still-finding-our-way

[still-finding-our-way]

W11, W12, W13

30/12/2020

Waking the dead, life, love and gossip

Flakey, flake, flake flake. I admit it, I let myself down and my nearest and dearest. Oh, the fucking self pity. Despite the ever changing rules and regulations over lockdown, we had planned to get out and walk with our respective menfolk during Christmas and New Year. We set a date and located a route. The forecast looked splendid—crisp and clear—it was going to be amazing. The day came round. I got up late, too late for my early morning climbing session with my daughter. I got dressed in my walking gear, and half an hour before leaving I couldn’t do it. I just could not walk out the door. So I cancelled and went back to bed. Yup, the diary of a depressive. Jen was her usual sage self and pointed out it was ‘twixmas’ and everyone was feeling shit, upside down and the wrong way round, and I should stop beating myself up about it. As Jen and A were already on route they continued on and later sent a breathtaking photograph of the high moor with the sun setting in one direction and the moon rising in the other. Studying the image on my phone in bed, I might have been peering into another world—a martian landscape, the light from the setting sun scattering a Persimmon glow across the moor grass—bronze and gold, molten lava, heat and searing passion. Dear Persephone, Queen of the underworld, you should eat all the seeds. These are winters treasures. Am I looking at a take from an African plain or perhaps a still from the film Dune? No, this is Dartmoor in searing clarity. The sky divided, storm grey cloud drawn low on the horizon and above an endless cyan—a blue to swim in. I could breath the freshness, feel the cold stinging my skin. Oh, the guilt and longing. So, I went out for a run to try and temper the physical yearning, and the next day messaged Jen to see if she could squeeze in another Dartmoor visit, with the promise that I wouldn’t bail this time. Two seconds later—a ping back with ‘Hell yes’. 

This time we kept our sights local, and though not a long walk we were going to colour in three whole squares on the 365 map: W11, W12 and W13. It felt like an accomplishment, nearly a full house—a line of colour beginning to emerge on the southernmost part of the map. The proposed route bypassed our previous walk to Western Beacon and headed for Ugborough Tor. The day arrived and clearly Santa Claus had been kind to Jennie. She cut quite a dash in her new walking gear, all booted and suited with military style walking shoes and thermal clothing. We exchanged gifts. From me to her a pair of essential gaiters—or ‘garters’ as Jennie likes to call them, and from her to me, some stylish ultra retro sunglasses. We agreed walking on the moor does not mean having to leave aside fashion. We parked up in the tiny hamlet of Harford and headed straight for St Petroc’s church, a Grade 1 listed building dated to the late 15th / early 16th century.

On this grey mizzly day at the very end of the year, the church looked bleak and unwelcoming. It wasn’t helped by the metal grill shuttered across the porch with a blunt no entry notice. We mooched around the graveyard at the rear of the church. Neglected and overgrown, it had a definite gothic air. We read the gravestones and pondered over the groupings of names and families. New to the term, I find out we are quickly becoming ‘tapophile’s’ or ‘grave stone tourists’—a person whose hobby or pastime is visiting cemeteries, graves and epitaphs; not to be confused with ‘necrophile’ and the perversion of showing a sexual or physical interest in the dead!  Not so much a morbid past-time, but one that is curious about past lives. Anyway we are apparently in good company as Shakespeare was supposed to have been a ‘tapophile’, and the related study of ‘taphonomy’ investigating processes of decay in archeology sounds fascinating and important. The hierarchal order of a graveyard is telling. Usually the bigger the slab the more powerful, influential and wealthy the incumbent, closely followed by the decorated memorials of war heroes protecting the former, whilst the women and children and those that had to live out the consequences of the deeds of the big slabs are marked by simple headstones. With this in mind when we came across a large plot encircled by low iron railings, containing a headstone marked John Jeffrey Dixon, 1756-1828, and surrounded by several smaller plaques, engraved with initials and the year of death all listed as 1855, we were intrigued. What could have happened? Were these children? A family tragedy, disease or perhaps a virus or infection?

I should not be surprised to discover that I have leaning towards taphophilia. Death came a blunder-bussing down my family’s own door a few autumns ago bringing with it a tsunami of destruction that took away three loved ones in a matter of weeks. In our highly polished antiseptic 21st century lives, tragedy is supposed to happen elsewhere, on the telly or as macabre titillation on news feeds. Having seen the havoc caused by the sweep of death at such close quarters, I seem to have developed an ear for the hidden tragedy that lies behind the bureaucratic recording of birth and death dates. One such story came with the accommodation that Al rented in the early days of our relationship. He lived in what was part of a 15th century manor house, in the quarter that would have housed cattle whilst the servants lived above. It was basic and cold—think rickety immersion heaters, cranky plumbing and layering up to go to bed—it was also delightfully romantic and we found our own ways to keep warm. Sometime in the mid 19th century the resident family, farm-workers, lost all 9 children in a matter of months to either cholera or diphtheria, the parents surviving probably because they drank mead and not the contaminated water. Some of our friends said they picked up prickly vibes in one room, but we never did, though there was the one time when I woke up in the night to someone blowing gently on my leg dangling out of bed. It was so focused, like someone blowing through a pea-shooter on skin, and then it was gone. It definitely wasn’t Alex, he was snoring contentedly next to me, nor were there any drafts in that particular area, and so overcome was I by my  primordial nighttime terror that I dare not look under the bed. I could never find a rational explanation for it, other than a waking dream, perhaps? I like to think that if there is any paranormal phenomena out there, spirits or otherwise, they would be up for having a laugh and hiding under the bed playing ghoulish peek-a-boo. Never mind wailing ghosts and ghouls, the universe seems set up for tragedy and comedy, see-sawing together, tempered with a dose of absurdity to keep the balance.

But how to imagine the desperation and hopelessness of loosing all your children, of not being able to do anything—no mercy forthcoming, from god or layman, through prayer or witchery. Heart wrenching, gut wrenching, unrelenting grief. The stuff of nightmares and surreal in the telling. A tragedy, they say. Indeed, a tragedy that reveals the limits of knowledge, failing systems and medical bungles. Death can tell so much about a time, and I needed to find out what had happened to this family in 1855. 

I found limited information online so I contacted the church secretary and swiftly received a response that explained that a memorial existed inside the church to the Dixon family. The Dixon’s had been a local family, the father John Jeffrey Dixon dying in 1828 leaving behind a family of six daughters and one son. The daughters never married or had children and continued to live with their mother Mary Romeril Dixon. The son married and moved away. The eldest daughter Sophie Dixon (1799-1855) was a poet, of the Romantic tradition, and had had some of her work published. Maintaining a household of seven women and living the life of a published female poet in the early 19th century suggests a level of education, cultural knowledge and financial comfortability, however I could find no further detail on the fathers preoccupation. Instead I was delighted to find copies of Castalian Hours. Poems by Sophie Dixon (1829) online, alongside two travelogues she had written about walking on Dartmoor: A Journal of Ten Days Excursion on the Western and Northern Borders of Dartmoor (1830) and A Journal of Eighteen Days Excursion on the eastern and Southern Borders of Dartmoor (1830). 

I find an online copy of the two journals bound together with an unauthored handwritten note that describes how the ‘two journals are seldom found together, and in this state are exceedingly rare’. The unauthored note instructs the reader not ‘to despise the untutored writing’ instead recognise that Dixon recorded what she actually saw, and ‘that she really saw a great deal more than most people’. Written nearly 200 years ago, the journals read anything but ‘untutored’ instead they present a style ahead of their time, combining acute observation with opinion that covers a range of subjects from education, poverty and religion that would not be out of place amongst the current plethora of travelogues and writings about place today. Nor was Dixon a faint heart—she was an endurance walker, with Donna Landry writing in The Invention of the Countryside how Dixon was not averse to enduring ‘incredible discomfort and fatigue’ walking up to 28 or 30 miles a day, and that she wrote to ‘expend feeling as much to capture or contain it’ (2001: 239). This is an impulse I can relate too. She was 30 years old when these works were published and was writing at a time that saw the countryside shift from being seen, at least by the middle classes, as a dangerous and impoverished place, to becoming appreciated for its leisure and therapeutic value. Despite Sophie’s passion for Dartmoor and poetry, little is recorded of her life unlike her male contempories—the walking poets—Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, nor are her writings given due acknowledgment in the round up of important historic literature about Dartmoor. A woman writing about walking across Dartmoor—a harsh and unforgiving landscape at the best of times—and being published at a time when women weren’t allowed to go to university is no mean feat. Sophie’s poetry and writing reveal a sensitivity, of trying to capture the immensity and rich diversity of the moor; an artist, creating through doing, striding out in all weathers, feeling the raw elements, being buffeted by the wind on the high tor’s. And all in Georgian attire, heavy skirted, possibly with pantaloons and with no GORE-TEX or triple layered waterproof performance technology in sight. Despite her absence in the text books Landry observes that ‘the slightness of Dixon’s oeuvre is no measure of the significance of her achievement’ (239). My impression after reading her works, is a writer who is capable, forward thinking, engaged in current affairs and confident in communicating her thoughts, yet I have so many remaining questions about Sophie that perhaps a historian will give the time to uncover. She deserves to be more than just an initial or a footnote in history.

