Gill Troup
Depute Principal and Vice Principal, University of the West of Scotland

Middle Earth Menage

In this, the middle day of our stay, we create our outdoor art beside the river. Each of us builds and crafts and sculpts and draws and writes forming what is here, a tiny Zen garden to a construct larger than human.

First – I climb across river with fence and two others helping. Did she construct the hillside in an hour with frozen pools and swirled white grass and red streaks through it?  Orange red streak into the river and I know I have been here before. Stones into the water and clumps of grass coming out. For here there is a theme of memory and memorial this week.

Second – He lay in his bivvy bag and wrote us a poem. A short duvet day which made him feel better and in this place … with us again …and just wanting to be. 

Third – A perfect zen cluster on a bed of shaped wood – water and sand, stone and fish. The water sounded the same 500 years ago and ice is less dense when frozen than when liquid. This man has new born twins – they are seven days old today. 

Fourth – My companion gives us another gift of her art. Spiral of lichen buried in sand flowing into the water at its heart emerald velvet of moss around grit, the contrast of textures the thing. She has had feet in the water and hands in the earth and says she lost her place into process.

Fifth – Holds a shambles in her hands of twigs lichen thread and detritus of nature.  She tellsa story and for me something new each time – I learn and learn being here. She can pull it apart and find herself and so she does.

Sixth – Is in layers, the grass drinking the water, the twigs rest on top and then blue plastic threads which are false and then all overlaid with a triangle of reeds and grasses, one reed for each us going in and out from here to our  lives and our loves and together hold us up .

Seventh – His lattice or weave is of sticks tied with nettles – they sting. The ones which break do not bend, they snap, so discarded, scattered about. He is going with the ones who will bend – not wasting his time with the rage-causing snappers and breakers. Red shot gun cartridges among the debris.

Eighth -  Found an altar and adorns with gifts of lichen held down with stones. It is a table in memory of the Salvadoreans who made their own, not idolatrous, and the priests came to them.

Ninth – In the same space and place one sees a frame – we are framing ourselves in this natural context. She has a spiral of stones, all good. “No stone without sea” – each is good and unique and the circle a spiral but closed for completion.

Tenth – Last to me and a safety net of wood on wood. No tree damaged in the making of this sculpture. I could have immersed me in the river. Me inside nature. Two trees hold up all of the sticks small and large, thick and thin, and can also support all of me.

I hung on the tree like a bear. Embraced it with cheek to bark  – legs and arms swinging close to the water, happy like child and silent at last so… some still place to be from, to move in being still.

 Don’t write.

Express  yourself in other ways.

Make it physical.

Let it go, the control.

Poo sticks

 through the water under the bridge 

“Poo Bah”…

the name for the thing with no name which I can’t quite describe

which is definitely happening to me right now!

And the web of wood built to hold me above the river between the trees – fourteen sticks, one for each of us here today.

Don’t write.

Express  yourself in other ways.

Make it physical.

Let it go, the control.

Poo sticks

Poo Bah!

Still Without Stopping

 On our second day I build our garden and our home out of paper in utopian and dystopian form. This was good. Colour, glue, bits of stick, in the old village hall – same design as at home – which has thatdrymustydustybutnice smell of bring-and-buy sales and the Rural Institute baking and community meetings about the rubbish collection.

Our first solo, at last, and so short – afternoon until dusk about five thirty. Every one of us loses our shape into formless dark plodding things under layers of goretex and down, with humps from the bags full of blankets and the 20 items of clothing we seem to need…dressing up and dressing down is a pain layer after layer and no sooner on than nature calls.

 So out and up the Minster’s Path then off it and up the hill towards the first lonely tree. Then further up towards the second tree, I see a spent yellow shotgun cartridge and pick it up – wonder what’s been shot and if I’ll see one alive. I go across to a rocky mound – maybe some shelter from the rising steel wind – but no, already been colonised by corrugated zinc and red plastic-covered wire which has held it together.  A brown plastic beer bottle sitting like a missile in pride of place – been here some time –I wonder how long it will take to disappear….for ever?

So up again to tree three – at last high enough to see over the hills and across the glen and a hint of the valley to the east and the hill to the north. I drop of my burden, black bag and incongruous emerald greed fleece rug from Ikea made in China. One of our number has told me they make them from thread spun from recycled plastic bottles which makes me feel a bit better but at £2.75 all the way from China something is wrong and it sits out from the tree on the hill like an accusation.

