Contemplations of a Nature Mystic: Whispers of a Whitby Winter

By Leah Black, 31st December 2024, Ecoinnersense.com 

For Yuletide this year I wrote my husband a story and placed it in an old Spanish wine bottle covered with leather carvings, seen in the Christmas day image below. Inside it, I placed a piece of Asturian jet or azabache as its known here - you'll find out why I did this if you read on. I found the unique bottle on top of an old torn and worn rug, where a young gentle-looking seller stood in the cold of December at her street-side antique store. Daniel is happy for me to share the story with you. I hope you like it and hearing about the extraordinary experience we had in Whitby, fifteen years ago.

Dear Daniel:

Do you remember…

It was fifteen years ago, almost to the day. The clairvoyant energy of an ageing Romany Gypsy drew me into her lacy kiosk of tradition and olden traveller heritage. Crystal ball at the ready, waiting to reflect that moment’s anticipation, as a cigarette slowly burned in a well-used ashtray. There I was, on Whitby’s charming promenade, awaiting my future inside the beckoning cabin of Lee Ester Alita Lee; her name written in large letters above the door. She was the real deal; I could sense it, nervously – did I want to know? Her kiosk had pulled me in, like a dizzying white whirlpool at the edge of a lucent sea. A moment of destiny about to reveal wonders or worries beneath the membrane of my moist salty skin. I prepared to dive deep, beyond the sun-lit ripples of gentle waters into the indigo ocean of my soul. The fortune teller’s kindness beamed behind large glasses, golden oval earrings and through her long mystical ancestry framed on tar-tinted walls. Images of horse drawn caravans painted like peacock butterflies lulled my pulsing heart and tense wide-open eyes; like a hare caught in meadow moonlight that swiftly retreats into the comforting roots of a familiar ash tree. My physical edges softened into the ancestral ambience, story and aroma of life that awaited me. ‘That man outside will be your husband’, she said. ‘Really?’ I replied, with eyebrows raised. ‘You’ll live together in a green place. A very green place, full of mountains. Yes, you’ll live in the mountains like Heidi’; Heidi of the Swiss Alps that is, in the story by Johanna Spyri. ‘Okay, really? I wonder where!’ I replied. At the time we both lived and loved the bustle of Leeds city centre. ‘You’ll be happy’. ‘You’ll have a good life’. The fortune teller smiled in a pleasant way; it seemed a joy for her to share such positive projections. ‘Phew. Well, let’s see’ I said, in a moment of relief. That’s what I remember anyway – I can’t promise fifteen years later that it’s word for word. But, when I stepped out of her cabin, laden with the type of enticing signage you’d expect at a seaside resort, like ‘get to know your future’ and ‘your hand is the mirror of life’, I saw Daniel in a different light. No, it wasn’t seeing. It was beyond that. I felt a change; my heart was alive again – I was back on path. Do I tell him? Maybe over a pot of Yorkshire tea and cake.

Around the corner from the kiosk of Lee Ester Alita Lee, I found myself stupefied at the street leading to an antique tearoom to the left of me; absolutely freaked out actually. ‘No way! That’s impossible. How?’ ‘This is the street... look Daniel… up there... there'll be a vintage café with carrot cake muffins in the window, like in the dream I told you about last week.’ There, indeed, was the festive window of a dark and cosy Whitby eatery, frozen in time, with carrot cake muffins that shone into my eyes; reflecting a sweet sleepy transcendent state from the week prior. ‘How?’ ‘This is exactly what I saw in the dream.’ ‘Impossible.’ The old-fashioned tearoom was full to the brim as we eagerly stepped in. Our snuffles gratified with ginger essences, cranberry pork pies and coffee beans. There in the Yuletide bustle of a tiny timeless space was a charming booth, empty. ‘Blimey, how lucky!’ Inside the snug sat a delicately adorned twee table with frilly doilies and flowery bone china that hosted sugar lumps and quaint curiosities. ‘Good afternoon, welcome to Sherlocks, what would you like order?’ ‘A carrot cake muffin for me, please.’ After Daniel and I bonded over delicious ye olde British food, and, of course, a carrot cake muffin, the silver-haired waitress with an Edwardian style tray and dainty pinafore walked past us as we got up to leave. She abruptly turned and looked at us in panic; like she’d seen a ghost. ‘Did anyone else see that?’ she said, in a raised breathless tone. She asked again. I sensed her feelings of alarm and revelation. No-one new what she was talking about, neither did we as she unnervingly stared directly at us in mild terror. She said to a colleague ‘I’m not going mad; I saw it. Did you not see it?’ ‘See what?’ they replied. The tearoom went quiet except for the sound of 1920’s crackling Christmas music. She put her hand on my shoulder, or at least I think she did, and proclaimed with trembling fingers and a face as white as her fancy apron: ‘I saw an angel, an, an angel above you both!’ In fear, or shock of the moment, the gentle woman retreated, watery eyed, shaking her head in possible astonishment. Then, she distinctly muttered that we had a guardian angel. That night Daniel and I walked hand-in-hand under the hidden gaze of a December meteor shower to the hum of Chris de Burgh’s A Spaceman Came Travelling, which played in the nearby distance oozing from a once adored sailor’s bar. One flare of a falling star brought that unusual day to a memorable end. Was this destiny in action? Did my dream really reveal the future? Is this synchronicity? Is someone or something watching over us, guarding our lives at pinnacle points along the way?

Perhaps that day wove with whirling whispers of a Whitby winter, magically entwining physical and ethereal souls in wonders of the unknown; ensuring, what’s meant to be, is meant to be. Five years later, we walked up towards a crisp moonlit Whitby Abbey; apparently to watch the romantic show of seasonal shooting stars. On step one hundred and forty-four, twelve by twelve for the day and month of our anniversary, to my utter surprise, Daniel got down on one knee. Waves crashed gleefully under the shimmer of orange lamps and old cobbled streets; a postcard perfect event unwitnessed in the darkness, except by me, feeling like the only woman in the world standing still with a delicate Victorian Harrogate ring. Icy warmth of sharp wind touched my heart, skin and spirit in a dance of double destiny; Lee Ester Alita Lee was right. And as I stood on the beach the next day with my handsome Spanish husband to be, eating Fortune’s kippers with breakfast bubbly, we smiled at the coincidental name of Whitby’s famous fish smokery. I thanked the universe for fate as I peered into a cloud-filled sea; I am exactly where I’m meant to be. And in synchronicity, we discovered that Whitby jet, an exquisite ebony stone, is only found in one other place in the world: Asturias. The mountainous Heidi-like location known as Spain’s ‘green paradise’; the lands of my husband’s ancestry. Where now, we reflect on our Whitby days sitting by an atmospheric fire that warms the loving silence of a stone built cabin braided by mountains and the greenest of greenery. Needless to say, we both wear black Asturias azabache. Perhaps destiny is not only reserved for people, looming too in the fortune of place; like Whitby and Asturias, intertwined by a pair of gemstones and the power of love of two souls in harmonious embrace.    

Merry festive wishes with deepest heartfelt love,

Leah x

Below are some images of our unexpected Heidi like cabin and small village home in the mountains of Northern Spain.

The village in its full green glory

Daniel in the finca of our remote Heidi like cabin; hidden well away from other human souls

At the cabin where I wrote this story, in a hammock, sprinkled with the warm sunny glow of snow

Our very rural village nestled in green mountains