But what of her death and her family? In her preface to Castalian Hours Sophie writes about the loss of her father and subsequent grief and illness effecting her writing, however further tragedy was to come. According to the GRO death certificate her mother died of heart disease on the 14th December, 1855 aged 80. Three days later her younger sister, Emma Romeril, died of Peritonitis, and ten days after that, on 27th December, Sophie herself died from what is recorded as Typhus at the age of 56. The two other sisters, Cora and Lucy, who are listed on the church memorial and on the grave stones as dying in 1855, actually died two weeks apart in 1876 at the age of 69 and 70 respectively of Bronchitis and exhaustion, a contagious illness undoubtedly spread through close contact. How they all came to be listed as dying in 1855 is a mystery, with the assumption given that the memorial was erected when the brother Clemsen Romeril died in 1893, and that somehow the dates were conflated or misremembered. 

***

Wide, open moorland, away from the clutter and noise of modern life where we are constantly ‘ON’, hyper-stimulated, reading the codes, the signs, the subtext. Classification and analysis, polish the mask and smile ‘ta da', who do you want me to be today? It is exhausting. From my studio, I used to watch my chickens scratching and busying—pre bird flu lockdown—and envied their freedom, whilst I was penned in, tied to a screen and working 10/12 hours a day. Sometimes I forgot to move, going hours without drinking or eating. I had become a battery hen and no matter how many golden eggs I laid it was never enough. Putting in numbers and words that churned out more numbers and words until one day the machine broke. Now I have become frozen, a glitch in the matrix, stuttering and locked in. I have to rebuild, start again, set a new framework but to do that I have to first find a way to reboot the frozen system.

We marched up the hill chattering eagerly, airing and giggling over the silliness of families and Christmas frivolities. Despite the chill in the air we warmed up quickly and had to stop to strip off layers, breathing heavily and taking in the sweeping view. It stopped us in our tracks, the vastness of the rolling landscape calming us down, bringing us back to rights. Body and earth, right here, right now. We were heading for Spurrell’s Cross, a medieval stone cross that marks the crossing of two old tracks, one running from Plympton Priory to Buckfast Abbey and the other from Wrangaton to Erme Pound, but we had been too cocksure on setting off, wrongly assuming we were on familiar ground. As a result of our cocksurety we had missed the path and, as is becoming routine on our walks, we once again found ourselves stomping over tussocky ground. The lesson learnt from this walk is that perspective changes everything—so obvious in hindsight but familiarity, as they say, breeds contempt, which in our case was for the map. We were walking on the east side of Western Beacon and though only a few miles into our walk we had quickly become disorientated. The ground undulated unexpectedly hiding the tors previously used as landmarks and we realised that we hadn’t quite got to grips with distance on the map, and as a result could not work out whether we were too far north or south? Scanning across the moor, and with better long distance eyesight than I, Jen spotted a shape partially camouflaged against the moor grassland. With nothing to lose, except our bearings, we ploughed ahead and thankfully hit base, laying hands on the cold stone of the old cross in gratitude. Back on track, we were able to stroll comfortably up to Ugborough Tor.

A space to decant—we talk about all sorts, everything and nothing, from work to children, to ageing and sex; to clothes, cooking, cars, consciousness and ex's—the ex's are most fascinating, the other women, they are set up as the opposition that we share so much in common with and who you can never, ever, know too much—to fungi, lovers, philosophy and death. It is not so much Sex and the City but Sex and the Moor. Everything gets emptied out and overturned. Nothing is trivialised, it all has its place—the worries, the niggling anxieties, superstitions; the casting thoughts that might dissolve into nothing or rankle away and fester without the ear of a trusted confident. Our grandmothers were right all along, a good airing, whether clothes, houses, babies, people or thoughts, makes everything feel better. Men and children so often fascinated by what women talk about… and no wonder, women talk about the under belly of life, paring back the fat and gristle, sifting the wheat from chaff. The talk that unites, strengthens social bonds and builds trust—what social psychologists refer to as cultural learning. In the stone age, this chatter was crucial for sharing information that would enhance survival, and whilst we no longer have wild animals to fear, sense checking about who’s who and what’s what remains essential for our well being. 

As children, Jen and I used to be fascinated by our mothers afternoon chats, tongues loosened by a dab or two of sherry. We’d quietly linger in the kitchen, turning the tap ever so softly to get a glass of water, or sit on the stairs ostensibly playing, all the while zoning in on the hushed tones, regularly punctuated by raucous laughter, our eyes widening at what we heard. Rogue men and wildish women, the drawn out agony of someones death, money—the lack there-of; clothes and weight gain, diets, boobs, hot flushes and farting. When they caught us listening they’d call us elephant ears and the conversation would drift to more mundane matters. On occasion the conversation would lower to a whisper, to more darker talk. We’d strain hard, catching snippets of a violent man and a vulnerable child. The school bully, the blond and pretty girl, always with shiny new things turned out had a not so happy home. This was a grown-up world that was somewhere else, far more entertaining and scandalous than watching an illicit late night episode of Dallas or Dynasty huddled together under the bed clothes.

Today out on the moor we find ourselves talking, amongst other things, about the origins of cellular life—as you do. Where once life was understood to have started at a particular point in time and from there on in evolution began spiralling outwards in a chronological timeline from A to Z. We’ve all seen the poster, some of us have the T-shirt—cell blob, lizard, monkey, ape-man, human, Trump. Then some clever spark asked the question, if life started at A—assuming it was down to 'abiogenesis'—where life emerges from non-living matter through natural processes as opposed to counter theories that posit life came from outer space, then surely life must have emerged previously, and continues to appear at point B and C, and so on and so on? Between huffing and puffing up the hill, it is not so much the biology but the shift in the question that fascinates us—alter the boundaries and framework of the question and a whole different perspective opens up, revealing the wood and not just the trees; the whole picture and not just the jigsaw piece. No surprise that Jen and I have dabbled in statistics—she in teaching the subject and I by presenting different sets of data, coloured pie-charts illustrating how the Arts can change lives, which is very difficult to prove in evidential terms but ask a slightly different question and the coloured pie-charts will look ever so pretty, so give us some money, please. It is all about the questions, the scientists and statisticians cry. If only we could step outside of ourselves we might understand so much more. But it is hard to shake off our human skins. 

Keep turning the stone over and take a walk around the hill. Anything and nothing. Our conversation continues to spiral upwards and outwards. We bat around ideas, snippets of information snatched from radio, social media, books, conversation—finding relevancy, knitting them together. It feels like moulding and sculpting, work in the studio with most falling to the floor as detritus. The artist Paul Klee said drawing was like ‘taking a line for a walk’, and so it is with conversation—take it for a walk and give it a good airing. Walking in the time of viral contamination is vital. It has become the new 18th century coffee-house, the place renowned for scintillating conversation (if you were a man of course); it is George Seurat’s glistening Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, minus the fancy pants and with walking boots, purpose and pace. It is the city flaneur but without the pomp or privilege. It is Piet Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie, but without the boulevards and pulsating lights. It is our mother’s sherry and Sophie’s journals. Hitch up your skirts and put on your garters and take a walk on the Wild Side. A walk in the park. An escape. Let the words wander or wonder, drawing shapes, hitting dead-ends and taking u-turns.

From the origins of life, depression and death our drawing circles around to the language of love, with Jen telling me how the ancient Greeks had several words for different kinds of love: love for children, love for god, sexual love, self love, whereas in the English language ‘love’ is pinned to its romantic roots—the all or nothing kind, of passion and intensity, valentines cards, red roses and the impossible happy ever after. We find ourselves wondering what is the word to describe the love between old friends? 

