach, it’s wooden cabins in the forest, music and dance in green grasses, it’s animal pelts adorning your furniture, and sleeping in on rainy mornings, and it’s something that moves you that leaves its imprint on your experience. I like this idea, and with a focus on country living, biodynamic farming, hunt/gather/forage lifeways, ancestral traditions, gaian ecology, rewilding, and many other branches of the feral path, I will regale some regular and seasonal posts about our life on the land, our continual acquirement of nutritious food, health information and forming an integral relationship with plants and animals, and more on rewilding lifestyle and biohacking our new paradigm with the world.