Growing a sculpture

Running down from the high trails last weekend I never had such a strong indicator of the advantages in living on a south facing hill, rather than clinging to the cold flank of a northerly aspect. Ice blue as opposed to mellow pastel. However it was amongst the storm-damage of the north facing slope pictured below that I found last spring`s birch log, which I then proceeded to roll and then daisy the 300 yards to my car. This (heavy) seven foot log became the happy spring and summer-long focus for a sculpture that evolved from a sun-welcoming yogi, into a drowned fisherman (whose death gave me life, but that`s another story), until it finally grew into a Riverman: wading amongst fishes, thigh deep in the strong surge of water. Perhaps drowned and being eaten by fish ? Some Nick Drake sadness informing his name, his constituent parts transforming. His recomposing body nourishing the river and its creatures.

I wanted his face to reflect the moment of passing: a "transmigration of his soul" ; residual afterglow once the sun has set; the darkness in a room once the light has been flicked to "off". The mystery of that moment and how we choose to describe it is largely a matter of semantics, like differing tastes in poetry, or temperament. 

At this early stage I really liked the looseness of the piece; its sketchiness and the broad brush strokes of blue paint to indicate intent.

A runner limbering ?

The decision to make an assemblage of the piece partly came about because I hacked off a substantial chunk of his left buttock. My sculptures always feel their way into incorporating animals, usually birds. This time, fish. He was such a vertical shape, the fishes flowing at right and acute angles brought about more dynamic movement.

  I liked the Punk / Mohican feel of the above arrangement. The fish-back was wave-like. The man was unequivocally drowned though; claimed by the fish. Seemed to limit possible interpretations too much.

I was pleased with the base. Always a challenge. This was taken from a slab of kiln dried sycamore I bought from a sawmill near the Moray Firth about 18 years ago.

Cut a swathe

Running up the logging road south of our wooden hamlet, I stopped to take a photograph; low mist and bright sunlight made for striking images. I was dismayed to have left the camera`s memory card at home. I was also dismayed that I was dismayed ! but I`d got into the habit of sharing these runs through the immediacy of photographs rather than through words.
Moving on, at three road junction or thereabouts, I decided to follow the faint trail that offered itself as alternative to the all too familiar forest roads. I thought I`d explored this years ago, found it to be a dead end. However, as I could have confused this with memories of other blind alleyways and dead end trails, the possibility of owning another way onto the high drovers` road spurred me on. 
The track was faint, more a roe deer way. No mountain bike tyre prints, no room for, or sign of, land-rover double imprints in the mud. It snaked its way along the hollow of the cleft between the forested hills. Maybe at one time, maybe for millennia, this pathway had been the direct way up from our bend in the Tweed and onto the high moorland...     Anyway, I walked up, pulling larch and spruce branches aside, winding up the uneven, tussocked ground; the heather clumps and pale green dougall-ish grass. I moved amongst bright forest greens, outlined in frost, (refreshing to see in a land all gone pastel and dead). At one point there was a clustered planting of bright Juniper bushes, outgrown their plastic protective chrysalis. Cherry and birch stood dormant in a stretch of wet ground over the hidden burn meandering a parallel route.
I thought about paths and ways; that they need to have a purpose if they are to thrive. This one had lost its way as the larger, utilitarian and ugly access roads had asserted themselves upon the landscape. And yet, as I reached the top, and found it to emerge close by the Southern Upland Way, I could see it had potential, again, as short cut up to the views, to the high watersheds flowing down west and  south.  
So next time I run this trail I`ll bring a camera (with memory card) and I`ll also bring secateurs, to cut a modest swathe through the plantings that have insinuated themselves along the way, in the years since the trail was last used regularly. 

Gloaming Tree Fall

I ran up by the bold burn to the three road junction. Not quite dark. Ink blot tree copses, pale grey snake of a road, puddles flashing with light as I came to them, like cats eyes. Not black enough to engender the glimmer of primal anxieties.
I wanted to climb one of the beech trees at the head of the crossroads; to rise above the ground in the gloaming, hugging the tree, listening to the night sounds` approach.
I chose one and pulled myself up six feet, reached for a stump which broke in my hand launching me out and down to the ground on my back, my fall  cushioned by coppice shoots.
Climbing to my feet, feeling my heart thud, I tried again, more careful this time, and rose up in a spiral round the young adult tree. Stopped and listened. Breathed in the sound of a hooting owl. Sinewed down again and trotted home, winding down the track, my sight diminishing, senses of hearing and imagination waxing.

Climbing Trees

Today I was in the garden by 8.30, despite it being a Sunday. It was to be a sunny day and, while impetus was there,  I needed to complete the wattle fence as well as the crazily paved front path.

By 4 all was finished, rubble delivered to the local dump.

I was happily knackered and yet wanted to stretch my legs and lungs in the forest, to feel strong and healthy for another week of challenging dynamics at work.

Returning from Scrogbank (where you`re almost guaranteed to meet nobody), I veered down into the copse above our field, which marks the borderland between farmland and "wildness".

Inspired by Robert Macfarlane, though (more significantly) giving into my own wish: I sized up the gnarled oak tree by the upper corner gate: plenty branches, not too many of them treacherously dead. I stepped from the drystane dyke onto a strong-enough branch and wound my way up the tree`s broad dinosaur hide. At twenty feet I stopped; didn`t wish to go further as I was cogitating difficult emotions, ancient but unarticulated. Didn`t want my equilibrium off-kilter while balanced amongst these branches of variable dependability.

I thought of The Wild Places: "I walked up through the wood, and midway along its northern edge I came to my tree - a tall grey-barked beech..." [clean limbed, strong branched !] "...whose branches flare out in such a way that it is easy to climb. I had climbed the tree many times before, and its marks were all familiar to me..." 

