The Glen River Diaries

Friday 22.01.2021 Lichens

It was a frosty night, the ground was still icy and there was a bit of cold drizzle this morning. I wandered slowly in with a young family feeling for our footholds and happy to be out. On the hillside each standing thing had a halo of frost about it, now collecting the damp rain in its boundary layer, the yarrow still green and clustered inwards with its hands down

the yarrow still green and clustered inwards with its hands down

I passed by the Bayou and drank in its watery strangeness

The skeletal branches have coats of woolly lichen, I find more mossy worlds gathering most profusely on the north facing trunks of trees

and also more sparsely on walls, I am on my way to the final tree cul de sac and pass by The Wall of the Hand of God, here I see the pool and imagine its pull for a young boy, before it disappears under the hatch and the two guardian trees overlooking

There has been an addition to the Tree cul de sac, I see it has a little red ribbon and I wonder if it’s the Christmas tree from St Luke’s Cross, I have an errand in St Lukes and see the tree has gone, at dusk I revisit the site and there is a bigger pile, I no longer see the red ribbon, I know this is the tree.

As soon as the days began lengthening the buds were beginning and many have now broken free from their sacs and are now strongly spearing upwards, here is the laurel promising flowers

The Glen sign rises above the banks of winter heliotrope on the Zigzag and a cloud settles above the rails like a lost sheep above

Thursday 21.01.2021 Walk with V

I had a walk with V this morning, we met on Whatsapp at 8.15 from a wet and haily Sligo to a bright and frosty Cork. The sun was sliding into the Glen from the East and unfreezing the frost.

We talked about real contact in this time of social distancing and lockdown, about the inner dialogue with an audience, needing an external response to see where we are at and to catalyze a spiralling outwards and onwards for the work, and my sense of being in a vacuum without my usual contact with groups. V was a perfect witness in this process. The screens on our phones were more of a distraction as we each made our way in tandem through our places, checking the screen occasionally only, when we wanted to share a fancy fungus or the flattened grass where a fawn had rested. I talked about my attempts at mapping, and we talked about questions of accuracy, and how mapping from memory can be more authentic than going for topographical accuracy – how disappointed I had been to find the actual position of the benches in relation to the hill paths of the Glen – my memory had a kind of musical notation that fell flat when I attempted to make it anatomically correct. We talked about dreaming and how illusive it is when we try too hard to remember, to tie it down. We talked about the significance of naming and how names deepen our relationship with places and other beings, V spoke of a certain resistance to naming, especially the Latin names used in botanical classification, and I was remembering my reading from yesterday when Robin Wall Kimmerer speaks of how her students grow a fraternity from learning and sharing the scientific names of mosses: “The students exchange these words like the secret language of a fraternity, and I watch the bond between them grow” V and we talk about personal naming , an idiosyncratic naming of things and how this can be shared or private I think of how our Friends of The Glen is becoming community, through naming from shared experiences and time spent together, I tell V about “the Wall of the Hand of God” V tells of ‘Canada’ in Sligo and I bring V to ‘Scotland’ in the Glen. I show her the pitted charcoal stem of some blackened Gorse, glittering now, sparkles of frost in the sun, past fire and present ice. We talked about the history layered in places, so different in an urban environment to that of a parkland, and our conversation veered to what was under the Glen, train tunnels skirting the West side, and the sounds of water I hear everywhere, from over and underground drainage systems.. (and sewers?) V reminds me of Robert MacFarlane’s Underland and I vow to read a chapter when I get home. We talk about the rock, Cork limestone and sandstone, the red and white of the city colours, I must look up a geological map of the Glen.

Wednesday 20.01.21 Oyster Mushrooms, blue skies and snow on the way

So I passed were N & I freed the water the other day, it was gushing forth in its new passage.

I’ve been reading Gathering Moss and this brings me to looking at the Boundary layer and the different kind of mosses that gather in the barks of trees

from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss – [Learning to See p 13]

The word “moss” is commonly applied to plants which are not actually mosses. Reindeer “moss” is a lichen, Spanish “moss” is a flowering plant, sea “moss” is an alga, and club “moss” is a lycophyte. So what is a moss? A true moss or bryophyte is the most primitive of land plants. Mosses are often described by what they lack, in comparison to the more familiar higher plants. They lack flowers, fruits, and seeds and have no roots. They have no vascular system, no xylem and phloem to conduct water internally. They are the most simple of plants, and in their simplicity, elegant. With just a few rudimentary components of stem and leaf, evolution has produced some 22,000 species of moss worldwide. Each one is a variation on a theme, a unique creation designed for success in tiny niches in virtually every ecosystem.

