Posts tagged with "knoydart"

Land of the living…?

Back from Knoydart for a few days, and it’s been an intriguing continuation of the journey. Lot of emotion and confused thoughts - ranging from pure rage at discovering on my first day back that they are going to tear the beautiful trees down outside my office to make way for the trams (and feeling so helpless about my power to stop it); to a real feeling of renewed perspective, with a counter-balancing awareness that keeping the sense of “connectedness” that all of us have written about is going to have its challenges.

But I do - after a week of intense city-dwelling, including a trip to London - have an overwhelming urge to be outside, despite the rain. My first convert is my husband, who arrived home today with his own pair of brand new walking boots - yaay! So any recomendations for some good walks around the Lothians very welcome!

The language thing is still my big issue - trying to explain what I’ve been doing to people has been tough, no getting away from it. And I have worried more about what people would think than perhaps I should. But reactions have been interesting - people I thought would laugh out loud have been curious and even envious, whilst others who I had predicted would “get it” have looked strangely bemused.

The other thing that is dawning on me is that there is a whole hinterland of academia surrounding this that I simply wasn’t aware of - from psychology, to environmentalism, to creativity and expression. Being the type I am, I’m tempted to start ploughing into theories and books (confession - have actually bought some already), but a part of me is resistant to it. So what if whatever I’m feeling and experiencing can be explained by Jung? But then, I’m part of a research project - a guinea-pig - so in the end, it is likely that secondary research like that will be drawn out, and parallels and assertions made. However, it reminded me of a poem that my Uncle Rae wrote for me before he died, in answer to me always asking the childlike question “why?” about everything. It’s buried in another book somewhere - will have to find it now - but essentially it was all about not always asking why (why is the sky blue? how can birds fly?), because in doing so; in forensically tearing things apart to see how it all works, you can lose the magic - and that’s what I really don’t want to do…

TALK TO ME PEOPLE!

But the bigger question is what am I hoping for from this blog? It’s a pretty big topic, saving the planet, so where do you start? Bit like eating an elephant I suppose – one bite at a time. This is just the start of a conversation and over the next six months the themes and ideas will emerge – and the challenges at a micro and macro level both personally and globally. I’d like it to be a conversation that is shared with people I know and those that I haven’t met yet. All contributions welcome – responses, questions, dissent and musings – feel free. Open discourse is the name of the game. I’m not doing this because I think I have any answers to these big questions – quite the opposite in fact. But I am clear the time has passed when we can just pretend it isn’t happening and hope someone else will fix it – there is no someone else – it’s down to us.

Solo day

One of the tasks was to find ‘our place.’ Somewhere to be present dawn to dusk. To be cradled, feeling one with the earth, somewhere we felt connected, at rest, content.

The night before I had done some preparation; OS Map 33: Loch Alsh, Glen Sheil and Louch Hourn, pathway from Inverie towards Gleann an Dubh-Lochain, past the monument, though the wood, right fork over bridge towards Glen Meadail, past the Drum bothy, skirt past Torran Tuirc and there was my place. 839981 look it up! I found it almost immediately it was so inviting. A natural resting place, the stop on a hillwalk, a wedge of mossy grass on the bank of a stream. I felt it was wonderful, could easily pass a whole day here, looking east an amphitheatred vista of Gleann Meadail and to the west a V shaped window to Inverie bay with Rhum and Skye. I made a pillow of my pack and micro-slept in smug contentment. Gently at first it began to rain.

Rain and stones

It kept raining. My westward window indicated more to follow. Waves of Atlantic rain. My view of the monument faded in the mist, my barometer and forecaster for the day. I could no longer maintain a lying postion, I like fresh rain on my face but this was like a sprinkler system going off over your hospital bed when stuck in a leg plaster. So I got to my feet. The stream offered a diversion. I had time to look intently into it, enjoy every coloured stone, some glittering, fragments of the Knoydart schists glinting, some sandy others opalesque. Some impulse made me gather, then I sorted, soon I had two competing cairns of opalesque stones one yellow the other white. The yellows won, not that you care.

But I wasn’t the only one working. A black flash from time to time revealed itself to be a dipper. A hardworking sleek black bird, long and wagtailled, white breasted and industrious. Certainly no diversionary activity here, this was survival, dipping for food security, rock to rock, pool to pool.