This is how MacFarlane introduces his book - touching base with his own private bit of wilderness a stone`s throw from his city home. 

I live at the edge of a tamed and industrialised wilderness of trees and moorland. To scramble into a tree is to be intimate with its own particular presence, and it requires focus and a degree of nerve, strength and agility. It is to be reminded that I am alive and that life is a balancing act.

Speak your truth

After setting a gatepost in concrete and starting all over with crazy paving leading to the front door, I met my brother at Flotterstone for a walk and a long ruminative blether.

Then home and, as there was residual light left from the gone sun, I clambered up the logging road facing the Tweed valley, jogging into the forest and on to Scrogbank.

At the junction there, I looked up at the silhouetted pine trees, dark against  purple-grey cloud cover. Above their high branches I sometimes glimpsed  a soft warm gibbous moon rushing motionless through the vapour.

Wind clamoured softly like a sea without waves or shore. Hit the pine-tops, set them dancing, resonating. 
I looked, listened, described in my head, with words and sentences. Words that spoke my experience.
My truth.

small quietness

I set up my camp at Kilvrecht on Loch Rannoch`s southern shore. I wasn`t bivouacking under a fallen birch tree in the Black Wood, in the snow, like Robert MacFarlane . However, again inspired by his Wild Places,  I still want to experience what Nan Shepherd described of the Cairngorms: "No one knows the mountain completely who has not slept on it. As one slips over into sleep, the mind grows limpid; the body melts; perception alone remains. These moments of quiescent perceptiveness before sleep are amongst the most rewarding of the day. I am emptied of preoccupation, there is nothing between me and the earth and the sky."  [p91]

Leaving my tent I wandered for some hours along a trail skirting the Black Wood`s edge. At its upper tipping point I glimpsed a stretch of still water fenced in and almost hidden behind trees. There was no way in for eye or body to fully appreciate the lochen`s size or nature.

Then I found a lightly indented grass trail leading in to shoreside. 

Such quiet.... Sound-proofed against wind and tree sway. At my vision`s edge, the light plink and ripple of a trout jumping happened. And again. The sound of quietly falling leaves drifted over to me.

I stood and stretched down, feeling hamstrings strain and then relax. Friday, Saturday and Sunday I could have sat, stood, even swam, just here. And done nothing else.

In the early hours before dawn I was awoken by the cold and listened to and thought about two owls close by me, calling across the woods. High, clear night song, trailing off in wavelets. Soft as their feathers.

Rannoch Moor

Parking the car at Rannoch station early on Saturday I prepared for my walk across the moor to Glencoe : took a selection from the stock of tinned sardines, oatcakes, apples and carrots. Plus some water bottles. (I really wouldn`t need these). I was walking east to west, into a vast and ancient sundial; each distant mountain reflecting sunlight and shadow in an ageless repeating sequence, augmented by the infinitely variable patterning of clouds and mists.
The walk was 12 miles across, carrying a heavy-enough rucksack. I knew Saturday`s weather was to be fair, Sunday`s execrable.

The first of three sections passed through woodland that skirted the head of Loch Laidon

Loch Laidon

The middle third was a walk through boggy grassland accompanied by a long, highly unphotogenic line of power cables

Then onto solid ground. Glencoe drawing almost imperceptivley closer

Bridges are a fine thing. How I hankered after them on Sunday...

One of the landmarks that failed to reappear on Sunday - because I was to branch off onto another path. 

The mountain the cairn echoes is Buachaille Etive Mòr, the Great Herdsman of Etive, and it was this mountain that I was visiting, like a pilgrim to his God`s cathedral

I pitched tent here. Felt I should have been raising a yurt. A beautiful spot in which to sit and breath and stop thinking all those clamouring thoughts. A place to awaken to an orange sun glowing on the mountain`s face.

When all was in its place a liveried estate manager drew up and asked me kindly to flit further along as they were set to move a herd of Highland cows that evening. 

The second pitch had a fine view of the mountain. Here, the river roared soothingly. Also it was only a mile or so down to King`s House Hotel. I sauntered down to the climbers` bar for a pint and some crisps.
Returning, I sat watching the mountains and marvelling at an eagle`s agility in flight. I then lay reading and, an hour after sunset, fell asleep - the river`s white noise a lullaby.
So that was Saturday

I was a bit concerned that the early Sunday rain would make some streams difficult to cross on the trail back. I woke before dawn and set off by torchlight. Sound as this notion was, the darkness caused me to wander onto the wrong road. In the dawning light I walked along for five miles or so looking for yesterday`s landmarks - finding none. The drizzle and fog obscured all the mountains. My compass showed south where north should be.  Retracing my path I came to a dead end. I became quite dismayed. I was lost on Rannoch Moor. Not good.

Then I saw what I hoped was the west to east trail markers (those ugly power cables). I followed the marshy line of a fence down towards them and was very relieved to have found my bearings again. Sure enough I encountered each Saturday landmark in turn. Safe.

All was fine (if wet and blustery) until I encountered the first in a number of "challenging" crossings. The first of these cataracts seemed impassable but, as there was no choice, I threw my rucksack to an " island", (on the middle left of the retrospective picture above) followed it, then chucked it and myself  to the other side. Had I slipped I would have been swept down the roaring flume. 

Even on reaching the woodlands, what had been gentle streams were now torrents. This last one fordable only with rucksack on my back. 
As I hobbled the last few miles blisters burst and I hobbled some more...
In time I reached Rannoch station and the car, whose key I had continually reached for in my jacket pocket, like a talisman.
And as I sat, heater blasting, stripping down and drying my sodden body, the deserted and remote railway station started to throng with locals and travellers awaiting the arrival of the Glasgow train to Fort William.
And I realised that I worship the gods of nature and modernity.