Steve stepped outside during his morning meditation and started feeling his attention being directed in a certain way. He realized that it was the spirit of my old friend Kate Mortimer (who died in 1997) who was encouraging him to keep looking at Nature. He came in to deliver a message from her, as I recorded. Photos are of Kate’s house by its current owner, Patricia Bishop.

“The energies that we are receiving are reminding us that we have lost touch with the universe in general, and Nature especially, on Gaia, by locking ourselves up in apartments downtown away from the lights of Nature, away from the sounds of Nature, away from the smells of Nature.

“If we still lived like Natives did in the olden days with bare minimums above your head to stay warm, we’d be constantly exposed to the winds and the sounds and the waves of Nature. We’d be more in touch with Mother Nature. And now we’ve cut ourselves off completely. This is what I observed when I was living in the [Annapolis] Valley.

“There’s this deep urge to connect with Nature again in simplicity, in simple dwellings made for people to gather, not to isolate themselves.

“We build homes to shrivel up in against weather and against people. And when migrations start, we exclude, because we’re so shriveled up. So we have become.”

I said, “That’s what she did; she built a house designed for people to gather, open to nature.” It was built into a hill, facing south, with a large gathering room. She loved her community and did a lot to foster it by providing a beautiful, organic space for people to come together.

With some urgency, she came through again. “Heather, can you post this message on my behalf? About people needing to come out of their locked in places, cut off from the messages of Mother Nature. To make dwellings that are made to gather, not to self-isolate.”

“Yes, I can,” I said. Then I recalled her statue of St. Francis of Assisi outside the window.

Steve said, “She was just showing me an image of that, when you mentioned the statue. And she said, ‘The light path from that gate to the statue is a good path, carried by your friends.'”

Kate’s house, “Swallow’s Nest”, is now owned by Patricia Bishop and Josh Oulton of Taproot Farms. It can be rented by the day, week or month as a Farmstay. It’s still a very special place to gather and be close to nature, including their working organic farm in the fertile Annapolis Valley near Wolfville.

Photo credits: Patricia Bishop.