The gaps between walks stretch and collapse these days and today the winds shimmy in song and ripple ~ summoning and releasing invisible presences in air, on water, through the winter valley
The whisper touch of living and dying, honed branches and fallen leaves speak in shapes shifted from puddles, on the gravel, at the well
birds disappear from the branches, song making presence in their spaces
ivy fern leaf litter humifying nettle forming oak giving hart’s tongue licking undergrowth at the well
So much happens all day every day – then there is a deluge – the river runs fast and with an urgency cutting through the Glen – filling spaces and gouging out where there is no channel to support its course, brown red brown opaque liquid clay fills the glen, swarming about trees, filling the mouths of the stone bridges, pouring over the concrete platforms of others – the element is water, and furious flow: matter resists, or is carried, then left, in the water’s wake – the Glen is thoroughly rinsed and combed, made orderly in the only direction the river knows,
there are castings and leavings as the waters subside – a pile of twigs on the hatch, riverine foot-prints of oak leaf litter pile by the benches – forming a transient re-enactment, echo and fleeting memory of the physical landscape left by The Great Ice. This present place of aftermath now already tidied efficiently up by diligent workers in hi-vis following their call.
I see the emergence of a lost pillar, an arrowhead into the past – for a moment revealed – and then erased again, here reburied in that place of forgetting – beneath the surface. I was witness this time (whatever will come of that) I know the Alder too watches on.
I find the words, humming the base (bass) line, mouthing Laurie Anderson’s voice, deadpanning: … this is the time, and this is the record …of the time…
leavings
flowings
gougings
revealings
footprints of the river
combings
flwoings
resisting
burial
A drowned mouse that mammalian vibration in amongst the the ravages of elemental force and plant resilience and crumbling human endeavour
I am back in the Glen in the early morning, its a time of a coming new moon and transition… dead dry docs are stalking through the still lush grass …rowan fruiting vermillion, chestnuts spiking up and the Chicken of the Woods returns to the womb of the hollowed poplar stump making a basket of itself, a broken branch in one of the Swamp Cyprus augurs the fall while its sibling tree harbours in her skirts a world of ripenings and the Miller is at it again growing and clutching all that falls in into its fruiting body
and all the while the river flows on by…..
I find some strange feathered script messaging my path and I dance back with it …hatching
I am overjoyed to see the mugwort re-emerge, last year it was squashed and demolished by tractor activity, it seems the tractor not only failed to kill the plant but carried some seed heads in its tracks and redeposited them in its wake…way hay for the mugwort
It’s raining a cold March rain as I stand at the Snake awaiting the arrival of A, who is searching for her red wellies… my gaze meanders over the familiar patchwork; circles squares texts and textures…the musical notes, the yinyang, always landing on Vincey Long is a Legend… I remember V the child, back in 2005 carving his clay, a solid kid dense with his own living gravity and lifted by a light humour, I hear he has his own kids now.
It’s a while before I see the crumpled shape of the bin, door swinging and bare metal, the remains of molten matter leaking out and a fresh black bag inside… pushing the door closed I see it is beyond easy repair, it needs a panel beater to get it back in shape, how long? It had a good stretch, it’s been 3 years since the beginning of the pandemic lock down Friday 13 of 2020.
I have been away from my old extraordinary routine. A arrives and we cast off West, unusually. Catching up on our bits and business we barely notice the park go by, meeting J, the dog fosterer, with her 3 legged black spotted lurcher, her doe eyed brindle, and a judgy chiwawa under her arm, she is with another familiar face, and dogs. It’s only as we mount the high ground that we land in the park, walking into our shadows in the evening sun, the weather has cleared and we see the burnings have started, the black scars on the surface bring us home to the rhythms of the Glen. Sadly we move along looking out for surviving trees one sapling rises, with its livid red trunk, more of a stem, we can’t tell if its taken on the colour of the fire, there’s not really enough for us to identify it, there seem to be surviving buds on its skinny branches..looking down we see an abandoned bicycled in the council dumping place, A says she needs a bike, and retracts, her tiny home won’t take another piece, and who would lift this anyway as we know it’s not been left by itself.
Passing more burned patches we see many rising saplings that may have survived among the strong oak babies that have weathered years of the pattern. A takes to the swing, swinging high over everything, gently back and forth in the evening light , her detached shadow rhyming out across the heath, unloosed from her foothold on the ground. we linger a while me leaning up against the mother oak, among her family.
Back down through the gothic zone elders and thorny trees are growing up where the old Golum stump rots down, past the well and onto the path. The mallards show us their rumps as we pass, we see the pretty lilac colour that becomes a sack of poo snagged on the briars and dripping in the evening light.