We reach Ugborough Tor, the temperature has dropped and we think it might snow. In truth, this is the southernmost tor as Western Beacon is not classified as a tor. There are four rocky outcrops: Creber’s Rock, Eastern Beacon, Beacon Rock and Ugborough Beacon; several cairns and a tumulus—an ancient earth burial mound. The view to the East is striking, what is known as Beacon plain slopes gently away then suddenly descends steeply into a valley, so abrupt is the descent that we can’t see the bottom from our vantage point on the tor. The effect is dizzying; the fields and houses rising upwards on the yonder side of the valley look like play mobile houses. We are 378 metres high (1240 feet) above sea level and can see the A38, or the Devon Expressway, snaking northwards. Jennie points out a prominent landscape feature, what looks like a Drumlin, a large teardrop shaped hill probably caused by the receding ice flow of the last ice age some 11,700 years ago. It was previously understood that Dartmoor lay beyond the ‘Quaternary glaciations’ however recent research of the landscape has challenged this notion. We amble our way back and it starts to snow; big heavy flakes, some the size of coins come down thick and fast. We are alone in this vast landscape and run and whoop like children. Back at our cars, as we turn to say good bye, we shout ‘I love you’ to each other. I think we might have always said this, but now we know somewhere it has a name.

Later, I look up Aristotle’s definitions of ‘love’, in particular ‘philia’ which is usually translated as friendship love, or ‘brotherly love’, denoting an altruistic loyalty between equals. This research takes me on a journey that considers what Aristotle defined as ‘good’, and ‘diakaios’, meaning what is ‘fair’, ‘just’ and ‘right’ in accordance to the laws of the universe—laws that draw on the ancient Greek idea that there exists within the universe an order. According to Simon May in ‘Love: A History’, Aristotle elevates ‘philia’ above all other forms, including romantic love and the virtuous love of god. May then goes on to explain how self-knowledge, a virtue much prized by the Greeks, is essential to becoming a well-balanced human being, yet Aristotle understood that ‘it is hard to know ourselves’, we are masters of our own deceit and that we need the aid of a ‘second self’, a person who holds similar values but serves as a mirror reflecting back to us who we are. May goes on to explain that it is not so much that our second self tells us who we are, but that we see in them a part of ourselves, quoting Aristotle directly ‘… with us [humans] welfare involves a something beyond us, but the deity is his own well-being.’ Of course, for this to work the second person has to be the right person—a person who has similar virtues, or values, as ourselves, then ‘philia’ becomes ‘diakaios’—‘when it is in accordance with the laws of the other person’ nature … If love isn’t in such accordance it is inauthentic and hollow’. (67)

How does this analysis of love, nearly 2400 years old, relate to my life long friendship with Jennie? Without a doubt Jennie is suitably different in character to myself—more gregarious and outgoing, her humour is deliciously wry and observant; she is clever, astute and canny, her readings of people and situations are always spot on and she is open-minded whilst still being firmly rooted in reality (the latter being a virtue that I cannot always say about myself); she is a fierce and protective mother, committed to family; ambitious and tenacious. Equally, she is interested in ‘self-knowledge’, if not ‘self-love’, which our deferent Englishness finds a little too gushing, however, she has never been afraid to look in the mirror and face her demons, to own up, reflect and rebuild. Her honesty about our lived contradictions—how we say one thing and do another, that we self sabotage to avoid shattering our fragile self-image and so on—is so refreshing in a time when you might be socially hung drawn and quartered for taking thoughts and words for a walk that do not directly fit the current view. Some of these characteristics I share, others extend my world view. If she serves as a second self, then hell, I need to learn to love thyself! I can count on three fingers the friends I share this type of relationship with, though I’d argue that we are constantly shaping ourselves against our interactions with others—whether children, parents, the shop-assistant, the teacher or colleague. Perhaps I need to be more discerning in my choice of lovers and husbands, as when it comes to the language of love I am clearly better at ‘philia’ than the ‘eros’ kind. In the meantime I’m going for a walk.

SC

Reading

Crossing, William. (1888) Amid Devonia’s Alps; or, Wanderings & Adventures on Dartmoor Plymouth: Simpkin, Marshall & Co. Online, 05, January, 2021: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Amid_Devonia_s_Alps/lfoVAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1

Dixon, Sophie. (1829) Castalian Hours. Poems. London: Longman, Orme, Hurst, Brown, and Green, Print.

Dixon, Sophie. (1830) A Journal of Eighteen Days Excursion and Dixon, S.(1830) A Journal of Ten Days Excursion on the Western and Northern Borders of Dartmoor. Online, 05, January, 2021:https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=d_4GAAAAQAAJ&hl=en_GB&pg=GBS.PA2

Evans, D.J.A. and Harrison, S. and Vieli, A. and Anderson, E. (2012) 'The glaciation of Dartmoor : the southernmost independent Pleistocene icecap in the British Isles.', Quaternary Science Reviews., 45 . pp. 31-53.

Landry, Donna. (2001) The Invention of the Countryside: Hunting, Walking and ecology in English Literature, 1671-1831. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

May, Simon. (2011) Love: A History. London: Yale University Press.

Sampson, J. ‘Women Writing on the Devon Land: The Lost Story of Devon Women Authors up to circa 1965’. August 13, 2018. Online, 05, January 2021: https://newdevonbookfindsaway.blogspot.com/2018/08/on-ways-to-old-literary-roads-around.html

[still-finding-our-way]

R5, R6

(SX 540672) 12/12/ 2020

Serendipity, rhizomes and lines. 

On my studio desk I have a number of rocks, stones and pebbles. None are particularly rare or precious, most have been collected locally yet every one is an object of beauty. One such stone is a sharp piece of flint. Small enough to hold in my palm, it has become my go to de-stress stone. I like to let its razor sharp edges bite, just a bit, into soft skin. My teasing wake up call. It has volume and weight, four planes—a tetra. One side runs smooth, curving to meet a granular knobbly surface, bone-like and skeletal, like the indenture of a clavicle or ankle bone. The underside of the stone is cut sheer, sliced through its core, creating a flat expanse onto which it is able to stand upright, before rising into a terraced plane, each step the size of a thumb print, a patternation that reveals the cryptocrystalline formation of flint (‘crypto’ meaning ‘secret’ or ‘hidden’). I found it on a beach in Cornwall. A dark grey stone with a white thread running through its centre. Its shape and size tickles my imagination, and as I turn the flint over in my hand I play with the idea that it was used as a Neolithic arrowhead, chipped away, stone on stone some 5000 years ago. The structure of flint requires a level of skill and expertise to shape; one wrong strike will send fracture lines through the stone rendering it useless as a tool. Our early ancestors were artisans and makers. Over and over, I have drawn this stone, feeling it’s texture, the sharp edges and definite weight in my palm. It does not take up much space and yet every time I draw it, a different angle or plane opens up. It is never the same. A small rock, inert and fixed, offering infinite possibilities.

You think you know something, someone, some place. A line on the horizon, a spit away from the sea and moor. Clambering over rocks, swimming in icy rivers and streams, climbing trees and making dens. 'Whence cam'st thou, mighty thane', pronounces Duncan in Act 1 of Macbeth. The utterance of such a question now comes with a cautionary red flag, one that implies exclusion and ‘you are not from here’. Too bad, coming from a white working class background, where histories and lives are lost, undocumented and unrecorded, I have no idea where my roots are tangled. I cometh from nowhere, no fixed abode, shallow rooted, spun together by frail relatives that can’t, or don’t want to, remember. To remedy this unknown, I was gifted by my eldest daughter a DNA test for my 50th birthday. The results from my spit reveal a blueprint that aligns with peoples who cluster around the North East of England, with a smattering of Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Scottish and Irish. Farmers and seafarers I suspect, a web of people who somehow managed to survive hunger and disease, violence and brutality, the lustful fumble in the hay and the traumatic birth. The odds were not good—about one in 400 trillion chance of being born according to the boffins. In staking a claim on the improbability of existence we got lucky, very lucky.

Where we come from and who we are. Layers of paint, fresh applications, still wet bleeding into others, making new colours and new pictures. Blending and binding. Some work and some don’t. It seems so arbitrary how we come to be. I should make time to salute the stream of past people, winding all the way back to the bones of dear Lucy, 3.2 million years ago, and her mother and grand-mother, all coming and going, doing their time. But, I won’t, it's enough to breathe in the noise of now. One heart beat, a blink of the eye and we are gone. Serendipity, luck, random, the throw of the dice. The cells didn’t bind in the correct sequence and the possibility of life just slipped down the toilet. Is it any wonder we seek out patterns to create order and structure, finding comfort in numbers and story; assigning value in the unexpected, and agreeableness in what wasn’t sought. Ones and zero’s, lines and dots, giving shape to all things. Artists do this all the time. Seeking opportunity in the accidental and unintended. Any stick, stone, door, book, conversation opening up new creative possibilities. The rhizomes seeking out a good place to settle, a place to nourish. The patterns, whether real or not, helping to make sense of the intensity of the here and now. 

