By Brother Hill

The reeds quiver in the wind as I tie them together with a length of twine. One reed bent around the next, turned clockwise, and repeated—an ancient Irish ritual meant for Imbolc, a changing of seasons. It is the end of January, and I am weaving a Brigid’s cross at the tail end of a four-day video shoot at United Plant Savers Goldenseal Sanctuary. The song I am shooting a video for, “Mother of our Nature,” is written as an ode to the divine feminine in the natural world, themed around the many faces of the nurturing “Mother of us all.” I can hardly think of a more fitting place on Earth to represent that sentiment for me than the Goldenseal Sanctuary in Meigs County Ohio, sentient land that has held me to its life-giving bosom this last year and nurtured my soul in ways I could not before have imagined.

My name is Brett Andrew Fritts Hill (though many call me by my stage name Brother Hill), and my home is southern Ohio from Montgomery to Athens counties. I am a performing/recording artist and songwriter of four musical acts: Brother Hill, Appalachian folk quintet Hill Spirits, Slavic-Appalachian supergroup Slavalachia, and Dayton doom-rock band Nineteen Thirteen. I am also the owner of Hiddensee Publishing Ltd, an amateur film producer, a 16-year film photographer, and a Certified Medical Qigong practitioner.

I am also a passionate amateur dendrologist which is central to my interest in ecology. I gained this passion during my time at Hocking College studying under the late Dennis Profant, who was the greatest teacher I ever had. He inspired by example and instilled in me a deep appreciation of tree science.

Atop all this I have been blessed to be named a Fellow of United Plant Savers’ Deep Ecology Fellowship, which is what has enabled me the distinguished honor of writing for this annual journal. How this came to be was one of the more serendipitous experiences of my life.

FELLOWSHIP

’Twas the beginning of July, and I sat on a stone at the Goldenseal Sanctuary’s heart pond with a handful of my dearest friends. It was an average 2020 afternoon for us—swimming, discussing the state of the world’s decomposition up to that week, playing with the blessed infant child of our dear friends Kyle and Jules, and of course, playing boisterous Appalachian folk music and singing to the forest.

Though the day was bright, this was an overall somber time for me. Had the performing arts not been derailed by the virus, I would have been only two weeks out from departing for Eastern Europe to perform, record, and continue representing Appalachia with the Slavic- Appalachian folk alliance SLAVALACHIA, a cross-cultural musical project I had been helping facilitate for 16 months by then. We were set to perform at a multitude of festivals in Ukraine and Belarus, record an album in my favorite city L’viv, and continue filming the documentary we’d put so much time into creating at the beginning of the year. Alas, none of that was to happen anymore. And now I looked down the line at August and wondered what I might possibly do with my time that would make me feel more than the pain of loss. I discussed the matter with my friends.

“Well, you could apply for the Deep Ecology Fellowship,” said that darling Katey Patterson, a dear friend and employee of the plant sanctuary. “I don’t think we have anyone signed up for August anymore because the guy coming from overseas had to cancel due to COVID.”

“Whuuut?” I must have sounded like Scooby-Doo when he gets startled. “What is that? I have never heard of this.”

“Yeah, UPS offers artists the chance to come live on the sanctuary and create for two weeks to a month. It’s something we are trying to push a little more, actually. We basically want artists to infuse the land with creative energy and for the land to act as the artists’ muse. It is an ecological process at heart, and that’s why it’s called the Deep Ecology Fellowship.”

I learned of it Sunday, applied on Monday, and by Tuesday I was granted the fellowship. There are some who may call this luck or coincidence. I choose to see it as pure providence.

Within three weeks I arrived back at the sanctuary to move into the yurt with four guitars, two drums, a banjo, a mixing board, two powered speakers, and a stack of texts from Thomas Merton to the National Audubon Society. My only mission: to dive into the sacred medicinal forest and create. This was an opportunity I could have only dreamed of before now.

In the course of the next month I grew my beard long and poured into both my craft and myself in every way I could including wandering the woods for inspiration on any given whim, writing every single day, practicing qigong deep in the forest, eating my fill of the oyster mushroom harvest, managing the coming releases of three albums, two singles, and two music videos, and plotting my best methods for musical proliferation and global domination. The world was my oyster, and I had been blessed with the opportunity to craft pearls of pure intention. Every day held something new, a new sight, sound, taste, experience, or realization for me both as an artist and as a human.