Tree Three - with bag

 I keep walking up to the ridge and then faster and faster along it to the south so I can see into the place where I spent so much time as a child – Glen Clova with the Airlie monument marking its start. Why have I not been back here for decades? It is two hours from home not two days. I come across a well worn sheep track. This is where the farmer I knew will have walked with his dogs for years. He will have known these hills so well and I so little. The mist sits like a damp shrug on the hills and the wind is sharper and louder nipping into the crevices where the Michelin wrap has smoothed lines.

Sheep Track

Walking back to tree three, there are still hard packed patches of snow which tells me the temperature here has been colder than home. The grass is pale frosted and strewn with lumps of granite (is it? Why don’t I know these things?) and pointed stumps of trees across the spread of it like angry creatures  fighting their way out from the peat below. (I later find out they are remains of silver birch forest – but why so jagged?)

I sit at tree three for a quarter of an hour – too cold, too windy – and then take a long steep route back to warm dark fire at our base – still without stopping all afternoon….

Strange Meeting

It seemed that out of battle I escaped.

Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped

Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.

Mood music entirely different from Knoydart journey as I crash around the house throwing things into a bag and drive at speed to Stirling station. Forgotten - blast, blast - head torch, waterproof shoes, hip flask (secret treasure of illicit still from last visit in week of de-toxing). Stirling grey, station almost shut, same bus grey this time not silver in the sun. Windows steamed, countryside flat and dull. I wonder if I’ll recognise this road I haven’t travelled for 30 years. I don’t…..until we get through Kirrie up to Dykehead.  The Jubilee Arms looks as if it has not changed a jot since 1960.

Up and onwards taking the left fork to our Glen and suddenly we see the hills and the river running through it. It’s a bit like what’s 2-dimensional suddenly adds another dimension which instantly reminds me why we are here…better already.

The Sign and the Village Hall

Others are here, kitchen full of beans and vegetables, tipi /tepee waiting for us across a  bridge down by the river – a river running by it, a river running through it. I remember my father going fishing in the mornings from the cottage we rented from the sheep farmers in Glen Clova - the next Glen only a couple of miles away. 

I grudge the fact that the journey here was not more pleasant. I am guilty that I have not done my urban solo homework and have not made the time to do justice to the little bit of research I needed to do. I think about the fact that despite best intentions and some time outdoors in the first week in January I am depriving myself and those I love of time and space.

 So first day in the tipi/tepee is about the urban solo – many of us found it hard or impossible to do – what does that tell me, apart from easing my guilt. Almost everyone found it a negative experience but one tells a saddening and inspiring story about the humanity he saw which was full of hope…in a consumer palace I pass through so often without stopping. Telling my short story about not doing it, and listening to what my friends have heard me tell, again gives me powerful insights from the group.

IN THE LOOP?

So after the facts of the first residential, where have I got to? And why am I finding it so much easier to describe what I have been doing and seeing and hearing and tasting and smelling than it is to get the right words to describe what’s going on in my head and my heart without sounding detached or, worse, demented!  Can I use words like blessed and soul and love and kindness and warmth and care and compassion and be credible in my own mind, far less the minds of the people who see the different fragments of me.

Having spent a lot of time on the coast, on the final day we walked into the valley, into the hills, and paused again for thought. The group got into talking about education and values and why we seem to have got so far into tasks and milestones and measures at the expense of the purposes which brought us all there in the first place. So starting to link it back into the rest of our lives.

So beautiful a place to leave, it was always going to be hard to leave, but last morning sunrise from the boat made me cry and laugh – which surprised me – and made me think about what that was about.

But I am sitting here, writing this at home, actually struggling to re-engage which is not like me. Putting off getting back in the loop I suppose – but part of the purpose of this must be to connect the being with the doing; to use the privilege of the experience I have had over the last few days with the day-to-day reality of how we live and work.

I think that is probably the connection – or the re-connection – which I said earlier in the week I needed. So what next? Stick with the programme, I think is all I can do, and keep trying to capture how my thinking (feeling?) develops in words…or pictures?

Look out for things which I want to change, or have changed without noticing maybe? More being and less doing – definitely!

THE THICK OF IT

There are these days when you get up and look out of the window and know that it is just going to be a gift of a day and the first full day of our shared and individual journey was one of these. Clear, clear blue skies and warm sun in a location which reminds you why we live in Scotland and why we are so proud. Activities in this day were about getting to know aspects of each other better – and aspects of ourselves maybe – through a bit of physical activity and practice stillness and observation. So sitting on the hillside, seeing, scenting and hearing so much better than I normally so – a blade of grass being moved by a small rustling creature below which I couldn’t see; vivid red and black berries; tiny spiders weaving webs with strands floating gently in the air; a dragonfly sitting on my fingers long enough for me to take a photograph.

