Tent Envy
Once it was a gazebo that
Was the apex of my aspiration.
Now, happy camper, I ask,
Will a tipi be
The tent that suffices
Or will I want to canvas for a yurt?
Sheila Smith
Continuing Professional Development Officer, West Lothian Council
Sheila previously worked in the secondary school sector, teaching Modern Languages and English although has always had in interest in Adult Learning which she developed through teaching in a Community High School and in college evening classes. She has also worked as a volunteer in Adult Literacy. Sheila completed an MSc in Lifelong Learning in 2006. Her main area of is interest currently is the particular cultures, environments and relationships which promote teacher learning. Leadership development is also a major focus.
At home, in the country, but just beyond the town, she is head chef and creative director of garden enterprises. While recognising that it is good to live in the present, she spends time planning future travel destinations. Sometimes she even actually arrives somewhere.
The Significance of Yellow
From my rocky place I notice yellow. A yellow buoy in the blue grey water. The yellow tangles of seaweed clinging to the wet ledges. Vivid yellow lichen creeping over dark rock. The muted golden beacon of the tipi on the distant shore. The sudden hyperreality of the chrome yellow sheep grazing in the dull green field behind the beach. The natural and the surreal combine to confirm the importance of yellow. Sunshiney colour of hope and optimism. Cheerful, individual, stand out, see-me colour in a grey world. You can make your mark with yellow.
Two days later, picking out a natural object, I reject the dots of purple scabious punctuating the long grass. I walk past the emerald moss seeping on the rock. I choose instead the intense yellowness of a lone clump of ragwort growing by the river. Why so? The answer to the yellow question came at last. Flowers don’t inspire violence, don’t need courage. Even ragwort, malevolent to horses is benign for me. Botany is not so bloody. Activism saves whales and rainforests not flowers, even wild ones. So, yellow for cowardice? My riverbed mate chooses liverwort. Liverwort, the plant to heal the liver, seat of courage and passion. Her choice is made out of admiration and amazement, not for need. The need would be mine. A tonic for the lily livered, herbal help to break the taboos imposed by individualistic values, nicegirl mores, personal distaste. The meaning of yellow: not always mellow.
The Rock, the Sea
Solo spot in marginal space
Ebb and flow, sit and stay
The rock, the sea
The sea, the rock
Abraded rock, old stone recast
As sand, between the toes of
All knowing certitude
And all seeing possibility
Agitating water, racing time
Dipping in, making waves
Pushing boats against the undertow
Eroding immovable shores
Intertidal zone of form in flux
Silt now in resolution
Rock, sure of heart and foot,
Sea, fleet of mind and spirit
The sea, the rock
The rock, the sea
The hunter home from the hill
We have been blessed by cloudless blue skies and autumn sunshine since we arrived in Knoydart. Settled weather for the unsettling process. Today has been a day of highs and lows, lightness and darkness; the beauty of the place and our various expressions of fragility; the warmth of the sun and the emotional shadowplay. Round the campfire, sprawled on the beach, and from our hard won positions on the hillside: checking in, making meaning, being heard, embracing silence. And Knoydart, impassive, unchanging witness to both the low vibrational peace generated by our short solo experience and the strident jubilation of the hunting horn. And the hunters home from the hill.
Occidentation
Debby has reflected interestingly on orientation. It is often illuminating to consider the original meaning of words, in this case positioning towards the east. Ironically we find ourselves positioning towards the west as we prepare for Knoydart. I am naturally drawn to the west which seems to represent freedom and possibility. Thinking of West Coast America, the untamed Wild West, and closer to home, remote, empty, unspoilt landscapes. Historically in Scotland the west represents the margins of the land, lives of simplicity and hardship, enforced population movement, often resulting in emigration. Perhaps that is why the combination of the beauty of the landscape and the hardship endured by the people who once inhabited it is so haunting to us today. Hopefully Knoydart will satisfy an atavistic yearning for simplicity and freedom by allowing us to access a more direct relationship with the land. So I am orientating by occidentating.
the Final Frontier?
An adventure into so many unknowns: the group experience, my own experience, our reponse, my response, but the first adventure of all starts here: the blog. No longer just shirking and lurking round other people’s blogs. Working my own here now with the first tentative steps into terra incognita. Going live in more ways than one!
