loren fetterman – STEFANIE ELRICK

Three years ago (to this very day) the King of my Heart and I escaped to Cae Mabon with our nearest and dearest to earn our wedding crowns and celebrate our nuptials. This year, we reap the fruits of that decision, with our firstborn kicking in my belly and only 3 weeks to go ’til our lives change forever!

2020 has been a grounding and intense time of reflection and transition: settling into our cute lil witchy cottage in Todmorden, dealing with the business I’ve spent five years building up and a whole season of wedding work disappearing, and preparing to become parents.

I almost said that it was luck that brought us here, but I have the strongest inkling it was much, much more. The people here are lovely, the views are incredible and even the floods couldn’t put us off.

These pictures, taken about 20mins from our house at a place called Staups Mill by the amazing artist and photographer Nicola Hunter, show just one of the many places seeped in atmosphere and natural beauty on our doorstep. “Walk long enough and you can’t help but stumble across a ruined mill,” a local told us only last week and it’s true: waterfalls, ancient woodlands, Ladstones and archeological sites are so common that most have stayed under the radar. It’s super inspiring and the perfect place to get lost, and find yourself. Since moving, Loren has decided to start oil painting and I’ve already written one pregnancy inspired dark folk story A Skin Full.

“We are, and have always been, in Eden” ~ is a phrase that’s been stuck in my head for some years now and begins another of my short stories Hollow is Thy Name. Turns out it was a perspective I had to open myself up to. A choice to be made. An intuition that guided us like a magnet.

Here’s to many years of putting down roots and aimless wandering in this wonderful part of the world.

Happy Mabon!

Sept 2020

Photos by :: Nicola Hunter of The Wild Love Club
Crowns by :: Jodie Cartman & Wyeth Fetterman

This poem was read by Afrodite Zachopolous at Stefanie and Loren’s Equinox Wedding in the Welsh Woodland’s at Cae Mabon. Stefanie wrote it for Loren not long after they met.

Fire & Water

Stefanie Elrick

Fire and Water, they met on the sand

A terrain where the rain and the flame can join hands;

An arena where elements cast off their shape

And dance in the dust whilst the earth’s crust breaks.

Fire whispered to Water,

“Will you come watch me blaze?

Warm yourself in these embers to the end of your Days?”

Water gushed,

“Let me quench you, you’ll never run dry;

We will seed this love’s tree with the tears of the sky.

You can cool in my shallows, and bathe in my sea,

Do you think that you’d like to sink into me?”

Fire flickered, then crackled, then glowing replied;

“I’ve been seeking a harbor to cling to in tides,

It’s time to retire from the ashes and dust

That crumble beneath in the shifting sands of lust.”

“So shall it be,” Said the Rush to the Roar

And they fused in that moment between sky and the shore:

Surrendering in trust, two opposites became one,

Evaporating faster as they rose to meet the sun.

Tag: loren fetterman

Seeds sown and harvests reaped

Fire & Water