Jennie’s story is fascinating. Her blue eyes, flaxen hair and Bridget Bardot pout might have you thinking she is of Swedish heritage, whilst my dark skin, hair and black eyes has in the past suggested Mediterranean roots. Not so, the paint palette is muddied. I will let Jennie tell her story. One thing to note here though, Jennie is an adventurer, she has travelled all over the world: on her own, through work, with friends and lovers. Occasionally I have joined her but mostly I skirt the edges of Western art history, moseying around European capital cities, museums and galleries. Both of us are wanderers in different ways. Parallel lines. The same but different. I am amused to read that women of ‘a certain age’ partake in what Jennie and I are doing—walking and exploring local history. I also note the term ‘a certain age’ is often used to describe middle-aged women, usually accompanied by a roll of the eyes and a double-fingered quotation sign. It is basically code for women no longer of a fertile age—post 40 and therefore deemed unattractive, and given age tends to gift experience (though not always) they carry a certain confidence i.e., speak their mind and know what they want.  

A simple stone. We are breathing, blinking and unstill. 

We ask ourselves how did we not know about this walk? It is literally a stones throw from Jennie’s parents village, just over the hill yonder, where Jennie spent her teenage years and part of her adulthood, and where I lived for awhile whilst homeless and lovelorn. Of all the places on Dartmoor this is an area that I would confidently say we know well, and yet here we are discovering new trails, hidden valleys, different perspectives and layers and layers of history, a thread of which connects with Jennie’s recent travel’s with her son to the other side of the world. The walk begins in the small Devon village of Meavy on the southwest of Dartmoor, a place I have cycled and walked through many times, enjoying a sup or two at the Royal Oak on the way. The route follows the river Meavy upstream to Burrator dam not far from Down Tor, where Jennie first set this adventure in motion as we glugged champagne and watched the setting of a glorious October sun. From Burrator, the road winds through Sheepstor village and into the woods where earlier in the year, at the height of bluebell season, I waited with my children for the badger's to come out. Hunkered down amongst bramble and fern at dusk, quiet as mice, hearing the birds hush and darkness settle. The children were not scared but reverent and awed by being in the woods at night, a time and place synonymous with the darker side of fairytales: of wolves, witches and being lost, and where the unknown and the unformed lurk. We whispered and signed to each other in the darkening gloom, until we no longer needed words and laid back in a bed of fern, faces turned upwards, watching the patchwork of sky between the canopy high above turn from indigo to midnight blue and then merge dark into the tall trees, the cool air lulling us to sleep. 

The ax strikes and life reclaims as swift as the blade can cut. My hand brushes the damp surface of a lopped off tree stump in the woods down from the reservoir, and I stop to observe a platter of squirming, burrowing, scuttling, squirrelling, decaying life; three empty acorn shells evidence a previous luncheon. I have set the objective to notice more when I am on these walks, to seek out habitat changes and to learn and know the names of things. But always I surrender to just being, breathing in the light and air, the atmosphere. I feel happy on these walks, a sense of euphoria and lightness washing over. It feels good to leave aside the cerebral and to let the physical, the motion of walking awaken a realm of sensing and scanning. She doesn’t say but I know Jennie has arranged this walk pre-Christmas because she is aware I am struggling with sadness—a sadness caused by my natural melancholia and tendency to ruminate, and a much bigger life crisis. Battle hardened to general romantic crisis’ I am not so experienced with career rifts, and so I have withdrawn and pulled down the blinds. But it won’t do and I know, as Jennie does, that the moor will help to alleviate the mental muddle I am in, and even if the effects are only temporary, it will store up the memory bank, to plunder and remember during the times when I get locked in. 

Ten minutes into the walk Jennie spots a Heron standing stock still in the woods by the river Meavy. Camouflaged against the bare trees, charcoal grey and ochre, we watch it rise and drift across the valley. Great grey wings, near 6ft in span, pulse slowly, its head and neck arrow-like thrust forward piercing space. It has a primordial presence. In mythology it is linked to the sacred Ibis, a bird revered by the Egyptians as representing Thoth—their god of wisdom, writing and magic. I take it as a good omen. The wood is dazzling, ice cold water tumbling down from Burrator reservoir. Wood, rock and foliage glisten from the early morning downfall, the ground water-logged from weeks of incessant rain. The element of water is strong here, 4210 mega litres—enough to quench the thirst of a city and the surrounding hinterland—held in check by towering granite slabs that form a 23.5 metre high gorge. Completed in 1898 and extended in 1923, the reservoir pools run-off from the surrounding moor and water from the river Meavy. Standing downstream from the dam in the wooded valley I hope the granite wall holds strong. The sun breaks through and turns up the volume on colour. Saturated greens: acid, moss, lichen, pine and fern. We watch a man on the other side of the steep valley, oblivious to our presence, pissing freely, a spray of urine forming a perfect arc; glinting golden droplets catching the sunlight.

Having learned nothing from our previous walks we decided not to take the obvious path and instead followed the course of the river upstream. This meant having to clamber over rocks and fallen trees, until we reach the imposing dam wall and are forced to scrabble up the steep bank, thick with mud, to get back on the road. Jennie leads the way, an experienced hash runner not deterred by the muddy terrain, she turns into a sure-footed mountain goat, while I, slip-sliding, defy gravity and somehow fall up the slope. Walking over Burrator bridge we pass the man we saw pissing earlier and beam broadly, making sure we hold eye contact for a bit longer than comfortable for him. We then follow the road up to Sheepstor village, and—given we are women of ‘a certain age’—we are keen to nosey round St Leonards, the C15th village church. But sadly, the door is locked so instead we admire the Lych gate, a covered over a double gate with a lychstone to rest the coffin before entering (‘Lych’ or ‘lich’ meaning corpse in Old English). At the time I did not notice the foliate skull carving above the main door, only a little while later when we sat for lunch under a massive oak tree, which we reckoned to be near on 500 years old given the size of its girth, do I undertake a little online searching and read to Jen a short history of the church and its whereabouts.

So intrigued by what I find that I go back a couple days later, this time with my dog and younger children in tow. In particular I wanted to see the foliate skull above the porch. In recent years there has been a growing interest in Pagan symbology such as the ‘Green Man’ and the ‘Three Hares’, several examples of which can be found in churches across Dartmoor. The ‘Green Man’ is usually represented as a carved face with foliage growing from the head, mouth, nose, ears and eyes. It is presumed to be a pre-christian Pagan symbol representing renewal and life—from death comes life—that has been absorbed into Christian ideas of resurrection and life after death. Often found in churches and cathedrals across Europe, its more macabre cousin, the foliate skull, is said to have appeared after the Black Death in the 14th century. The skull at St Leonards church is carved with ears of wheat sprouting from the eye sockets above an hourglass. The suggested date of its making is given as 1640 and it is suspected to have originally been part of a sundial. Now it sits behind glass in a small recess above the porch, and on this particular day was partially obscured by condensation so I could not see the inscription incorporated into the sculpture: ‘UT HORA SIC VITA’ (As the hour so life passes), ’MORS JANUA VITA’ - (Death is the door of life) and ‘ANIMA REVERTET’ (the soul will return).

As a motif representing vegetation, rebirth and resurrection, the ‘Green Man’ archetype is found in many cultures across the world, including the ancient Egyptian God Osiris, the god of fertility, agriculture, death and resurrection, who is often depicted as green skinned, alongside several green figures found in Nepal, India, Iraq and Lebanon, the latter dated to the 2nd century. I wonder how far the Green Man story goes back? As a cross cultural archetype it suggests a commonality of belief about the life cycle that is interconnected with the land. Whilst its incorporation into ecclesiastical architecture alongside other apparent Pagan motifs, points to the fluidity and evolution of belief systems, which subsume and build on pre-existing ideas, even when the incoming authority seems most rigid and contained. Most of the what we know about the ‘Green Man’ is based on speculation and supposition, as we have no historical evidence as to why and for what reason they were made. Instead the ‘Green Man’ motif has been reclaimed and remoulded at various points in history from Romanticism to Neo-Paganism and most recently as a symbol for the environmental movement.

A little village church under the shadow of the looming granite tor on the southern edge of Dartmoor, connected through culture and shared beliefs with a much wider world and history. If the Green Man does not provide enough evidence of these interconnections, then the large sarcophagus, protected by iron railings in the churchyard, and housing the remains of James Brooke, First Rajah of Sarawak (29 April 1803 – 11 June 1868) alongside two other White Rajahs should affirm the connections without doubt. It was whilst peeling the shell off hard-boiled eggs, freshly laid by my chickens that morning, at the foot of the big oak tree that Jennie realised that she had previously encountered the story of James Brooke whilst travelling through Borneo with her son. A sultry jungle, 7,000 miles away on the other side of the world tied by empire and colonialism, violence, power and trade to this peaceable village. I find out a little more about James, the questions concerning his sexuality and love for men stick with me more than the dates, titles, skirmishes and conquests. I go back again to the church on new years day and with fresh snow on the ground, sipping steaming hot chocolate on the bench overlooking Brooke’s slab of a tombstone, I retell the story of what I know to my children. They hang off the iron railings and argue over the remains of the Christmas chocolate, I don’t think they were listening.