I found some new fungi forming a flamboyant ruffle on the bark of a tree, a birch I thought at first but its branches didn’t form the familiar ever-more-finely-frayed silhouette. It’s a fabulous crouching cloud dragon. And there was more then on a stump by the depot. there were some deliciously splashy laurel leaves nearby the stump with the brackets.

Identified as an Oyster Mushroom Pleurotus ostreatus meaning ‘side ear’ because it grows a lateral stalk like an ear, and oyster because of its wavy edge. It is a saprophytic mushroom, getting its nourishment by absorbing dissolved organic material and can be found on live or dying deciduous trees, especially beech. It traps and eats nematode worms using lassos on its gills

here’s more about Oyster Mushrooms:

https://www.first-nature.com/fungi/pleurotus-ostreatus.php

here is a fascination video showing the Oyster Mushroom technique of lassooing of nematode worms:

How Chemical Eavesdropping Enabled Carnivorism in Fungi

I couldn’t help getting close to the Alder as its catkins are turning fuzzy already anticipating Spring. The sky was pinking in the East as grey clouds amassed in the West.

Tuesday 19.01.2021 under the oak on a grey day

It has been grey and drizzly I went today to stretch my legs, there were few souls out, a small posse of boys and dogs and while I stop to notice a birch on the zigzag, a girl on a pink bicycle her Mum in tow, picking up after the dog. At the top a young woman with long hair hammering out a slitter against Keatings wall, leaping into lightening bolts with every strike, as I turned at the top she packed it in and got back into her car. Back at the bottom a pair of heavy lads in training, taking it in turns up and down the concrete steps, and on my way a steady churn of passing joggers and runners doing their circuits. It felt desultory. I walked and felt into it, a pair of ducks on a floating branch in the Bayou, calmly casting their doubles, Greta the Egret needling her way through the trees and onto the water, landing always just out of site, the empty benches, I go to the top of the grassy knoll and look out over the park, its grey and getting wetter. Still people about, I see the birds have been feasting and pecked the flesh out of the apples, I go to the oak and stand under her branches and it’s beautifully calm, an embrace, and again I see the music of her branches against the sky and the valley below, its a real hug without even touching.

Monday 18.01.21 Damp & overcast – Velvet Shank Spore prints

Today the veil of fog never lifted and i walked out after 3pm. I had been in the studio preparing paper and looking at my collections. I remembered the velvet shanks I picked last week and went to check on the spore prints – they are a beautiful white as predicted and there is the ultimate proof for this variety. I made up my mind to visit their families again on the dead elms at the NE entrance to the park.

I have been trying to make a map of the Glen and find that my memory is missing parts that help to navigate around, how do the benches on the north side of the upper pond relate to the paths and topography around? I find the paths work in sweeping arcs, looping the hills, like a needle threading stitches, the benches spacing the intervals between the loops. This is quite difficult to photograph, but I have the 3 benches now, the Ramshackle, where the path loops up behind the PROSTO, then another rises behind the Burntbutt before falling as Self-heal avenue. The concrete steps then rise again at the end.

I found a rope on Self-heal Avenue, which is now a muddy track, and I guess it is from the Glen horsemen. I gather it up and loop it over a tree stump by the water’s edge at the Alder’s eddy.

I notice the water is much cleaner in the Bayou where we collected the oil yesterday.

ramshackle
loop1
burnt
loop2

Sunday 17.01.21 CleanUp

An interim clean up with small posse, N, I, L, G, E – oddly enough I_GLEN! With me it’s JI_GLEN or GLEN_JI, and now I’m somehow hearing a Genie in there, how bad <3. I collected the trolly from outside the Council Depot where we parked it last week. The trolly had been in the river on the site of the O’Brien house and someone had fished it out and left it invitingly under the little oak tree. N took a shot of it here and posted it to the Friends of the Glen FB page last Thursday. L and I thought it might be useful for our pickups or at least, if left beside the depot, it may not end up in the river again.

the trolly rescued and inviting another plunge…photo by Niall Murray

I brought some newspaper with me and E and I went to where the oil slicked the surface in ‘The Bayou’. We were using the free local paper, the coloured ink gave it a mixed absorbancy surface and so while we managed to mop up some of the rainbow colours from the water, there was plenty still stuck in the mud. A scoop and collecting bucket would do a more thorough job. E had a garden rake with an extendable handle and we set to lifting cans delicately by the bendy tines hooking the triangular slot, most cans were too weighty with water, we tried scooping up bottles sideways into its basket, like impossible fairground games, we roared with every success, the game evolved and we were soon pressing gently foothold by foothold to the waters edge finding a tentative certainty in our footing as we went along, brambles reeds old branches and the crunch of plastic or aluminium underfoot as we went along ..below is an image of me standing out and E totally blending in with the surroundings.

finding firm footing in the river photo by Niall Murray

Little by little our little group of oddballs arrive, N is trying to free the flow under one of the yellow bridges and I’m inspired to join him. Big old branches have ended up here and are creating a kind of a dam and we released these making a pile of them on the bank. Later I go to the Sociable wall where I know there will be drinks cans, also known as the Hand of God wall, where W had his experience many years ago, oddly enough as we were chatting about where to go next we spotted W sitting quietly on his bench, looking towards his view of ‘the pyramids’

I took no photos today.

