Here I stand,

Says the ancient sycamore,

As the river thunders

As the waters swirl

As the high water Tay rushes past,

Here I stand.

Here I stand,

Says the tall mighty tree,

As the people pass

As they gawp at my neighbour

As they rush past my splendour,

Here I stand.

Here I stand,

Says the sycamore,

As the forest was timbered

As the trees were cut back

As Birnam was broken,

Here I stand.

Here I stand,

Says the ancient,

As you walk with your troubles,

As you pass with your fear-thoughts,

As you wrestle with worries,

Here I stand.

~~~

Inspired by this ancient, 300 year old sycamore, standing next to the more famous Birnam Oak, one of the few survivors of the ancient medieval forest at Birnam.

I grew tired of thinking, listening, smelling, hearing, feeling, trying to write, trying to notice, trying to think about how I would write.

Grew tired of the creative challenge I had set myself: exploring, looking for evidence of autumn, looking for 29 things.  I grew weary. Things looked jaded.

I stopped myself.  Stopped trying to capture, to process, to notice, to think.

Started to gather instead.  Gathered objects: real, tactile, dirty, wet, curled up, broken, twiggy, wet.

Felt the pleasure of the objects in my fingers: seeds, leaves, burrs, nuts.

Noticed the imperfection of the objects, more real than the photos of the colours.

Dull, faded, brown, dull.  Curled up, broken.  Falling apart, disintegrating.

Wanted it real, not processed.  Wanted 3D, not flat.

Wanted to feel through my fingers, not think through my mind.

So I walked through the woods, gathering leaves.  Felt about seven years old.

Gathering leaves for my grandmothers: look, look at this one!  Look at this, what a beauty, look at this!

Gathering leaves for a nature table at school: look what we’ve found, what we’ve noticed, what we’ve learned.  Look how we’ve gathered the feel of autumn.

My spirits lifted as I walked, not taking photos, not writing,  not thinking, just gathering.

Processed it later, of course.

A fragment of conversation:

Why do we stop gathering up leaves and seeds to show, share, tell, celebrate?

A photograph

A word picture on my wall:

But still.  Still, as I touch it, the picture’s in 3D.  It’s changing day by day.  The leaves turning dry.  The seeds hardening.  The berries rotting.

It’s real.

It’s dark, imperfect, curled, up, disintegrating.  It’s darkly red, it’s reddening darkly.

The picture is red at its heart.

~~~

And somehow I know there’s one more than one lesson here.

It’s a reminder not to write, sometimes, but rather just to gather, to bundle up leaves, to go back to childhood, to celebrate, gather and enjoy.

But it’s also a story of nature’s harvest.  The gathering time for a woman.

Patterns repeating.

Curled up.

Torn and tattered.

Dull, and colourful.

Colourful, and dull.

Disintegrating.  Slowly letting yourself fall apart.

Perfect imperfect.

Imperfectly perfect.

Three dimensional.

Red at heart.

Breathe, she said, breathe the air that stops as I pass,
Soft, hushed, calm, electric

Listen, she said, to the music that follows my moves,
Songs, whistles, drums of the forest

Smell, she said, smell my perfume as I sway,
Still turning heads and breaking hearts

Feel, she said, feel the strength of my feet
Solid, rooted, grounded

Watch, she said, watch the swirl of my skirt
Watch it fold, and dance, and twirl,

As I scatter confetti
As I move in the forest
As I dance to the birdsong
As I breathe out my perfume
As I stand here sure-footed
In my full female power

Watch, she said

As I swing through the seasons
As I dance through the decades

Learn, she said

As I shake my leaves
As I twirl my skirt

As I show you just how to dance.

~~~

Inspired by this gorgeous tree at the side of the River Earn, whose bark reminded me of the swirl of a skirt, and who looked gorgeous and graceful enough to be a dancing queen.

Thanks to Amy Palko at Less Ordinary for the additional inspiration to dare to write (and publish and share) something creative on Will You Join The Dance?

It was a day

to let you take me by the hand
to let you whisper in my ear “stop looking”,
to let you lead me into the garden

It was a day to feel:

The cool of the air
The damp of the rain
The greyness of the day

Soaking my jacket
Kissing my face
Soothing my soul

So I followed your invitation to:

Step over stones over tiles
Bejewelled
Pulsing with blue
Brush past the flowers
Damp with fresh raindrops
Breathe the dank darkness of the wood
Step into the dampness of the rain soaked garden
Let go of expectations
No sunshine, it’s raining
Just be

Pathways open
Archways appear
The vista changes and I turn the corner
The stone talks to me, firmly,
Your’re here now.
It’s time.
That’s the time.
This is the time.

I trace it with my fingers in the rain.
You’re here.
It’s time.

Rail all you like,
Wish things away
A moment past,
A future lost
Won’t change a thing:
It’s set in stone.

No, I won’t move
Won’t change my mind
Or alter my course
I’ll stand here, firm,
While you struggle and weep:
It’s set in stone.

~~~
Words inspired by the art work at the Smith Art Gallery garden, Stirling.

Quiet roads

Straightforward houses

People going about their work

And minding their business

It’s quiet, easy, peaceful

Walking

Till you take the path down

Down from the corner of the road

Down, down to the mill by the bridge

Down, down to the pulse of the burn

Teeming, seething,

Pulsing with history,

Dark with brown water

Surging with life.

I can’t decide what to look for but a burst of purple heather at the top of the church lane makes the decision for me. And so I watch for purple as I walk.