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Reading: Lyon, N., (2016) Uprooted: On the trail of the green man (London, Faber & Faber).

https://www.legendarydartmoor.co.uk/sheepstor_church

[still-finding-our-way]

N17, N16

(SX 742760) 28/11/ 2020

I am slow to write about this walk. For days after, whenever I close my eyes, visions arise, vivid and intense. Spooling and searing under lids, I need time to process what feels like a profound experience. Hallowed and spiritual, time distorted, surreal and dreamlike, we are moving through a white space, still without a whisper of wind. Silence magnified. The sighting of a magnificent raven perched on a boundary wall, silhouetted against the gloom, statuesque and blacker then coal. Its eerie caw, rasping, cuts through the stillness. We watch, still and wordless, spellbound by its presence, reluctant to peel away to continue on our journey. The sighting feels totemic. This is the ravens space, not ours. 

Jennie points out a tiny plant no more than finger height amongst the moor grass, dew drops suspended, crystal cut on delicate limbs—it radiates amongst earthly hues, no seasonal decoration able to match its completeness. Stripped back to the elements, away from noise and distraction, the high moor often feels otherworldly, now swathed in thick fog, visibility reduced to less than a few metres, the landscape is positively alien. Spatial perspective has dissolved and we are suspended in a colourless void. A place where there is no middle or far distance, no front, back or sideways, no horizon or sky. Only the here and now. Just us, breathing in whiteness, the sound of boots trudging. For all we know we might have slipped through a megalith portal, crossed over a time and space threshold and be walking in a different dimension and reality. 

My eldest daughter Libby joined us on this walk. All three of us seeking relief and respite on the moor and in each other’s company; vital therapy for shaking out the suffocating insularity caused by the lockdown restrictions. As with Jennie’s children and my own, Libby grew up with parts of Dartmoor as her extended playground. Now, as an avid climber, she regularly searches out the moor’s rocky outcrops to boulder and climb with her partner Harry. No doubt under normal circumstances—not being pregnant and having clear visibility—she would have confidently strode out and led the way. Today however, engulfed by a swirling nothingness, unable to correlate the symbols on the map with the surrounding terrain, the compass becomes our only reliable guide. 

Navigating through murky liquid water requires an act of faith. Follow the flickering red arrow, trust the magnets and the unseen. Our belief rewarded by staying on course. Landmarks marked on the map: Rippon Tor, Logan Stone, Buckland Beacon, Pil Tor and Top Tor, loom out from the grey miasma, yawning great slabs of granite, alien rock sculptures, moulded and defiant. It felt miraculous. All this despite my erroneous route planing. X may mark the spot but as we found out, almost to our peril, the links between the X’s do not necessarily follow a neatly drawn line on the map. 

The walk was designed primarily around visiting Buckland Beacon, a Tor which stands 1,253ft (382m) above sea level and which Jennie had discovered hosts two slabs of stone carved with the 10 commandment’s from the Christian bible. Given our religious upbringing, exposed to the spiritual fervour of Pentecostalism, we wondered how we had not heard about the stones before.

A quick scan of the internet reveals a family who had made money through the Greenall Whitely brewery established in the 18th century in the North of England. An enterprise enabled by the seismic cultural and economic fallout from the industrial revolution. Flicking from page to page I quickly spiral into a story about commercial enterprise, the expansion of capital, wealth, political influence and private education, the tentacles of which reach Devon through the brothers William and Herbert Whitely, who moved to the county in the early 20th Century. William Whitely became lord of Buckland Manor, buying up land and a number of surrounding farms with the help of his younger brother, Herbert. As a staunch protestant and traditionalist, William commissioned local stone mason W. A. Clement to engrave the ten commandments on two slabs of granite on the south face of the Beacon in 1928. The inscription was a celebration of the Parliamentary ruling that rejected proposals to revise the Book of Common Prayer, and included the dates when the bill was passed and an eleventh commandment for good measure.

Meanwhile, the younger brother, Herbert had been busy building a menagerie on his private estate near Paignton, acquiring all manner of exotic plants and animals. In 1923 he opened his collection to the public as Torbay Zoological Gardens, a venue that later became known as Paignton Zoo. I read with interest that Herbert had a particular penchant for blue, collecting and breeding blue animals and plants. The most precious hue in nature, not really a pigment but an interplay of light on feathers, wings, skin, scales and exoskeletons. Blue is not an earthly colour, it has to be extracted from stone or made synthetically and as such has been much prized in history. The deep blue pigment 'Ultramarine' favoured by the great Italian renaissance painters, Raphael, Botticelli and Titian, was ground from the semi-precious mineral ‘Lapis lazuli’, which translates from its Middle Eastern roots as literally ‘blue stone’. Mixing and blending, accruing and containing. Blue became the colour of royalty and divinity. Peacock feather, delphinium, cerulean and the deepest indigo. A slick of blue eyeshadow drawn across Cleopatra’s brow to seduce an empire. Virgin blue, alchemy and sorcery. Blue blood and blue beard. The rich and powerful scoring words into stone and hoarding natures treasure.

Reading the inscription on the stones unearthed long forgotten memories from childhood. Stories flooded back about the wrath and vengeance of the Christian old God ‘Thou shalt have none other gods but me … I the Lord thy God am a jealous God’. Seduced and softened by modern liberalism, a new religion where, on the surface at least, we are expected to cast no judgement, the language felt controlling and finite, limited and at odds with the fecundity of the moor, which even in the deepest winter is alive. You can feel and smell the aliveness, folding and churning, a living entity. Leaf mould and dung, symbiosis, copulation and predation; the parasitic and endophytic, plant and animal and the in-between. Everywhere sprouting and spewing fungi, mulching and mashing. Names that weave story and folklore into identification of plant and fauna, marking out the deadly and the vision inducing: Witches butter, Yellow brain, Ink cap and Velvet shank. The moor speaks to an earthly spirituality, synthesising and composing, living and dying, a life renewing continuum. I take heed of myth that reflects the biological life cycle as found in the ancient trinity of the Hindu deities: Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva—forever creating, maintaining and destroying. Alive and dead, my skin catches on the shards of granite, grains of quartz and feldspar, mingling with micro-biological lifeforms, bacteria and my own spiralling blue-print contained in DNA. 

The commandment stones are no match for the elements or the passing of time. Eaten away by lichen and eroded by the onslaught of weather, the words have to be regularly chiseled to stop them disappearing altogether. A hundred years passing, not even a heartbeat in geological time. Rooted in pre-history and borne out of fire and fusion, the stones represent forces far bigger than the scratchings and scrubbings of men. Standing on the stones, taking the obligatory 'we were here' selfies, it is easy to dismiss the monument as archaic, the monomania of a rich and powerful man. But we arrive at the stones with our own set of beliefs, contained by ideological structures—some of which are invisible to even ourselves—that colour how we see our place in the world. We talk comfortably about the effect of nature on the body as evidenced through scientific measurement and analysis, the language of endorphins, lowered blood pressure and raised serotonin levels—but we are not so fluid in the language of the spiritual. 

Sipping hot tea, I garble about monotheism and the cultural separation of the divine from earthly realms to an abstract other place. But I am unable to grasp the right words to explain the contradiction of the stones with the surroundings. I want to say how the arrival of the three mono religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam elevated the divine to a non-earthly domain, somewhere over the rainbow, beyond the clouds and out of reach. The earlier gods and goddesses; the spirits and deities of rivers, trees, forests and stones were all but chased out, surviving only through folklore and myth. Whilst the life renewing vitality of the deep earth became associated with devilment and hell; a place to bury the carnal and hide our earthly appetites. Out too, went the animal spirits, the totems from which to learn and draw strength from: the sharp eyed raven, the stealth of the wild cat, the strong ox and cunning snake. In separating the divine from the corporeal we created a hierarchy and dominion that placed man atop of the pile so we might touch the divine and in doing so we cut off our roots. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Bones and dirt, dirty old bones. Godliness became whiteness and purity, and heaven the only place where we might be free from earthly weights; the sweat and the tears, pain and sickness, shame and folly. You can see the attraction—the body weighs heavy, it breaks and is fallible. Our appetites always biting back. Too much and we get sick, too little and we get sick. How to to lighten the load? Psychedelic drugs, serotonin, diazepam, liquid ecstacy, shamanic rituals, prayer, hallucination, meditation, visions and dreams; a story to make it all go away.