Passing a couple of Magpies we stop at the bench with its new grafitti, Farsi I fancy, Sri Lankan A offers, knowing we are both wrong, it’s fluid lines red as A’s boots. stop to spend some time with a blackbird its black shape and golden beak so deeply exotic in the bare branches looking back, hungry I imagine, birdsong fills the air. We both stop at the witchy willow, eyes seeking the remains of the young fox in its resting ground, there is nothing obvious, no scent, A sees something under the water but we both know its from the searching the vision comes, gone fox. Into the Fleischmann place A spots a yellow glimmering, daffodils in the woods and as we move towards them there is a lifting and white wing tips, we have disturbed a buzzard, I feel the familiar blessing and all is well. Back along Rope walk we see the other bin has survived a burning, its front face still bears a coat of paint and the lock still holds firm the door.
We are on the home stretch and glide on up the hill full of our experience in the glen and once more lost in mundane conversation until we arrive at the corner and kiss our cheeks goodbye
Another gap, plenty of water under the bridge. flowing flowing
Back to the Glen
I stand over the river facing the disappearing waters as they flow under me away from me
this is the direction for the turning of the year, watching the waters wash westwards the low sun rising at my back we are attuned to the same direction, the tilt and spin and rounding of the year. There is a red embering through the mossy wickers, the deep breast of a robin, who alights in the branches at the riverside, I have barely moved in a timeless length from this standing, we whisper to one another our breaths disappearing outwards into the air about us as the water flows on and on.
Later I see a strange thing near the Willow a slant and bald presence in the boggy wetland and something shaggy beside it I can’t quite make out… oh ’tis a fox , a cub in a silent trajectory tail and snout in one sleek line, breathless, motionless, stilled.
The pool by the Alder spirals, gathers rain drops dials in and spins out on course liquid light fluid motion
It is the time of suspension and falling and the glimmering colours before the quiet release …the most gentle sweep to sustain into the dead still of the Cailleach’s grip.
hawthorn and sorbus berries, scarlet and vermillion – October CRUSH – golden stars of maple and sycamore, fallen acorns hatching pink seekers all rain-swept in growth or in decay or in offering. I play hide and seek in the long grass, picking up small handfuls of vibrant matter, five or six berries at a time,
crossing my path is a stone holding down the five limbed star of a field maple, pinned somehow purposefully there by wind, or weather, or dog , or child. Another leaf dwindles and turns in the nave of arcing branches amid the falling surrender of leaves
Each day the same way in, the way down promises clouds and skies – the swirling shifts of weather even in this small crucible of the Glen
beckoning
and the small oak by the well is still yielding an abundance of acorns into the ground where the mowers will one day come – I arrive and pocket on successive days the small oak beings, some still in their caps, some knocked out of them, so ready to become earthed in, already sending energetic feelers for the deep, my dress and coat bulging with new prospects; some for sowing with Trees Please, and some for throwing on the highlands, a good enough ritual for Samhain on the cusp of a new year.
throwing Acorns
And the next day I stand sheltering under another mother oak, before more i do more castings of baby oaks brought from the valley floor
This third day of gathering I find a seedling has begun rooting where it fell, here under the crown of mama tree, so I must pull, more than pluck it from the ground, these babies will take their chances on the steep hard slopes of the valley’s walls, must find a resting place among the bracken skin, which has taken over from the gorse, whose skeletons remain withered now and blackened from successive spring burnings … I am praying the wind and rain will drive these little time capsules into the ground where they will take root out of reach of next year’s fires and the next and the next…until strong enough to spread roots and oak arm in oak arm can shoulder more.
Today I feel I may have got my last haul from the bole of the chestnut tree… “my chestnut tree” who presides over the entrance to Glenview park.