Saturday 17.01.2021 Busy Park

A late walk today it’s after 4.30 and I hear the bikes as I enter, growling angrily below, the large boys seem too much for these small motors and they are straining as they cut up the wet turf on the football pitch. I decide to go towards the ridge, up and away from the noise. The park is busy with families and young children, still here as we are nearing the end of a bright Saturday. Even on the ridge it’s busy, under the oak are some youths taking time out with a pair of burly-shouldered pit bulls, large and small, both with silver velvet coats rippling their bodies, the smaller one is “Luna”, a leggy brindle-spotted whippet roams nearby, the lads are smoking and taking in the view. A father and son bound down together as I do the loop, they are speaking French. I walk back past the ducks and the night reflections on the pond, passing one of my favourite silhouettes – the eccentric Swamp cypress.

Friday 15.01.21 the northern edge and the oak stump

Two walks today. An early on a mission to procure a velvet shank, to take a spore print, excited to see if it will yield the white pattern that will be the final test to identify it as one of this kind. I enter the Glen my usual way, between the young birch and its darker barked berry bearing (yet to be identified) compadre, passing the pond on the northern edge I see an oily galaxy on its surface and worry about its presence here.

It’s damp and rainy as I head up along the upper football pitch and exit the main park to the laneway. There have been winter clear outs from the local homes and garden debris intermingles with Glen borders. The fly tipping is also revealed by the winter paring. The trees reach all about and the dead elms are the place where the velvet shanks are to be found.

I rush back from my early foray which as usual is longer than anticipated and I am distracted by some new daffodil shoots coming up and on the bark of a tree a perfect oval of lichen and a pair of un-identical twin spots.

I notice some activity on the stump of the oak that was felled last summer. There is a wedge shaped stone on its table top, approaching it more closely I see a nail and a screw have been roughly inserted, I am given to thinking it may have served as a bench top, or even some kind of an alter…the face has darkened, perhaps with the rain, and there is a distinct corona marked out with white splotches, like numerals on a clock face

Returning in late morning for my meeting with L, as usual this is a walk and talk and so my camera stays in my pocket. We catch up, swapping encounters and pursuits of the last week. My talk is filled with vocal soundings from the Healing voice workshop and I showed L the improvement of skin condition on my excematic finger, and demonstrated the vowel sounds and sang her green Tara mantra.

Thursday 14 January 2021 ~ A circuit

Today there was a young heron in the egret’s spot, she was not too bothered by me and didn’t engage in any games of hide and seek, knowing her place and wading about it, busily piercing the surface of the water with her long beak.

I head Westwards along the Northern bank of the pond and along the edges of the footpath I find a mossy nest with a perfect opening, it is striking to be in such plain view, I wonder about its inhabitants, are there any present dwellers, perhaps new come squatters? Or has it been abandoned by far off emigrants….who may one day return? Further along there are offerings of apples cored and looped over branches by kind walkers for the birds, mixing up seasons and fruits with the trees’ skeletons. In the distance, the morning light bounces golden off the upper walls of the prison perched on the hill.

I was drawn again to looking closely at the skin of the trees, enjoying the soft pitted greens and striated brown and tans and even finding something in the growth that looks like text – uppercase cleavages in the lichen.

…BIL…

…IRD

Moss more vivid and lichen greying, on the surface or silting up the gashes and wounds in the bark: mosses and lichens seem to be on friendly terms, each taking up position and forming spots that appear convivial yet self-contained.

And on the smoothest barks are traces of ivy paths meandering upwards, made visible by the moulds that accrue in the traces of its leggy reaches, the ivy now stripped away, perhaps by a zealous Glen walker (there are a few of us with various agendas).

The dark bark weaves across the trunk of a cypress and I see the way it is built for expansion, and shedding. In the ground the roots are spelling out signs or, it seems to me, balancing equations – somehow I’m reminded of old currency, shillings and pence archaic now but embedded in the memory, perhaps this tree is as old as me.

I meander to the Fleischmann place, and there is a theatrical presence, where new trees make a chorus to the fore of the platform, a concrete square that is, for now, bare of trees and is all that has become of ‘the cottage’, an image ghosts in my imagination above this footprint, of a mock tudor frontage shadowing and confusing the present tree forms. There are other structures, revealed now in the thinned undergrowth, like bared traps. And something that may have been more a more playful construction suspended between the bellies of the trees. Walls are less substantial than plants here, whose rooted vigour gives them an obvious gravitas.