Then another army of workers appeared out to harvest blood. Mine. The Glean Meadail midgies revealed themselves to be much like their West Coast cousions. I contemplated the midgie hood. For about a minute, which feels like a long time in extremis. I needed to move. But it would break the rules! No matter I calculated I had walked about an hour stayed an hour, that made it about 9am! Plenty of time for new place hunting!

Second place

I packed up and walked on, leaving the grassy bank at Torran Tuirc. Upwards, up the glen, I trudged, the rain kept on. Looking back the monument was gone, dissolved in grey mist. The tapping on my waterproofs increased its frequency, the rain was on for the day.

Where to stop now? I had real ‘place anxiety’ now! Now I felt I’d erred, surely everyone else was settled in their places now and here I was toiling on. I passed by slippery ledges, rocks offering doubtful leeward shelter. So on and on up the glen I pressed on. Wetter and wetter, getting tired, slipping, the mist closing in, narrowing my options. Soon a forlorn rowan tree gestured to my right. It did offer another grassy ledge and gave a sense of shelter at least an anchor in this storm. So there it was second place but no means inferior.

I lay down again and clung to my pack in foetal like desperation. All my previous experience of wilderness walking made me instinctively walk through rain; quicker and downwards. This was giving up weather; ‘oh well pub anyone?’ But not today I had to sit through this, maybe for hours! I estimated maybe 10am? Plenty of time for hyperthermia.

Rain in my face again I tried to connect, feel cradled, drink in (literally) and kept my eyes shut. Despite layering and waterproofs I was wet and getting shivery. Imperceptibly at first there was some heat reaching my face, the sun was slowing winning a battle with the clouds. Some time passed I had shifted position to face the sun, like a flower or plant straining for the sunlight. I began to connect a little, elementally, taking in rain and sun.

My life as a tree

With sunlight I came back to life. Hope revived, the day became a more bearable prospect. My rowan tree lent itself to close inspection. I had a lot of time to spend with it.

This tree was not well. Up above me was a resplendent rowan tree, nestled next to a waterfall showing off its clumps of berries like Christmas decorations. But here on the ledge things were sparse, spindly and sickly. Moving under it I could see how growing out of the top of the rock cleft gave it limitations; a misshapen gravity defying U-bend trunk, stunted branches, a smattering of leaves and shrivelled fruit. Like our treatment of the planet this tree was trying to sustain itself but drew too much on limited on resources.

I imaged cutting the tree down and counting its rings. Its thickness suggested several decades, I fancied it like me being about 40. How had our lives compared? What seasons, weather, colours it had seen pass? How many birds visited and taken rest in its branches? Straining towards sunlight, pushing roots in tight gaps for nourishing soil, scattering seeds? Whose life was the more life affirming?

Walk on by

People were approaching! This made me surprisingly edgy. I had time to watch their descent towards me. Their steps halting, deliberate over the muddy, rough rocky path. Surley they’s engage in greeting, I searched for the explanation for what I was doing. I imagined an exchange of hillwalker pleasantries and then on being asked where I was headed, ” Oh well actually it’s a kind of dawn to dusk challenge, y’know” and stroke my chin, gaze to horizon.

My line ready I waited to give reception. At this point I’d ascended up to the other rowan tree, amongsts its rocks and waterfall position. Minutes passed and then they were beneath me! They passed too! They didn’t see me or acknowledge my presence! Maybe the rain focussed them on the path or I had achieved a blend-in. I couldn’t help feeling slightly snubbed and chuffed at the same time.

Knoydart sound and vision

The light was changing. It had been changing all day, the bursts of sunlight amid squalls of rain. The heathers, brackens and rock faces had colour makeovers by the minute. It was thrilling to watch, even with a wet bum. Took my mind off it, the wet bum that is.

It was a dazzling and compelling display. Nothing like it to restore childlike wonder but takes the patience of a saint to wait for. I was now in the Knoydart gloaming. Time to leave. I felt slightly disappointed to leave the glen looking the best and most spectacular it had all day.

Leaving brought unexpected pleasures. I heard distant grunts. Guttural whinnies and groans. No human sound this. Definitely from the right. Up on the goldening hillside there were specks of red. A deer herd and the stags calling. This was a privilege an experience unmatched by anything in digital HD. It felt almost intimate to be overhearing these domestic familial utterings amongst the deer.

