Imagine camping in the rain, in a muddy field, for a cold week late in April. Sixty odd people living closely together, seeking shelter from the wet. Imagine a central fire that turns into a central water feature after 36 hours of incessant rain. Imagine sucking mud, and boots that start to all look the same. Imagine waterproofs and damp clothes. Quite challenging, right?

Then imagine a sickness bug levelling about a quarter of those present, and making pretty much everyone else feel sick for at least some hours. Imagine buckets of sick having to be carried across the field and disposed of safely. Imagine seven people puking communally in a bender that is now a makeshift little hospital. Imagine the mother of all thunderstorms breaking over that camp, that bender, those people being ill and the ones looking after them. Some tents are levelled, others have little rivers running through them. You've now got trench warfare - it even sounds like you're being shelled.

But still, despite it all, everyone is in high spirits. Everybody pulls together to take care of each other. Heroic deeds are done for the people feeling sick. Hugs and heartfelt thanks meet the people taking care of them. Random people keep kettles on the boil to sterilise buckets. The situation in the hospital bender is so surreal that even the sick people can't help laughing. Little girls build a nest for a rubber duck in the central water feature. Musicians and poets compose humourous songs about mud and pestilence.

Through the misery and the challenge, because of it, a powerful magic is woven. Chaos is turned into harmony. Community grows closer and stronger. And when it gets a bit dryer and everyone is feeling a little better, we celebrate the coming of Summer with a Maypole and May fires and a new King and Queen. The experience is intense, and after a week we all leave, returning to our ordinary lives filled to overflowing with love for these people and hope for the world. Big buzzing love. And gratitude.

The first day after camp is always the same for me. All I can do is sit in a sofa and stare at something: a tv screen, a web site, or empty space. The next day I went to work with my head and heart still full of that buzz. My head was trying to process all that had happened. Memories would run through my head in a constant whirr. It was, frankly, uncomfortable. I didn't quite know what to do with it. My colleagues would have been a bit taken aback if I started hugging them all, but that's exactly what I felt like doing.

It took me another day or so to realise how much I needed my daily practice. Feeling dog tired made me skip my spiritual time. And of course, camp routine is so different from my usual that I never got a chance to really meditate while I was there - the meditation time on the timetable is just too early for me, and before breakfast, too. And I felt so alien in London. After a week in a field visited by red kites and swallows, the traffic was a bit hard to come to terms with. But when I finally took time to call upon the elements, the ancestors and my goddess, my buzzing bubble became more transparent and I managed to feel at home in my life again.

My heart is still full of that big love of my tribe - those amazing people who didn't go home to their warm beds despite trench warfare conditions, those warrior men and women who kept us all going. But the buzz has settled. I can now share the strength and love of that community with the people I share my daily life with. And that is great. Because this is the real magic: bringing that experience, the love of community, and the hope that as human beings we can work together for the good of all, into the world at large. This is the work.

So I'm letting that love and hope flow into the Westacre Project*, and into my day job. I'm channelling it into my relationships and into the land where I live. And I'm putting it right here, in this blog, for anyone who reads it. Can you feel it?

*The Westacre Project = the Big Adventure: My husband and I are going to renovate a house and make it as environmentally friendly as we can. I plan run a mini retreat centre from there. This is Westacre Day minus 223.