As I write this I feel the precariousness of her position, on a road, a conduit East – West across the City’s Northside, but thankfully not the main one, she is the guardian of our park. I have been picking up the glowing kernels since September where they fall. This patch, like all the roadside verges is managed by the council, who mow here regularly, and I harbour feelings of guilt over my obsessive pickings, knowing that they would be crushed and turned to mulch, like the husks I leave behind, to feed the earth. Knowing my intervention will have repercussions these thoughts are brought into the mix of the ritual of the circling of the tree. Tuning into the ground beneath my feet, the domes of empty shell subtly different to those containing nut or the slide of nut alone. I enjoy becoming sensitised through my soles to the ground beneath, to the offerings of the tree. I have seen the freshly opened linings of the newly fallen by their glowing white, these alert me to a new finding, a singular new finding of findings which accumulate with each new passing. Some cases have had their conkers bounced completely out and I will find the chestnut in the grass nearby, while others split off a segment, which will indicate nearby a cloister of the other two sections harbouring the glossy brown treasure which, on picking I will prise from its spongy satin walls yielding its soapy inner skin. Today I find a small naked one in the grass, it may be one I overlooked, it’s skin is darkened and it lacks the lustre of the newly hatched, but as usual, the finding of one opens the forager’s sixth sense, alerting me to others nestling nearby, the prickly outside looking more whole somehow, betraying their bountiful presence as they hide among the grass. Today I find six in all, rich pickings as I had expected fewer, anticipating my final haul…when this day comes it will be momentous… it will have already passed.. – We have had heavy rains and winds and sunny spells on the in-between days across last week, culminating with a major deluge on Sunday. All of this intention for collecting of gatheirng my senses and noticing has massed into a ritual and an aknowledgment of my relationship with tree: the circles happen, beginning in the middle ground , radiating to the outsides, coming back in close as I tread the ground, all senses alert, to ground and not least to passers by as I must have become a regular site here treading and circling, bending and peering and plucking at the base of a tree who yields no fruit for regular, adult behavior. On the final inner circle I remember to touch the bark and as I leave I look back at the tree her branches now showing plenty of sky, she is etched in my mind as I leave for home with whatever haul I’ve made for the day.
I wonder sometimes at the need for this foraging, summoning an ancient instinct of hunter gatherer ancestry, a need for deep connection with land and soil of changing seasons and nature’s bounty, as the days grow shorter a gathering of stores, the squirrel in me harbours this joy and impulse to collect. In my studio they gather, I’ve been informed that the gases emitted by horse chestnuts will ward off spiders, (the arachnophobe in me is grateful). I’ve seen recipes for crushing the chestnuts into laundry soap. I fend off practical uses for the chestnuts, the ritual of collecting is all I need, a connection with tree without any purpose is important, the connection made in movement, gesture, time and repetition the reciprocity I have bound in spell between tree and me. A song.
In the studio I look for the brown of the nut in layers of colour I put down on paper, attempting to build the pattern and depth while the nut retains its lustre, the chestnuts darken quickly withdrawing back into themselves and contract, hard and wizened on the strings I’ve made. I have a whole tree’s season of chestnuts here… I imagine that with due diligence I have gathered not quite every single one the tree has produced this year. There, with a couple of additional nuts from Birr, some from the trees in the park and from the tree up the road … the exceptions proving the rule… or the glitches which take us out of the rut, essential catalysts for a spiralling evolution ( I see more burnt orange in the nuts from Birr)… or a proof that I move about the land a little further than the doorstep of home… or a network greeting other trees in other parts… All of this, and not a betrayal as I have pondered before, a mapping of migrations and returnings.
I remember the gathering of different numbers on different occasions … at the height of the season there were too many to hold in view, but latterly there have been the constellations formed by different numbers 11, 12, 4, 6. The numbers resonate in patterns, emitting a certain tone, the ultimate collection of 6 appears somehow like a 5, one elides another in the pattern of its placement, in my minds eye, and in its relationship with the others. The mixture of sizes plays with distance and proximity in the same way we perceive and judge the stars. How they look on my table, each makes contact with the surface at its shadow, another form cast from the light behind, showing a weightiness and, at the same time a lively buoyancy at its contact with the ground, a contrariness that has fascinated me of matter held together in this way, each a capsule of itself.
The connection I feel is a musical one, repetition, rhythm, weight, buoyancy, proximity, distance, glossiness fading to dullness, iteration, reiteration, chestnut as notation… somehow I want to express the song.
Addendum – later on Tuesday …
In retrospect I must have been aware of the motors yesterday … I took off for an evening stroll and greeted the tree, where I found the ground was patterned with drifts from blade and tyre, leaves mulched, linear heaps of decaying brown in the newly leveled live green … here a different kind of tide mark from the rains, I note the overlay of tractor trails on my walking patterns circling the tree, I see the old horse chestnut shells now mixed up with shorn and torn leaves I see conkers, unharmed still, peeping out from the piles I collect them all – 8 beauties so this was the last day of the conker …perhaps
I have been reading about becoming compost seemingly online, I find Sophie Strand reciting her I will not be purified (Amanda Palmer and others here providing the fertile soil out of which the words can grow) and have drifted across her in conversation with Andreas Weber about the indiscriminate eroticism of becoming food, the act of love in decay, a yielding and active participation in earthly cycles … it all rings very true with me <3