You wouldn’t be surprised at the flowers and plants I found on my way: crocuses, tiny hedgreow blooms, dark purple leaves on the ground, even the woody stalks of the brambles have gone purple, as if the juice of the last berries has been sucked into them, waiting to paint the next batch of berries when the autumn comes back around.

And I guess you wouldn’t be surprised at the pebbles and rocks on the shore, the inner shine of an oyster shell, the near brown shades of the sea-weed, all adding to my collection.

It was the rubbish that perplexed me the most – dairy milk chocolate, a blackcurrant Locket, a calypso bar from the summer, even the print on thrown away papers was running purple in the rain. A circle of plastic washed up on the shore. An old office chair in someone’s garden – mainly white with a bright purple cushion. As if it had been put there, waiting for me.

On the way back from Kings Cross my eye was caught by a fragment of material in the muddy ground. A fragment of something bigger, a scarf maybe, or the lining of a glove, embedded deep into the earth, only an inch of colour showing: deep, dark purple.

Later in the day I walk out again. I’m looking for different things now.

As if.

Purple leaves, stones and flowers are thrown into view. Look at me, they say. We’re here too.

I walk down to the shore at Fallen Rocks and it’s all I can do not to laugh.

The rocks and stones are a thousand shades of purple, as if a god has taken the colour and splintered it into a thousand million variations all lying here at the beach to the north of Sannox.

It starts to rain and I can’t help myself, I gather up handfuls of pebbles, tiny stones and larger rocks, filling my pockets with the fruits of my day, bringing home bundles of purple.

There are purple crocuses, palely coming into bloom, in the centre of the yard.

The lane leads down to to the road. It’s bumpy, pocked, muddy. Water pours in from a leaking culvert. John is proud of the state of his lane.

I meet him walking back. Collecting his post from a hand-made post box, a bucket with a half fitting lid.

There are daffodils by the side of the lane. Some are just starting to bud. Some are in full bloom. It’s impossible to walk past the daffodils without the hope of a poem bursting inside you. Even if you don’t want it to.

The lane leads down past an old house, half in ruin, the for sale sign crossed out with a sold. It sits almost at the corner of the lane, where the track meets the road. I call it the main road, but it’s just the road that runs round Arran really. It’s busy when the boat comes in, a stream of traffic filing their way to their home, their end point on the island.

I turn left at the end of the lane, over the bridge. The river is running full. The wind is blowing in the trees, wintry brown in the woods, it’s misty today, but there’s still colour in the wood.

I cross the road to Sliddery and walk into town.

The road goes past a wood, the grounds I think of a big house you can just see in the distance. The trees swing in the wind and it looks like a place you’d want to play in as a child. As I walk past the trees something catches my eye: pink blossom on the branches of a bare tree. I look up through the grey branches to a totally grey sky and the blossom smiles.

On the way back a man stops me to point through the trees. “A heron” he says. I can’t see it, though he keeps on pointing. He’s disappointed in my response. “Well I think it’s amazing, it’s amazing to me”. This is enough to give my eyes focus and I see the bird, not one, but four birds sitting quietly in the scrub beyond the trees. Just sitting, or waiting, or thinking or having a heron parley.

I walk past Murray Place. I’ve done this walk many times, repeating this cycle over and over, coming to Arran, coming to Lamlash, looking, wanting, unable to move past the paralysis of the dream. And that knowledge carries with me as I walk, dampening my spirits as I look at the hill behind the houses – it’s not much of a hill but it’s shape is just perfect, it always make me smile – and the Holy Isle, sitting, waiting, as it always does. It’s good to know that Holy Isle will always be there.

I cross over and walk by the shore. There’s a wading bird there, a curlew perhaps, it has an impossibly long beak. The bird looks silly, comical, to my untrained city eye, and yet at the same time it is so perfect, so perfectly designed, so right for its purpose, that my eyes fill with tears at the unutterable wonder of the whole thing.

The wonder of evolution, of adaptation, and the wonder of the knowledge that all of this, somehow, was thrown into being by some essential, elemental, universal force.

It’s misty on the way out, wild and wet when I turn back for home. The weather doesn’t trouble me. I like it. I like the feel of the wind on my cheeks and the highland rain on my face. It reminds me of the person I was when I was small. Because I remember that feeling of walking on the moor with my grandmother with the wind in my hair and the cold rain on my cheeks, walking to cut the peats.

Oh it’s not rain as such it’s rain in the wind, it’s mist that makes you wet, it leaves you wet and cold but laughing too. The wind batters when I turn and I think about wind in the city, the way we scurry to get indoors, the dirt that blows around, the bins that uproot. I don’t walk in the town when it’s windy.

I’ll walk here. Walk out and talk with god, watch the waves, listen to the cry of the oystercatcher.

Know that I’m home.

You might be forgiven for thinking it was totally grey.

But there is colour everywhere, if you know where to look.

Walking along the front at Lamlash I notice a line of small birds. A flock of oystercatchers. My favourite bird (how did you know?)

I bend down to try and capture the group. The movement makes them fly up and away.

The sky is a flash of black and white, brilliant flashes of white, illuminating.

As far from grey as can be.

My landlord is waiting for the bus, a hopeful trip to the Ferry terminal, to see if the boat is running. In the Co-op, neighbours discuss the speed of the wind. There’s a discussion about speed and directions, and what it means for the running of the boat.

The boat is the pulse of the island. Regulating its pace, its speed, its economy. It’s a constant, humbling, reminder that there are things outwith our control.

By the shore at Kildonan the wind howls, blowing salt water onto my face. The waves crash on the distant headland. It’s hard to stay out, to stay upright, but it’s hard to stay inside too.

The wind has wild dervish energy. It makes me shout, and laugh.

The wind has dominion.