The Glen River Diaries

I was early today at 8am for a video walk with Vanya , it was light in The Glen but still dawning in Sligo.

We walked and talked and skated the surface of our places mixing deer fences with old walls and talking about our all too human contact and how to listen more to the ‘other than human’ and how to practice, encourage and nurture a more reciprocal relationship with the living natural world …as expressed so poetically by Robin Wall Kimmerer here:

The Service Berry

We looked at mosses and lichens, tuning into indicators for the wider environment, and we talked about time, some lichens taking 25 years to grow an area the size of a cent, all of these microcosms cohabiting at different paces rhythms and so intricately, intimately connected, and how time has been changed for us all since last March, losing the dimension and imposition of regulated workdays and routines. What structure can we adopt for a new relationship with time? V has the tides for her daily swim and I’ve been more influenced by the changing rhythms of day light, especially as it is contained within, and plays upon, the East-West gash of the Glen River valley.

Greta the Glen Egret was on the water again at the upper pond, we danced together and this time she stayed the whole time, knowing that my battery was done and there was no way I could capture her… I was happy not to have the distraction. It has been bothering me that so much of my time in the Glen is spent with camera/phone in hand and I realise that this agenda to document has been blocking any kind of creative response. So I am skirting around this right now, as the documentation is also part of the process

Grey day late lightening and rosy in the west when it does…shepherd’s warning. I go in late afternoon, through the Glen to Blackpool, looking for wintergreen to add as a preservative to my sticky blackberry ink, 2 bagsfull, evacuated from the freezer to make room before Christmas.

I see the decoy again and also the Little egret, two white dots in the upper pond… as usual Greta takes flight when I begin to get near

On returning without any purchase I pass the newish Glen signs and notice the bird’s skull form of the Park, I think of the photo in the Crawford Art Gallery by Murdo MacLeod of local boy Roy Keane, who must have spent time here, though I believe never played with the Glen Rovers FC.

I enter by the birch and say hello, wander down to the river where the Little Egret decoy catches my eye as usual, hanging in the bush on the far side, and as usual it makes my heart jump, a plastic bag I believe.

The poplar stump holds its audience, and I picture its old tall flamed form ghosting above it.

I decide to go and visit the large birches and think of asking for some bark, having heard the inner skin yields a red for ink or dye…and hoping I can gather some. Instead I find the bark is rugged raw, with a condition that is not unlike the scaly skin on my ravaged finger, so instead I give the trunk a gentle pat and walk on.

Now I’ve been alerted to conditions of dermal outbreak I pass a proud trunk with a showy green bustle, its broken and bulging bark patterns accommodate the most luxurious green moss and I imagine a perfect home for other life forms.

One of my favourite Glen trees skirts the council depot. Its trunk bears an ovoid scar from a long felled branch, the scar resembles a fairy tale mirror. The Snow White Tree tells me nothing about the fairest of them all and I tip my brow instead to the eye in the peacock’s feather drawn out by climbing ivy across its towering trunk .

I pass the sentinels and the shadowy figure is not so present today, I look down and find another kind of damaged skin, this time on an ivy leaf, a brown scab captured within its blooming hearts.

The thaw is here and the drops are hanging off the Swamp Cypress branches, a sugar coating still shrouds a stump, and for now the tracks of the Glen walkers – human, canine and other, are still pressed into the frosty ground

Today to meet LL at 2.30 in the sunny and fresh Glen of many magical worlds, it felt like being inside a happy Breugal painting, families doing their leisure time things and smiling in the gold lit frost and in the shadows blue and chill.

We saw a pair of teals, another blue flash for the Glen, this time on the back of a dabbling duck as he motored across the glassy surface of the pond.

One very happy child found an ice sculpture formed around individual blades of grass at the rivers edge, we looked at the world inside it and then she put it in her bicycle basket to carry home

LL showed me her hiding/trading place for hazelnuts, it seemed to me a very safe bet guarded as it was by a pair of cantankerous twins.

The sun was going down by the time we reached the ridge, we stood under the oak and looked deep into the valley and across to the frozen North face. We drank in the sight of secret pathways made visible by the winter frost.

There has been no new snowfall and so what remains is the frozen leftovers from yesterday. I’m in the Glen by half past three and wondering what I’ll find today, I am happy to see the Glen little egret, Glenda, Glenn or Greta… the names are hovering, I see her as she swipes left on my approach, dragging her yellow boots behind her. I don’t even reach for my phone anymore, beginning to respect her desire not to be captured by me. One of the walkers recently took a photo showing off her lovely lacy plumage, just missing her fancy boots.

I head towards the Fleischmann place as I have a tub of leftovers to offer the robins there. Instead there are a couple of men deep in conversation by the fallen tree, not wanting to linger too close I spread my offerings and move on. I notice that the tree that leans in is an ash tree – I can’t be sure it’s the tree from the old photograph and I’m drawn by other things, there are a pair of curious ivy clad stumps by the river, surely too alike to be natural under their coats, and as I’m drawn in I notice a shadowy silhouette on the other side of the river.. this place is full of ghostly presences

I take the path out of the grove and head towards the high ridge. Up here in the cool air I find a crackling presence, I’m caught between the tangle of the bracken and the static energy coming off the prick-sparky gorse, each alight in the setting sun. The contrast between South and North facing slopes casts a strong diagonal across my path, already a giddy mix of steep falling away at one ear and rising incline at the other, I steady myself to keep balance.

On the way home there is a lurking ball, it too made glamorous in the low slanting light. The blackbirds are kept busy tossing around the leaf litter while the light fades.

One of the Friends of the Glen has found some images of the old Fleischman House… It is hard to imagine this in the undergrowth, today’s mission will be to locate this crazy tree, I can’t make out what the leaf form is but will be looking out for the bendy trunk and have sent out feelers for ID from the photo, this little bridge is still there… and so we hear that the Mill stream flowed under the Fleischmann House, and the Heron was captured from the kitchen window… just 28 years ago… labelled as “Glen House Ballyvolane 1947-1992” and “Mill stream flowing under Glen House – view from kitchen” on UCC’s Fleischmann Diaries page.

I find another astonishing photo from the Rory Gallagher Music Library’s archive on Aloys Fleishmann, I had heard that Maeve, one of the daughters built a house beside the family’s in the 1970s…

I find it fascinating to imagine these colossal buildings amongst the tangle of trees, I go looking, following the clues – the river ran under the house and the photo of the bridge was taken through the kitchen window. The site is at the place where there is a fork and diverging paths, So I enter left, via the ruined gate posts to ‘the clearing’ I turn and looking back I see the arch of the bridge and I find I am standing on the ground that is covering the river there are many remains of walls, and as many layers of history here so I’m following closely the clearest clues from the photos and

I see now there is the upright handle bars of a scooter where the Heron stood.

The Fleischmanns literally lived on top of a river …there is a fallen tree, I look for the bending tree from the photo… there is a laurel, the large rhododendron where the parties happen and where the drinks cans clutter the ground, this is the right place, grown larger now

There is a family of shoots peeping out above the leaf litter a robin joins me while I excavate, deeply pleasurable, dank and dark and decaying fecund and virile we share moments together

I wanted to check in with the Ceder pile this morning, to see if it was still there and also to sample again the pencil perfume, wondering if it was still as strong in the frosty weather.. the pile was there all dusted in frost and the pencil scent was hanging in the air, it was a heady mix – the delicate ice patterns on the sawn wood and branches, the exposed diameters raw and fleshy anywhere they had been cut

The egret was there but managed to slip out of range again