As a propagator and disciple of Appalachian folk music, I believe that the music and land are tied in much deeper ways than simple origin stories and ethnomusicologists give credit to. It is my belief that the sounds of the hills that predated human habitation have woven themselves inextricably to the music. Many would try to pin this down as simply the “Old World European and African folk influence,” but truly it is so much more than this. I believe the sound of Appalachia to be woven into the spirit of the land, like mycorrhizal fungi spreading itself across the region, supporting and nurturing the sounds of those who sing and play to the hills. Thus this opportunity to spend my late summer days in ecological communion with some of the healthiest and most abundant forests in Appalachia was an esoteric experience that has left me both nourished in perpetuity and reaffirmed in the belief of the magic of these hills. When you sing to the hills, the hills sing back.

BLACK HAW

Perhaps the most notable anecdote from my stay at the sanctuary came about one afternoon when walking the Medicine Trail. Whistling a nameless tune that had come into my head, I came across an understory shrub with opposite branching and finely toothed ovate leaves. It took me a moment before I deduced what it was: black haw (Viburnum prunifolium or, “that-Viburnum-with-thecherry-leaves”.) It took me by surprise how long it had been since I’d seen one or even thought of its name. It was like hearing a song you haven’t heard in ages or suddenly seeing the face of an old loved one again. I would be lying if I didn’t note that I was in a state of utter heartache at this time, longing for a lover after our time had passed. On this day both of these sentiments rang the same bell in my mind; that of a longed-for lover and that of long-forgotten plant medicine.

I stepped a few feet off the trail, sat down on a fallen ash tree, took the notebook out of my pocket and the guitar off my back, and penned “Black Haw” to the tune I had been whistling.

Been a long long time since I heard your name, Black Haw
Been a long long time since I saw your face
Allow me a study of your shape, Black Haw
And to memorize your patterns and your ways
Fell winds are bringing down the ashes
I hear even the the oak has fallen prey
Though many have come and gone, rouse and rally
and linger on
I’ll sing a song to you my love and that’s “Soldier on”
What may I find that I’ve forgotten?
Oh all of those tales I’ve craved so long
I wanna bring you into the light, show the whole world
what you’re like
But you’d be out of place and surely you’d fade away
Long, long time since I heard your name, Black Haw
A long long time since I saw your face
Let me love you just away you are, Black Haw
And never seek to change your fate

I recorded this song at Reel Love Recording Studio in Dayton, Ohio the week after it was written and it is featured on “Blackfish”, the newest Brother Hill record (out 12 March.) In the background of the recording you can hear the evening birdsong of the Sanctuary prairie, a field recording I made during my fellowship.

HILL SPIRITS ELDER GIN

Even after my time living at the sanctuary came to its conclusion, the fellowship thrives and the collaborations continue. My Appalachian band Hill Spirits will be releasing our debut album on vinyl on the 30th of July 2021, and along with it we’ve conceived of a liquor specifically crafted for drinking while listening to it. In the spirit of support for the United Plant Savers mission, we have also found a way to help preserve American Ginseng at the sanctuary while still being able to reap its sacred medicinal benefits.

Introducing Hill Spirits Elder Gin: an earthen decoction of Elderflower, Eastern Red Cedar, and American Ginseng distilled by Athens West End Distillery with a botanical bill sourced from United Plant Savers Botanical Sanctuary, the proceeds of which will go to support UPS’ noble mission of American Ginseng preservation.

Come Spring we will be harvesting all the constituent ingredients of Sambucus canadensis flowers, Juniperus virginiana berries and tips, and Panax quinquefolius root and leaf from the UPS Sanctuary and surrounding areas to distill a collaborative spirit conceived, harvested, produced, designed, bottled, and labelled entirely between three sustainably-minded organizations in Athens and Meigs counties. Thus it shall be the threefold force of a local business, local non-profit, and local artist collaborating to make one mutually beneficial product for all. (Also the first collaborative liquor/album release that any of us have ever heard of. Have you heard of such a thing? If you have, please send me an e-mail because I want to know more.) The proceeds of our first batch will be sufficient enough to provide for the planting of our own Panax patch, from which we will be able to harvest Ginseng for our gin in perpetuity. Sustainability or bust!