The crown slips. The spires reach high up to the skies but bring us no closer to heaven. We are no more divine or kingly, as we ever were. Heaven was always here.

The spool keeps spinning and I can’t rewind. Each moment evaporates into nothingness. Gone. White space. Dense twisted oak and hardy hawthorn giving way to larger trees as we descend into the valley. Mosses, liverworts, fern and lichen. Leaf litter turning to thick mulch. Branches snag and catch loose hair as we duck beneath trees. Bulbous fruiting fungi wet to touch, animal. Three women: mothers and daughters and friends, traipsing down a winding road in the deepest winter. Smiling and laughing, savouring the moment. An old church, cool and still invites us in. Before we enter we study the lettering on the ornate clock face on the church tower, we think it spells ‘Dear Earth’. Later I find out Mr William Whitely has been at it again, replacing the numbers in 1931 with the letters ‘My Dear Mother’. I figure it means the same as our first interpretation. We enter the church and stay awhile. My girl waits outside, sitting on an old lichen covered bench amongst the granite gravestones, her trusted dog by her side. The old bones of Mr Whitely not far away feed the earth while she grows new bones deep within her belly.

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[still-finding-our-way]

Ten Commandments walk 28 Nov 2020

Date of walk 28th November 2020

Present – Sarah, Libby and Jennie  - and Lola

Location – somewhere foggy behind Ashburton

To adopt a quite chavvy phrase from popular culture I think we are starting to ‘own’ this now. For most of the walk we were pretty credible really. Using a map and compass with about 65% success. We definitely got to everywhere we wanted to go to and got back to the car. In deep and consistent fog – which just a few short weeks ago made me sick with anxiety now bothers me not. We can just about do it. I think having Libby there made me feel safer to because we had someone to look after – I am not sure how that makes sense but it does to me.

So the unwitting star of today’s walk was probably a tie between libs and Lola. Lola is lovely, and I was fond of her by the end of the walk. A very modest, considered quiet dog – and what I liked about her most was that she did not beg at our brief picnic lunch. She just sat and waited. Like one of the servants off the Crown.  I was most impressed to see such control in a dog and it reminded me of Bo. I do appreciate that sort of thing in a dog. FFS.

 Libby was also a star. There were several reasons why. The first is a top secret secret, she is going to have a baby girl next year and no one knows except a few of us and this alone makes her a star.  The second was the classic start to the walk where we met in the fog having taken separate pandemic compliant journeys to the rendezvous site. After finding each other (a small miracle) and starting off in thick and bloody fog we soon encountered a cattle grid. Which I crossed. Then Sarah crossed. Then libs crossed…but with Lola who unsurprisingly isn’t too good with cattle grids as their purpose is to deter animals such as herself. After a bit of an awkward drag across the cattlegrid Libs seemed surprised at Lola’s presence having forgotten she had started the walk 30 yards previously with said dog.

I would deduct from this that Libs is well preggers. She is also a star because she stoically limped half the way and because she was – and always is – jolly good entertainment when she want to be - and also when she just is.

 There were several highs – the realising we could almost use a compass correctly, Alex’s boots again which I am in love with, and the ten commandment stones which were authoritarian but fascinating. I find the way people are compelled by religion to commit such acts bizarre. As I read through them I realised with dismay I had probably broken more than I have adhered to and considered my own future in hell surrounded by eerie midst. This did not last long however (as is the nature of those who break ten commandments, a lack of concience) and I managed a picnic in the shadow of said stones and my inferno future.

From the stones we set a course and it was this part of the walk that taught us a valuable lesson. Sarah rightly marks the Tors we will walk between – and so like lemmings we follow her crosses on the map. However, it seems this is not always the best course of action and as we headed along the freshly set compass course it because clear this was not terrain for 2 middle aged women with creaky bones, a pregnant woman and a dog. It was tumbling rocks separated by crevasses, gorse, thicket, bramble, slippy moss etc. There was nothing there that was our friend and it went on for a  very long time. At one point Sarah appeared to be lounging atop a rock like a roman about to receive grapes but this was apparently a fortunate pose reached through falling down. I was impressed. There was a point where we realised there was no good way out of our predicament, we forced ourselves downwards through the thicket or back upwards through the thicket so we pushed on eventually finding a path thank goodness. Lesson learnt – look for and follow paths. Paths are often near walls – follow walls. They offer shelter, certainty and the way out

And on we walked – miles and miles. I think we did about 10. We got hot, we got cold, we saw a raven that was grunting like a pig, we say huge docile cows, we saw Tor after Tor, we saw a beautiful copse. Sarah has grown into a yomping gait which so suits her. She yomps up and down smiling and laughing. We all talk shit for hours. I love that about these walks– the time to talk shit properly without the clock being on. We talk about the pandemic, abut Christmas, about men and kids and jobs and hormones and tv and art and history.

We are almost back at the car – just a few tors to go. We rest in the middle of a tor formation surrounded by alien like monoliths, our secret pre-history tea break den. We are tired and Libs is limping. We eat soft boiled eggs and drink tea. Libby has been here before and knows the way home and she points her finger to the fog. It’s that way. Sarah is having none of it and takes a reading of the map and points her finger into a different part of the fog. I am called in to adjudicate and take my own reading. I point my finger into yet a third area of fog. Perhaps we have not yet mastered the compass. We laugh  - a bit – but it’s also annoying. We trust Libs. We walk home to our cars.

A wonderful, happy, successful walk in the fog. We are settling into Dartmoor 365 and it is just the tonic we need. Therapy in walking boots.

JW

[still-finding-our-way]

X12

(SX 654575) 15/11/2020

Learning how to use a compass feels like an essential life skill. The birds, bees, beetles, slugs and snails know how to do it, finding their way home by forces we cannot see. In the absence of animal super powers we are driven to build navigational instruments and fabulous flying machines hewn from earths finite resources. We draw lines in the sky embellished with tales of mythological animals so we know where we are, and yet, we still do not fully understand the magnetic powers that guide us. The attraction of opposites, north and south, hot and cold, love and hate, the spark between two people. Chemical, electric and magnetic. Charged particles in motion and orbits in alignment. The forces of compulsion and repulsion and the desire to become whole again; to fuse and merge with another; to find a soul mate, our other half. The cell splits and one becomes two and two becomes the many. These are the forces that colour our most dramatic love stories. 

All this from learning to read a map on the southern most edge of Dartmoor, exposed to a battering wind and sheets of stinging rain. Lines, circles and dots. Hieroglyphics that need decoding. Tracing undulations and guided by the red arrow tracking north. There is something fascinating about an analogue Ordnance Survey map that is different to GPS. For a start the OS map (OL28) is big. To set a route I lay the map out on the floor and plot the grid reference using a mnemonic I learnt from my partner Al 'walk before you climb', which basically means find the grid number on the horizontal first, then along the vertical and where the two lines cross is the start point. Folding the map involves wrestling with the unwieldy paper, ensuring the creases are in the correct place in order for it to fit back into its plastic sleeve. The map is proactive whereas GPS is passive; it invites you to look at your surroundings and to locate yourself within the terrain in relation to borders and boundaries, conurbations and landmarks. The map opens up the world in a way GPS does not. GPS does the work for you and is all about getting to the destination, from A to B, as quickly as possible. By comparison studying a map is all about the journey. Slow down, look and see where you are and how you fit in. A process of discovery, a journey in itself to understand the language of maps and the environment of the moor, which Jennie and I thought we knew. Huddled at the start point above Hareford car park, battling the elements and hunched over the map with compass in hand, we realise we have much to learn.                                                                                                            

The original intention for my 50th birthday was to go to and see the aurora borealis, the Northern lights in Norway with a small group of friends: Jennie and her partner A, my eldest daughter Libby and Al. I wanted to see the visual evidence of the cosmic forces that govern our lives and hold us to this planet. In very simple layman’s terms the aurora is caused by clouds of gas emitted by the sun which interact with the earths magnetic field. Energised atoms and electric fields of light perpendicular - the very stuff that keeps us alive. As an artist my understanding of science is pretty basic, however I am interested in how humans relate and make sense of the world through story and art. As a species we look upwards and outwards and have the ability to contemplate our existence within time and space, a process that has produced all manner of art, myth, poetry, theatre, music and religion across all cultures. It is through culture and story that we are able to situate ourselves within the world—providing meaning, connection and hopefully a sense of direction to guide us through life’s journey. Like maps these stories need decoding. Civilisations rise and fall, come and go, each with their own set of rules and belief systems. Layers upon layers of stories, some building on others and some lost forever. 

