I was running up the long, long track towards the Bold Burn`s source.The larch are in leaf. Spring green overwhelming the orange-pink like a tide coming in. I stopped and watched a coal tit. It was halfway through its long, hot day`s urgent flitting, from sunrise to set, bush to copse, calling for a mate. One shrill note samba. In my ignorance I seemed to match a goldfinch with a bright orange chaffinch, or were they just friends ? Across from the stretching diagonal rise, on the valley`s far, echoing side I heard a woodpecker`s burst , like gentle machinegun fire. How many taps: 10 or 20 ? too fast to count. This bird was carving more wood than I was, came the thought. Robin and I had chipped off the prone Birch log`s bark, revealing chicken breast wood - but I still haven`t carved; too constipated with ideas; unwilling to expend the energy until guaranteed a good outcome... Running again, I reached the top bend and drank from the burn, then moved on through shade into pinewood and boulders, startling a dark brown roe deer 50 metres ahead.
And as I loped along images came and went like card houses rising and falling, and I realised I need to get out the chisels and just carve and saw and chip, because it`ll be in the doing that a shape will start to form; I can see it in the other curious, finished figures around my house - why not this time around ?
But there will be a figure, hands held high , holding a creature (or being a wild creature`s perch). He`ll be running (or will have the legs of a deer), or he`ll be standing still (or dancing); rapt; attention focused on the small siskin sitting on his palms, that he`s returning to the safety of a tree branch. Though wood, he`ll have the plaster-freshness of a Marino Marini sculpture. Saturday`s the day to begin.
