The Glen River Diaries

There was a really hard frost last night and I go early to the Glen to catch it before the sun does. The Mossy microcosms show their boundary layer where the warmth has been trapped around them, frost reaching only to the upper limits, the old oak stump is witness to the play of white all about, I can’t resist a few jumps into ice puddles shattering the mirror of their surfaces and casting gems of ice. Footprints left by canine and human mammals are solidified in the mud that once squelched under their bare and booted feet, the frost makes stages of the Fleischmann residences, oyster mushroom is in tune with its winter element, growth has been triggered since the turn of the shortest day and is now budding in the laurels.

Later I go again to meet L it’s midday and the frost has almost gone, there are still icicles hanging in the river and the cold damp air hangs in the valley. We meet the retired politician and he shows me where the practice trenches were, pointing over to the Resource Centre, in the lee of the Barracks where there are now housing estates, I wonder if my house is built on top of these old playgrounds. He advises us to check the Military Museum in what used to be Victoria Barracks in the days of the trench making and is now Collins.

An article appeared in Emergence Magazine that encapsulated conversations with V as we talked about mapping from memory.

Jim Enote, a traditional Zuni farmer and director of the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center, is working with Zuni artists to create maps that bring an indigenous voice and perspective back to the land, countering Western notions of place and geography and challenging the arbitrary borders imposed on the Zuni world.

“Modern maps don’t have a memory.”
—Jim Enote
“The Zuni World is not limited by any kind of boundaries, not on a piece of paper and not in our minds”
https://emergencemagazine.org/story/counter-mapping/

Below is a partial transcript:

We live in a world of many ways of knowing, with many different systems of knowledge.. the knowledge that Zuni people have about the landscape hasn’t been clearly understood, it’s time to assert that we have the knowledge about place and challenge what maps are about.
Zuni is a place where most people live within 2 minutes of every living relative, and dead relative. I think knowing where you are from is important. What other people call you is really what makes you Of this Place. First some of them know of me as a farmer, most of them don’t even know I’m a museum director. My Name is Jim Enote and I’m director of the A:shiwi A:wan Museum, here in Zuni New Mexico

…..There’s my field, it’s kinda creepy to look down on…..It’s disorienting. One time I showed my mother some aerial photos her first response was “I’m not a bird”. She said “that’s not how I look at things, what am I looking at? I dunno what I’m looking at”

Maps have done a lot to confuse things for people.…More lands have been lost to native peoples probably through mapping than through physical conflict. I thought we would create some new kinds of maps that counter and challenge the notion of what maps are, where north does not have to be at the top, that scale is unnecessary. What’s more important is that these stories of history is described in these Vignettes of experience, and now these stories are for all Zunis to learn from, from here on. I wanted to make maps that were elegant provocative and profoundly important to the Zuni People and that’s where the map art idea came from.

These maps become a thing that helps a family or a group to start speaking about places, to start learning from each other and talking about places in a way that’s uniquely Zuni…if we were to go outside our doors now and walk down stream from the Zuni River we would take us right back in to the Grand Canyon, it’s like an umbilical chord that connecting us back to the place we came out from Mother Earth

We limit ourselves if we think of maps as only 2D – a map may be something we heard from our grandmother about a place…there are maps in songs and in prayers, there are maps that are etched in stone and woven onto textiles and painted on ceramics google maps or any other kind of maps are really helpful places the names around here are in English or in Spanish and so they completely leave off the meaning of the place it is replacing our language, eclipsing our language and knowledge with something different, something that’s not really from here, this whole constellation of what makes up a map to me has always been beyond what lies on a piece of paper… if my Grandpa and Grandma would see the Zuni maps they would recognise quite quickly ah yes this is what’s in that song, this is what’s in those prayers, and I thinks as their descendants we would have been proud. … remember those things …map art is gonna be something to say “he remembered”

Jim Enote, Zuni people, New Mexico

So its after midday when I wander down and head to the island again, I pass the birch with the oysters on the way, I cross over by the sluice gate and enter by the stump alter, it looks like someone has taken a bite out of one of the mushrooms and decided to move on, I pass between the Cedars and allow myself to be wrapped in the laurels, I find more jewels on the branches

I took the path up to Scotland after hanging in the embrace of the oak a while I decided to take on the snarling briers, treading my way down to the riverside path, where got caught up in the tangle of branches screening passers on the other side, coming back the moon has risen in the East as I check in on Cedar Alley, there is still ice in its bark and some dramatic golden edging in the West. Passing by the WotHoG I find some elegant script embellished by lichen, moss and ivy its funny how a story can alter a place and it does, the water pulls me in and the trees hover magically over, trees that have grown up since W’s story. Approaching the Island once again I find a fairy door so inviting, it echoes the scale of the gothic quarter steps in my next view

I pass by the ponds and go towards the Fleischmann place where I see a cat on a day out then I head up the zigzag to see the sign a walker has installed with Jack the Dipper and a piece of advice. Homeward bound I spot an entangled object, I am curious about the lichens and take a closer look, entangled to be sure the vegatal//lichel//human post seasonal and transformed. The Queen of Sheba passes by on her way home

Got a call from A today to meet up in the Glen. It was a morning with a hard strong frost still cutting a diagonal across the football pitch as the sun reaches for the dog roses.

A and her dog Fudge brought me to a place I don’t remember being before, though I’d heard talk of ‘The Island’ . Over the sluice gate and under the laurels it’s a jungle I’d peered into with [Another A] before but today we stretched our legs over the gap and entered a jungle chamber, the frost was melting from the large leaves and glittering, falling and held in the sunlight throughout the space, the sound of the river rushing by on all sides added to the sense of deep immersion. Two tall Ceders formed an inner portal, slightly skewed and through the gap I see a table, or an alter, the stump of a laurel, and upon its icy surface are some glacial fungi, glowing orange in the jungle light. It was a magical, mysterious experience. The barks of the laurels have letters, mysterious as hieroglyphs, carved and stretched out on them from previous callers, going back in time. There was a high wall on the north bank of the river which could be scaled to exit but we went back via the metal sluice.

We met up with M and her dog all dressed up like a jockey and wandered over towards the Fleischmann place and the Zigzag. We talked about dance and sound and music and places to stop and listen. M showed us a natural ballet barre that had been revealed by ‘P the Wall’s excavations, the root of a tree growing through the wall exactly the right height and girth and behind the wall is the clearly visible platform footprint of the cottage. We wondered how this natural stage would be in the summer growth with clear winter views from the zigzag and all about the wooded grove.

Winter heliotropes and buttercup leaves hold on to the frost, exposing their inner patterns, smashed ice in puddles left exclamation marks from earlier walkers and the frost still holding its pockets amongst the long shadows as I leave a couple of hours beyond midday.