Unfortunately a world-wide pandemic in the name of  Covid-19 came along and put a stop to any travel plans. However Jennie’s genius birthday gift has become a much needed life line, offering a way of escaping the restrictions to reconnect with the land, history and people. As we are discovering Dartmoor is very rich—rich in history, geology and culture. The walk to Western Beacon, 1080 feet (333m) above sea level, with Al in tow providing us with much needed guidance as to how to read a map, compass and the landscape, is littered with relics of past histories. Cairns, burial grounds, stone rows, alongside evidence of a more recent industry, including an old quarry on the southern slopes of Western Beacon and a solid track that slices through the moor, which Jennie recalled from childhood as being called the Puffing Billy track. Later I read it is known as the Redlake tramway line and opened in 1911 to provide a transport link to the China Clay works. The track is eight miles long and ran for 21 years before closing in 1932. Today, high above Ivybridge with a glint of the sea in the far distance, the landscape feels haunted. We keep turning around to look northwards at the high moorland cast in stormy grey and shades of magenta. The weather is squally and turbulent. Close to Cuckoo Ball, a Neolithic chambered tomb, marked by a cluster of stones within a fenced-off enclosure, we see a dead cow. Blood covering her rear we surmise she died in childbirth. Al will phone the local farmers when we get back home. The moor is full of secrets and there is no place I would rather be.

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Route: Hareford Car Park to Hangershell Rock, following the stone row to Butterdon Hill, down to black pool and up to Western Beacon, then across to Cuckoo rock and back up to Weatherdon Hill cairns and back to the car park. Approx 5 miles.

Reading

Mortimer, Ian. (2020) The Time Traveller's Guide to Regency Britain. London: The Bodley Head.

[still-finding-our-way]

15th November 2020 Harford to Western Beacon

Date of walk 15th November

Present Sarah, Alex, Jennie

Blimey a whole month since this plan was hatched. There has a been a lot of moor walking since then with this project and in addition. It’s become what happens on days off. I work and I walk. Today we hit the southernmost tip off the moor, Western Beacon with some other tors and lots of cairns and stones on the way. The most wonderful thing about this walk was Alex’s police issue 25 year old boots which actually keep water out. This I not something I had yet experienced or thought really possible but they were amazing. Better than the fresh air, the wind, the views, the laughter, the gossip. Alex’s boots. Yum yum yum. The second best thing was Sarah’s gloves. Although they were teeny weeny tiny they were warmy yummy scrummy. I have learnt nothing from the previous walk despite the lessons loud and clear. GEAR. BUY IT. ITS ALL THAT MATTERS,

On this walk I was throwing out dates to events that I don’t think were right. We know stuff between us. That there were forests once, that cairns means bury, that beacon means fire and communication, that bronze age means settlements ( maybe) and today we learnt about new layers on our Dartmoor palimpsest like the OS lot with their new-fangled old-fangled trigonometry technologies  to help poor lost feminists locate themselves in time and space if they only knew how. And again there were loads of thing we could not see in the landscape but were there apparently like a race course and a firing range. I can’t yet see with moor eyes. The landscape is so empty yet so full all at the same time. When I get my moor eyes I will be able to see the things I cannot now.

Today was about really shit weather and technique. Alex makes the compass more friendly and I was able to make tentative associations between it and something positive   - and not a school maths class. The compass puts me off because it looks like something I used to carry to school in a pencil case everyday but be unsure of its utility. He is very suave and very sure and its comforting to be out there with him. He and Sarah look good together, good gear and ying-yanging their strengths and sandwiches (who gets the crust). We talk and walk and laugh and share and I feel lucky to have this.

Things I have learnt from this walk.

Today I claimed the bronze age was 10000 years ago which is bullshit. This plagued me all day. The ice age was 11/12000 years ago so it wouldn’t line up. When I got home I checked and started learning all sort of stuff. Like that Britain only became an island 8000 years ago when a tsunami wiped us off the edge of Norway by a wave so big it dismembered creatures in its way (Nice!). 8000 years WTF, how could I only know that now? That shook my identity as an islander I can tell you. I am happier now knowing that the bronze age was back where it should be about 3-4000 years ago. And totally marvel at the length of time that the moors have been used for.

Dartmoor emerged out of the last ice age densely forested and it was around this time that people started to inhabit it properly. People means deforestation and deforestation created man eating peart bogs (still need to sort that one). People did start to leave Dartmoor for a while due to fOOOOkking up the soil but did return briefly around 9/10AD. There are over 1200 sites on Dartmoor including cairns (burial sites), ceremonial sites and over 75 stone rows - in fact, 60 per cent of all the stone rows in England can be found on Dartmoor. There is a great web site here that documents them all in total nerd fashion. There are 15 stone circles.  One of the most dramatic is the circle at Grey Wethers wherever that is. Now I have looked it up and we were bloody well there. Grey Wethers is the double stone circle we went to near Fernworthy. The only double circle on the moor. Significance now know ! Most of these rows and circles were built in clearings in forests so they must feel all cold and naked now.

Other things I already knew but need to know harder

I must get a map

I must get a folder

I must get boots

I must get gaiters

I must get gloves

I must get a compass, a GPS, a decent hat, a good coat, a bag to throw muddy stuff in at the end.

JW

Stuff to read – Stone Rows - http://www.dartmoorwalks.org.uk/resource/rows.php#:~:text=The%20longest%20is%20the%20Stall,triple%20stone%20rows%20on%20Dartmoor.

[still-finding-our-way]

G12 / H10

It was so beautiful. All of it. Exhilarating, wild and alive. Two women bonded by over forty years of friendship and on the verge of entering a new stage of life. It somehow felt appropriate to begin our adventure on the day when the veil between this world and others is said to be at its thinnest. Midway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. A point in the year that is steeped in culture and myth reaching all the way back to the Gaelic Samhain. A time to salute the diminishing sun and to ready ourselves for the coming darkness by giving shape and form to our darkest fears and terrors. A day for dancing with the goblins, monsters, demons and witches - those glorious devilish old women with wild hair and dirty cackles, who know a thing or two about life, love and death, and who are not afraid to scream into the wind. 

Roaring, wild hair whipping wind, cuffing at your face. Wide open moorland, burnished bronze, gold, sienna, burnt umber and peat blackened oozing mud. Rain clouds rising and falling, billowing, all air and light tumbling. Saturated ground, soddened boot filling, slip sliding and laughing. Do not be afraid to scream into the wind. She’ll whip your voice away, throw it out to the open moor, bring you down to size. Grounded and elemental.

This was Jennie’s gift to me for my fiftieth birthday, to explore 365 square miles of Dartmoor together. Her gift floored me completely. It went to the very heart of who I am - my love for the moor, the wildness, the big geological time, the myths and adventure - to be able explore what is beneath our feet, finding the familiar in the unfamiliar and vice versa, and all topped off by a night in a posh hotel for our first excursion. There could have been no better gift to mark becoming fifty, which in itself feels like such a momentous achievement because fifty seems proper old and grown-up, and despite having accumulated enough emotional baggage to last me a lifetime twice over, I still at heart feel eleven.

Only Jennie could have chosen such a gift, not only because of our shared love of the moor, which provided the backdrop for our childhood growing up together, but because of our deep and long-lasting friendship that has stood the test of time, from wilful girls to testy teens, through marriages and divorces, demanding careers, dealing with loss and life's psychological demons, and babies - lots of babies (8 between us). She knows all my secrets and all my foibles and will readily tell me when I’m talking bollocks. She is my go to counsel. Now here we are, still shoring each other up and still laughing. My fellow life warrior. We wear our battle scars as epaulettes and they are numerous and many. Somewhere she is still nine and I eleven, sitting in a tree, with bows and arrows made from whittled down green wood, carved into sharp points, we cut our palms with a dirty penknife. Daring ourselves to do it. Wincing, willing. Brave girls. Loyal, with fighting spirit, not afraid of going to the edge. Pray pity for the parents. But perhaps we knew, deep down in our small cellular selves that we were already bound together, life paths beginning to unfurl, the same but different. Add spit for good measure and grip tiny hands, dirty fingers interlocking. Sealed in flesh. It is done. Blood sisters, bacteria shared, we will survive.

How to communicate Dartmoor? What language to use? Words won’t cut it and my photographs are left wanting. Searching for the stones. It feels like a pilgrimage, here in what is effectively our backyard, the high moorland always visible on the horizon of our home city. A journey not so much to test ourselves but to provide much needed sanctuary. Time in the wilderness, to set ourselves right again. This may well become our church. Heads down. Two circles, separate.