I had lingered too long and faced a march back to the tipi in the dark.

solo poet

At the end of an intense couple of days. This is a powerful experience, there’s no question. The solo day – where we spent from dawn til’ dusk on our own out in the wilds of Knoydart - was incredible – but what has struck me the most has been the common threads and themes of everyone’s moving stories. We each told them in turn, and looking back we all felt an amazing sense of connection with the land around us – using the sun to navigate and tell the time by; cloud-watching; feeling a sense of place and ancestry; the time to focus in detail on the small miracles in this spectacular nature all around us; a sense of just being one small part of the whole living, breathing planet in amongst these mountains. Colour and sound – and the chance to really see it, and really hear it.

So this is maybe what the start of change feels like – wonderment, discovery, curiosity, a desire to experience more. Well, that’s what I’m feeling now anyway.

 I’d brought some poetry books with me – with the intent of taking out with me on the day, but decided not to in the end, to try to make sure I did not get distracted from the whole purpose. But when I came back tonight, I opened it at the page of one of my favourites by accident – and there it was – Renascence by Edna St Vincent Millay:

Was three long mountains and a wood;

 This is just the beginning – but I urge you to read it, and maybe then you’ll get a glimmer into all of this. She may not have done an “eco-psychology solo day”, but I get the feeling her sense of connection to the planet was no less astute than this experience seems to be creating for each one of us.

Journey in

As something long planned suddenly approaches, like the groundrush to a parachutist, I realise I don’t feel ready. On the bus now and feel like I’m on a school trip! Up until this point I’ve been checking my kit list, The strangest and most ironic part of the preparation was the last minute panic buying! Here I am entering a downscaling transformative experience in the wilderness and I don’t have enough stuff!

Unexpectedly I’m feeling a little nervous about the project for the first time; what will the group dynamics be like? How will we all get on? Will there be the usual suspects; born leader, distractor, sympathy seeker?

At least I have done some mental preparation. I’ve been imaging the experience as if a first time settler in Knoydart. Arriving on the shoreline of a never inhabited land. As a frontier pioneer where would I start? Shelter, water, food. Driven by these basic physical things I would go about creating, uprooting, making a base and setting out on trails. And yet it seems I’m not too far way from that person. All the decisions I make revolve around these basic needs and my part along with millions of others have made it unsustainable.

Clearing for puffins

I spent the whole days yesterday on Fidra island on the Forth clearing invasive mallow plant, as puffins can’t get into their burrows to breed because of it.  Lots of work there still to do but it was good, honest, physical work that i enjoy and miss these days being stuck in front of a laptop most days.  

Of course i am 44 (since monday!) and now feel it, but since I am so gym-adverse the physical aches feel unusual and quite virtuous too!  Actually helping wildlife is a good feeling - physical, mental, spiritual.  This was virtually the last trip out to the island this year as the seals are pregnant and waiting to haul out onto island to have their pups so don’t want to disturb or stress them by landing close by.  Seals are SO curious - most of our chopping down activities on the wee island were watched from the sea by several seals.  Was quite magical really - and free - I was a volunteer for the sea bird centre. 

Thought of our nearing trip to Knoydart as we went to Fidra island on a boat that may be similar to the one we’ll take to  Knoydart.  That bit was really exciting and exhilarating.  The whole thing was genuinely satisfying.  

I wonder if physically “making a difference” is an important part of feeling it psychologically?

preparing for Knoydart

Glenshee in the snow

Has CERN started working early?

I think I might be in a parallel universe… Here I am, a woman who has aspirations to become a “weel kent face” in Prada and Gucci stores around the world, about to embark on an “experiential change through nature” escapade on Knoydart - which everyone gleefully describes as one of the last wildernesses in Scotland.

Speaking of “everyone”…so far, the common response of everyone that I have told this fact to has been to laugh, long and hearty. But then, but then….a sense of envy comes into play, and then real intrigue as to what it is all about. To be honest, I’m not THAT sure myself, but we talk about how this is something challenging and exciting, plus how important it is to do something that really scares you every so often. And then back to more fundamental questions about how I’m going to snap my achilles heels walking in flat shoes for five days and was I aware there is no Clinique counter on Knoydart???

My most recent exchange with one of the project co-ordinators didn’t help. Commenting on how the only items I possessed on the (very) long and (very scary) packing list were a notebook and pair of sunglsses (naturally!), the response came back: “I know - it means you get to go shopping at Tiso - heaven!!” Sorry? Tiso? Isn’t that that place in-between Cruise and Jaeger darling??

Yup, it’s a different world I’m heading for. And that - THAT - is absolutely the point….