It is high summer, and this country spirals into the dizzying frenzy that is the British summer holidays. The dry land tires of increased traffic and footfall, yet still provides abundance. My first year of growing in a new place fruits in the form of beans, courgettes, chard, tomatoes and herbs. The soil is not so good, but this is the most food I have ever grown.
When summer is over, I will dig out the bolted chard, crazed vines and giant courgette leaves to give the ground some breathing space. Too much nitrogen in the soil apparently results in big leaves and less fruit, so more mulching and wood chip is needed for next year. The seasons are like this for humans too, adapting each season with learnings from the previous year. In a fractious climate this includes being prepared for more eventualities and changeability, at home and whilst travelling.
I have just returned from a ten day trip to the very edges of these isles. From North Wales we headed up through motorways and the ‘fake’ North (Manchester, which is actually the middle), to the Scottish Borders. From there my little blue van plodded up to Ullapool, my past home of six months and a place which pulls me back again and again. Nestled amongst mountains and sea, Ullapool is miles from anything and has a very special and rare sense of community. It has a high volume of artists, and despite relying on a fair amount of tourist trade in the summer stays true to a unique sense of place and soul.
Ullapool was somewhere I really, really wanted to stay, but life had other plans (below is a poem about that). Still, an enduring love affair between Ullapool and I continues to unfold. I think it will be life-long and that it is meant to be this way. Some loves are supposed to be a more distant part of our lives, weaving in and out of it over the years. It would not be the same to live with it every day – as an occasional deep dweller I can fall in love over and over again, bringing fresh inspiration back into my day-to-day places and connections. Artists often express these connections with place through their practice. How do the places we love and revisit change us, and play out in our evolving day-to-day geographies?
Passing Place: a poem
I am a contradictory mix of earthy homebody and eternal nomad. Nothing pleases me more than to stay at home, inhabiting my own space and speaking very little. Yet there is a restless sprit there too, who craves to see with fresh eyes and explore new terrain. The terrain, as mentioned above, is mostly tired of visitors. As a driver of a diesel van I know I am very much part of the problem, and by now we’d racked up a lot of miles. The far North edges were calling in all their wild remoteness, and North we went. I try to travel in a way which feeds my work (rather than just for leisure), partly due to an inability to not be constantly learning. I also like to visit places that inspire how I want to live in terms of community, sustainability, spirituality, creativity and lifestyle. Before leaving the Ullapool area, we hiked the two hour trail to Scoraig; an off-grid community accessible only by boat or foot.
Exploring the coast up to Durness, there were remote coves, golden eagles, white sand beaches and minke whales. I remembered a past obsession with Lewisian Gneiss, began an A3 sketchbook and felt into some new edges. The human nervous system must surely be related to land, perhaps this is why I love the coast and islands so much. Always I return from a new edge somehow expanded, moving within a bigger, freer sense of self.
The journey back South came to soon, yet involved a fun detour to Holy Isle and Bamburgh beach (of Last Kingdom Viking fame). The Easterly edges are new to me, and will be further explored out of the summer season. We did not walk the Pilgrims Path to Holy Isle, and I hope to return to walk it with a guide as Robert McFarlane does in his book The Old Ways. This ancient route is marked over mud-flats by sticks, and must only be walked at low tide with someone of local knowledge. New obsession alert: those curious, wayfinding, life-saving sticks.
Waters rise, our path becomes submerged and mysterious, possibly dangerous. It would be easy to stop wandering, to submit to singular narratives and close off from newness. Yet the world keeps on calling, whispering that there is something out there that we must see or feel or do or learn or be. What will we (as Mary Oliver puts it) do with this one wild and precious life? This life, that is mutably, blissfully, often uncomfortably, and eternally in our hands?
UPCOMING…
Poetry reading Wednesday 23/8/23
The Poetry Pharmacy, Bishops Castle, Shropshire. 7.30pm
I am supporting Jen Hawkins at the launch of her new pamphlet Moth, published by Mark Time Press. Book online at the Poetry Pharmacy.
RECOMMENDED READING…
• BFFs: The Radical Potential of Female Friendship by Anahit Behrooz
• Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities by Rebecca Solnit
• Terrain.org online magazine