Today we are searching for a story, the story of Grey Wethers, two stone circles, side by side, the mid points aligned almost exactly north and south. Bronze age in origin the circles are dated in the region of 3,000 BCE, though note they were ‘restored’ in 1909, so what remains may not be the original version. Nevertheless they are steeped in myth, ancient tales, tall tales, tales of greed and comeuppance, of violence and sorrow. Each has a distinctive sculptural form. From a distance they hold a solidity, a vertical uprightness that looks almost human against the wide open moorland. Myths abound on Dartmoor about people and animals being turned to stone, and ‘Wether’, germanic in origin, refers to a castrated ram, a common farming method used to temper the ram’s hormonal aggression and feistiness, which is all the better for eating, apparently. Earth, sky, water and rock. Orbits and circles, lines and delineations. Lost lives, lost civilisations. We are grasping at straws. I tell Jennie I want to go back to draw the stones, to pay homage to their physicality through line, but the weather, as we enter the darkest part of the year, will not permit this and so we agree to revisit what is described as the north plateau in the summer. I raid my oil pastels and hold the sticks in my fist and attack the paper. Raw and direct. It is the only way to remember.

SC

[still-finding-our-way]

Halloween walk

31/10/2020 Present Dr Sarah Chapman and Dr Jennie Winter. FFS. Drs of nothing useful between them.

Our first official walk. Preceded by yellow weather warnings from the Met office and everyone talking about the storm coming… reports of cliffs being washed away at Wembury and slashing horizontal movie type rain punishing Plymouth every time I looked out the window. WTF is a yellow weather warning anyway? Sunshine is yellow. Surely there could be a better colour for storm, flood and pestilence when its on its way, maybe ‘dark purple’ or moody blue’ or ‘crimson red’ weather warnings? In the 36 hours before we left on Halloween morning my anxiety was rising. Sarah text me that her and her man were arguing because she apparently wasn’t learning how to use the compass effectively. Her opinion was that he was being an ass and what did I think. I thought the compass would probably be the only thing to save us seeing as visibility was about 1.5m and her man happens to have 30 years orienteering practice which is part of his job and perhaps she would listen. But hell. I just agreed he was an ass and sat back whilst the text message fed my hungry anxiety monster.

Sarah picked me up and we were both suitably hysterical. We rolled eyes at each other and marvelled at our ridiculousness and I tried to interpret anxiety as excitement, but I was genuinely concerned for our lives at that point. The drive to Fernworthy did nothing to dissipate that. Water, water everywhere and only glimpses of Dartmoor through sleeting rain and fog. Fucks sake. I kept imagining the bar at the end of the day. Being an amateur alcoholic has its benefits.

But I could not have been more wrong. We arrived, and after changing a few temporary road signs around to ensure we didn’t park too far away from the start point -just like that we were off. And like magic the rain disappeared and we literally had sunshine and rainbows….. maybe the yellow weather warning was right then, and it is sunshine? Must look some basic weather stuff up.

 The walk was epic. I know this because Sarah said it so many times and I agreed, it was the right word for it. It was windy, bright, noisy, expansive, dwarfing. The forest we started in was shouting loudly about tree business in the wind and we shouted over it. Chitter chatter about all sorts of excited nonsense. And the gifts of the walk were numerous and generous. Stone circles, double stone circles, prairie type plains, blue skies, black skies, views, tors (What’s the name Sarah?), rocks and mud and water (so much mud and water), Oreo cows, Halloween red sheep and mud and mud and water. And a bit more mud. Hard going. We walked and slipped and fell a lot. We took photos and talked about all the things she knows that I don’t. About standing stones and stone circles and the role of women in their cultural significance.   Women under the stones, the stones because of women. I told her about things she didn’t know. About Irish prehistoric sweat houses and the possible orgies that I hoped had taken place in them ‘Fulacht fiadh’.  We talked and walked and slipped about and made concerted, but I fear erroneous efforts, to read the compass and treasured the map like a bible. We learnt a lot. I had never heard the word Tussock before, it sounds like one of Genghis Khan’s guys. I now know Tussocks so well, they are pernicious little fuckers. Putting feet down with the caveat that there is likely to be 50cm difference in where I think the foot may land and where it may actually land for step after step whilst traversing an area I am sure the walking guide told us to avoid due to ‘man eating peat bogs’ is not something I will forget in a hurry. During this section of thee walk I developed a motto which was ‘paths, pfffff, paths are for pussys’.  I am hoping to grow away from this motto as my Dartmoor maturity develops.

The highlight of the walk for me was what incidentally made us turn back. Our complete dismissal that the blue lines on maps are rivers. And how one gets a cross a swollen flooded river. Sarah’s brilliant/barmy idea of removing rocks from an ancient wall to hurl into the raging torrent to create steppingstones across (the river did not agree and angrily ate the rocks) made me howl with laughter and still does. We realised at that point we needed to go home.

Other things we learnt.

·       We walked 1/6 of our planned walk. We walked for 7 miles and it took us 4 hours. The walk we planned was a marine commando level SAS training walk. We have learnt that like the curiosities associated with a Cornish mile – the Dartmoor miles is not a mile as we know it. And should be respected as such. Otherwise we will perish.

·       There is no relationship between contours and what one website quintessentially termed ‘man-eating peat bogs’ (I am hoping that as a human with breasts I am therefore safe). However, titty jokes aside these are my biggest concern. I am pretty tough. Ghosts scare me a bit but I would give it my all being lost on a cold haunted Dartmoor but I definitely do not know what I would do in a man eating [sic] peat bog. Sarah and I discussed different scenarios which actually were not wildly different at all. Basically ‘lie lay flat’ and ‘do not move’. But then we took a straight-line shortcut across potential peat bog territory so we could fit in afternoon shopping in Chagford. Mmmm….

·       If something is on the map it is definitely there it just might be in disguise. We spent a considerable amount of time musing over a wall on the map that we could not see in the landscape because we were not looking through Dartmoor eyes. We were looking with townie eyes. In the town walls are walls. On Dartmoor walls can be meanders of slightly raised vegetation. Lesson learnt.

·       We need better gear, gaiters, flasks, boots, binoculars, gloves, GPS, we estimate about a thousand pounds each.

 After this walk we drank a lot of champagne, congratulated ourselves on still being in the world and listed some what we thought were questions but in my notes were just badly written champagne nonsense. Por ejemplo.

·       Peat hag. Swamps.

·       Circles – women, walls men?

·       White on a map – danger men with guns.

·       Yellow?

·       Red flag?

·       Blanket bog….raised bog….mired in a bog. I have starred this item, so it is obviously important.

·       Feudal pre-catalyst, owners v custodians

Interestingly as I review this list I see that throughout the chronological sexology of Dartmoor where women are buried under circles of stones and then visited by other women with compasses and maps  - and men build walls so they can shoot guns - the peat bogs have their own little joke where every now and then they just gobble some poor fucker up in the same way they always did. One trick peat pony.

As walks go this was a good walk. As much as I am excited about the adventure, the wildness and danger and beauty of the place and the challenge of the walking  - and I am. I need it. As much as that I am excited to do it with her and the other people we will take. She smiled and laughed and slipped and peed herself a bit (it was that good), she took photos and has painted it and this is a right thing for her and me at this 50ish time. Its fucking perfect.

I have no idea which and what squares we ticked off.

JW

[still-finding-our-way]

Her birthday - she knows

Date of walk 15th October 2020

Location Down Tor

Present – Sarah, Jennie, Alex, Alex, Adam, Thea, Ella, Libby

Blissful. That sums up the first walk. Perfect cold sharp district Autumn colours, clear defiant rocks. Running busy demanding kids spurred by the place to engage, to vie for attention competing with the scenery and each other. A huge bottle of Moet, fitting and too easily slurped and spilled in joy and celebration. And Sarah. Looking like a kid, acting like a teen, yet her she is, a ridiculous and unconvincing 50. Jesus. I cannot believe it, none of us can and that makes us celebrate more, she is proof we can escape the stereotypes and will live forever! Gifts are exchanged. I am pleased with mine and I have thought about her opening it. Watching her read it and finally being able to share my plan, our plan, our adventure. And she likes it. She loves it. She gets it. How I did not get a knife out right there and slash our palms to solidify the pledge in blood I don’t know. I don’t think we had a knife with us. Probably best. I seem to get quite excitable around her. I watched our patchwork family in the sunset. Life is so bizarre. Here we are with some of our kids and some of our partners in a sensational place with a biblical sunset savouring life and its passing and its coming and it was everything life should be for an hour or so. I am still glowing from it a day later like the ready brek kid and I thanks the gods, especially the god of serendipity who gave us each other in this spot in the universes. Cannot wait for the next walk. The Chagford walk and the sleep over. Geddon.

 A couple of days later. I am bemused by the effect her birthday has had on me. Ever since I left the Moors I have been listening to 80s music, particularly Madonna and reminiscing about teenage anxt. It looks quite attractive from a distance.

JW