Exiting I see two dark fairies dancing in the river in the place where the ivy clad sentinels keep watch.

Moving out along the riverbank the silhouettes of trees are making their own of sky and understory.

A tree seems to be crying from one of its multiple eyes, or possibly a leaking breast, at any rate it’s the place it lost a limb.

I reach the Gothic quarter, finding steps and platforms here too, I know from the Friends of the Glen that it was the place of the O’Brien Family – now the peripheral cornering fence post forms a solitary figure on the winter stage.

I cannot resist the pull towards the dismembered Cyprus in the back-alley of the park, itself cracked like a giant broken pencil, I see it has company now, a palm looking very raw, also cut down from a healthy state of being somewhere in the outskirts of the Glen.

Weds 13.01.2021 ~ 8am video walk with Bec- close ups & scars

Another video walk, this time up the Creek with Bec on the other side of the globe, from a dampish occluded dawning in Cork to the end of a day of summer swimming in Tasmania we left our homes together. We show each other small parts of our worlds making connections and noticing differences. There was a seed (called a smokeberry ?) that the Tasmanians use to flavour ice cream, it is bitter sweet and has a strange peachy spiral around it, all the more mysterious for lacking focus, Bec is interesed in brickwork and odd inclusions that occur so I brought her to the Fleishmann residence and showed her the trees growing in the walls often we were talking in parallel as our phones glitched in and out, we both enjoyed getting up close.

Today one of the Glen walkers found a strange object in the river bank – it was a rung of a ladder for a manhole.

I was fascinated by some pale green lichen that managed to hold on to the raindrops/dewdrops while they slid off the other bark, I went back later and this activity was no longer evident, the lichen seemed to have sunk back into a passive role, its colour drained and texture dried and cracking, this made me think about Monday’s scarring on the birch and bustle formations so I began looking at tree skin conditions and healing.

I am preoccupied by my dewy lichen and I go back the next day at the same time, weather conditions are different, milder, and I find no beads of water gathered on the pale green spots. I seek some answers from botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer in her book Gathering Moss and I find out about The Boundary Layer:

Mosses inhabit surfaces: the surfaces of rocks, the bark of trees, the surface of a log, that small space where earth and atmosphere first make contact. This meeting ground between air and land is known as the boundary layer. Lying cheek to cheek with rocks and logs, mosses are intimate with the contours and textures of their substrate. Far from being a liability, the size of mosses allows them to take advantage of the unique microenvironment created within the boundary layer.

What is this interface between atmosphere and earth? Every surface, be it as small as a leaf or as large as a hill, possesses a boundary layer.

…I can imagine the pattern of air, flowing smoothly around it until it encounters the surface, where the mosses live. The sun’s warmth gets trapped in the tiny layer of still air. Since the air is nearly motionless, it acts as an insulating layer, much like the dead space in a storm window, which forms a barrier to heat exchange. The spring breeze around me is chilly, but the air right at the surface of the rock is much warmer. Even on a day when the temperature is below freezing, the mosses on a sunlit rock may be bathed in liquid water. By being small, mosses can live in that boundary layer, like a floating greenhouse hovering just above the rock surface.

The boundary layer traps not only heat, but water vapor, as well. Moisture evaporating from the surface of a damp log is captured in the boundary layer, creating a humid zone in which the mosses flourish. Mosses can grow only when they are moist. As soon as they dry out, photosynthesis must cease, and growth is halted. The right conditions for growth can be infrequent, and so mosses grow very slowly. Living within the confines of the boundary layer prolongs the window of opportunity for growth, by keeping the wind from stealing the moisture. Being small enough to live within the boundary layer allows the mosses to experience a warm, moist habitat unknown by the larger plants.

The boundary layer can also hold gases other than water vapor. The chemical composition of the atmosphere in the slim boundary layer of a log differs considerably from that of the surrounding forest. The decaying log is inhabited by a myriad of microorganisms. Fungi and bacteria are constantly at work degrading the log, with an outcome as sure as that of a wrecking ball. The continual work of the decomposers slowly turns the solid log to crumbling humus and releases vapors rich in carbon dioxide, which is also trapped in the boundary layer. The ambient atmosphere has a carbon dioxide concentration of approximately 380 parts per million. But the boundary layer above a log may contain up to ten times that amount. Carbon dioxide is the raw material of photosynthesis, and is readily absorbed into the moist leaves of the mosses. Thus, the boundary layer can provide not only a favorable microclimate for moss growth, but also an enhanced supply of carbon dioxide, the raw material for photosynthesis. Why live anywhere else?