Hill Spirits Elder Gin will be available for purchase at Athens West End Distillery come July 30. It will be sold both on its own and in a package deal with the Hill Spirits vinyl record, cocktail glasses, and Elder Gin t-shirts.

The mission of Athens West End Distillery is: “to use the finest, locally-sourced fruits, grains, roots, and herbs to produce top-shelf spirits that embody flavors and styles uniquely Appalachian.” (For more information visit www.athenswestend.com/hillspirits)

CONCLUSION

All in all, my life has been indelibly changed after receiving the Deep Ecology Fellowship last summer. I can hardly imagine what my life would have looked like had I not had the space to clear my mind from the static monotony of 2020 by coming out to the sanctuary to live, write, and rebalance. I can confidently claim that this experience will continue to nurture me on my life’s path by reflecting back to me my deepest understandings of who I am and the role I am to play in interpreting the natural world through my art and music.

I can only hope the incredible staff at the Goldenseal Sanctuary knows what an absolute lighthouse they have been to me through these times. (Katey Patterson, Chip Carroll, Susan Leopold—you are saints in my eyes.) It is my vow to do everything in my power to aide their mission of conservation and preservation through artistic interpretation and creative methods of support for all the days of my life. As an Ohioan naturalist, the Goldenseal Sanctuary is the Promised Land. Long Live the Deep Ecology Fellowship.

POSTSCRIPT: “I WILL HANG A BRIGID’S CROSS ABOVE MY DOOR”

There is a tradition dating back to at least the sixth century in Ireland of preparing a Brigid’s cross for 1 February, “St. Brigid’s Feast Day,” also known as “Imbolc” to those who do not subscribe to the Catholic calendar. This cross is made from rushes or reeds and placed beside or above the door of one’s home to prevent disease, fire, hunger, and any evils from entering the home throughout the year. This cross is then burned and replaced the next year on the same day.

The history of Brigid is a fascinating example of syncretism between early Christianity and even earlier pagan beliefs. The pre-Christian Brigid was known as one of the chief deities of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the supernatural inhabitants of ancient Ireland that the legends say were already there when humans first arrived. Brigid was a goddess of spring and of the hearth, of fertility and of the forge, of inspiration and of poetry.

Once Christianity came to the island, a “St. Brigid” was soon to follow. (Deities can be shameless in their ascertainment of devotion.) Alas this inheritance into the canon of saints has kept Brigid alive and well into the modern age, particularly due to the weaving of Brigid’s crosses, the first of which St. Brigid was said to have woven for a druid king on his deathbed. While using it to explain to him the doctrine of salvation, the message was supposedly so moving that the king requested to be baptized a Christian before passing on. Fast forward to the 21st century and Brigid’s crosses are inextricably tied to Irish identity, in some ways reflecting their ancient brand of Christianity but to a deeper degree reflecting the remnants of a far older belief, that of the ancient ones and of old Brigid In the “Mother of our Nature” interpretation (AKA Brother Hill’s interpretation) Brigid represents another incarnation of the divine feminine from the pages of space and time alongside the likes of Freya, Mother Mary, and Mother Nature herself. In this light the Brigid’s cross represents an intricate wholeness in the balance of nature and we humans finding our proper place in that balance. Thus the song concludes:

“I will hang a Brigid’s cross above my door
You should hang a Brigid’s cross above your door
They should hang a Brigid’s cross above their door
We’ll all hang a Brigid’s cross above our door.”

Instructions on how to weave one of these ancient crosses can be found in hundreds of places on the internet, most simply by searching YouTube for “How to weave a Brigid’s cross.” (I find instructing one to do that is simpler than instructing through text, though of course not as simple as sitting before one and showing them in person.)

The symbol of this cross is prominently featured in the music video to “Mother of our Nature”, filmed in part at United Plant Savers Goldenseal Sanctuary, which will be released alongside “Blackfish”, the full length Brother Hill album coming 12 March, 2021.

Visit the website below to look down the Brother Hill rabbit hole, follow Brother Hill on Instagram and Facebook to stay in the loop on what betides, and contact Brett Hill directly via e-mail with any inquiries or comments.

https://linktr.ee/brother.hill

Heavens bless.