Country diary: Sheltering under ancient yews, surrounded by past and present | Paul Evans

Pennant Melangell, the Marches, Powys: Inside the church, a story was carved into wood before it made it on to the pagePennant Melangell is a thin place: a place where the veil between heaven and earth, reality and dream, fact and fiction is so thin that it becomes a semi-permeable membrane. Remembering osmosis, stuff travels through the membrane from a strong solution to a weak one. Today in the valley of Cwm Pennant, Melangell's side of the divide is stronger than the drizzle-diluted world outside the circle of ancient yew trees. The place is thinnest under these trees and, sheltering from the rain under one that's more than 2,000 years old, I listen to what leaks through the membrane.Of course, I am thick with thought and listening with badly tuned ears. The story of Melangell, the seventh-century saint of hares, was carved into the oak rood screen in the church before it was written in Latin, existing as images before words. In that wooden form, her myth - of the hare-woman-nature-spirit who defied patriarchy - links more directly to the trees surrounding her shrine than to the literate culture that still appropriates her. Continue reading...