And a helicopter reminding me that the other aspects of life can be a long way away in this stunning place. And on the way back a dead and bloody stag in the back of a truck where hunters are talking loudly about the day’s sport.

So many contrasts, so many sensations, is a bit like an avalanche and I am wondering to myself where this is going to go.

The pivotal activity of the week is the solo – an opportunity for a day and two nights to reflect and focus (being not doing) in a personal space in the outdoors. There is much humour amongst those who know me about me not talking for a protracted period of time, but that actually holds no concerns. Being in the moment – having no choice in that, not being in control – is a surprisingly good sensation.

Each of us sets out and returns in darkness across a threshold framed by bells – sound and vision again – more literally that is from the tent in which we meet as a group and hearing a chime to start and stop periods of not talking. For me, in advance, this feels like a bit of a chore, but in the moment, up and out before dawn, is exciting and a bit edgy. Lots of questions about what it will be like and what it will do to me…if anything at all…

Looking back on it feels very different from what it was like at the time.

At the time it was a series of fragments, of impressions, of pictures : of people – not yet out of bed, or passing with a wave but no words, or playing a loud game in the distance, or taking a chainsaw to a tree; of creatures – seventeen goats looking down on me, surreal chrome sheep, sea birds, industrious artistic small spiders; raspberry sphagnum moss; of views into and out of Knoydart; of light and dark; dank sticky charcoal mud flats; laughing to myself in the woods; and the joys of the composting toilet and the swing on the way back to the companionable silence of a fire and a warm meal. My stick on the fire glowed red rather than burst into flame – perhaps that is how this is evolving….or am I just obsessively reading too much into everything because I can? And lots of thoughts, ideas, frustration at not being still. And such vivid pictures and so many from just a single day – I can’t recollect in tranquillity the emotion of a normal day the way I can this one.

My individual experience then became part of a much larger and richer whole as each of us told our adventure over the course of the following day. (“Adventure” is from the root which means to arrive, same as “advent” – will we arrive somewhere together?)  Overrriding feeling at this point was being physically and emotionally tired but also pulled together as a group quite remarkably.

NO SLEEPS LEFT

Pottering through the Trossachs behind slow drivers and the occasional bus is my start to the journey to Knoydart and what comes after. At this point my head is still somewhere between last week’s e-mails and the vague worry that I might arrive late at the Green Welly meet up point. Arriving with half an hour to spare – happily looking forward to the prospect of some light breakfast and shopping – I immediately bump into some of our number being friendly and welcoming and concerned that I know where they’re going for coffee and a last meat eating session before our week of veggie alcohol free bliss. So I – somewhat grudging – antisocially join them.

The silver bus then takes us to boat from Mallaig – giving up control as a driver of course gives me time to gaze out of the window. This is a perfect day – clear and blue and sun-filled – and the road through the mountains and glens past lochs and lochins moves my head into a more appreciative mode.

Then the blast of the boat and the drama of the Knoydart skyline makes me smile.

This is strange thing to do. Five days in a confined space with 15 strangers – including one with whom I have a work relationship so some residual anxiety about that – literally not knowing what the programme holds ahead far less how I will react to it – feels like something pretty risky. And again about giving up control and trusting in strangers. But post- dinner chat on first day is suitably sceptical and gives me some reassurance that I am not the only busy person concerned about the usefulness or otherwise of navel gazing. And good evidence of humour abounds so that lightens me up a bit. Better by far though is the point at which we start to wander outside to look at the stars – millions of them, and the Milky Way, and Jupiter clear and bright and winking – more than I think any of us have been able to see from Scotland before. So when I got to bed it was with some relief and some wonder, some people claustrophobia, and more curiosity.

SIX SLEEPS AND THEN…

So only six sleeps it is until we take off on this awfully big adventure. 

Surprisingly for me, the more I find out about the practicalities - the  more real it is becoming - the more anxiety-provoking it feels. Hey ho…let’s just immerse myself in another day of work as displacement activity. (I’m in Glasgow, Dumfries and Edinburgh today; can I ever do this the way I want to without a car?)

Looking forward to the boat and the sounds of silence though (with apologies to my fellow travellers).