Still ill, i've started making plans for where to walk once i'm recovered to cheer myself up. Slow Ways (https://beta.slowways.org/) is a wonderful initiative to create a national network of walking routes connecting all of Great Britain’s towns, cities and villages. I've had my eye on it for a while and i'll be walking and testing routes once i'm all better. But which one to do first...
Unfortunately I have fallen victime to the 'worst cold ever' that's been going around so I've not been up to any outdoorsy stuff for quite some time! I have however been walking up the hill nearby to a nice bench to read in the sun when my foggy brain allows. as you can guess by the title of this one i've been reading Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing's wonderful book and thought that i'd share a few little exerpts.
"To walk attentively through a forest, even a damaged one, is to be caught by the abundance of life: acient and new; underfoot and reaching into the light. But how does one tell the life of the forest? We might begin by looking for drama and adventure beyond the activities of humans.Yet we are not used to reading stories without human heroes. This is the puzzle that informs this section of th book. Can i show landscape as the protagonist of an adventure in which humans are only one kind of participant?"
Obviously the chapter that follows this paragraph is my favourite in the book so far. 'Landscape as a protagonist' is an idea i've also been dwelling on a lot, in the way i engage with it, write about it and do art.
I enjoy the way Angela talks and thiks about conservation, inspired by Japanese conservationists to see conservation as a hodgepodge: building a net of people and animals and fungi and bacteria and insects and trees and so, so much more. A conservation that rejects stasis or individuality.
"Telling stories of landscape requires getting to know the inhabitants of the landscape, human and not human. This is not easy, and it makes sense to me to use all the learning practices i can think of, including our combined forms of mindfulness, myths and tales, livelihood practices, archives, scientific reports, and experiments... ...I offer stories built through layered and disparate practices of knowing and being. If the components clash with each other, this only enlarges what such stories do."
A pretty nice view to be reading huh?
Back with Slow the Flow, this time i was the macho one going straight for the saw and tacking bits of tree that really should have been donw with the chainsaw instead. Jamie from the national Trust showed me the proper method so that the branch snaps with a cleaner cut near the end, though it took me a few tries to get it right. There were some beastly bits of tree lying on the ground that tried to trap the band of the saw in a vice-like grip but i emerged victorious in the end.
It was interesting to see the Ash dieback in the stumps of the freshly cut trees too. The black mark just like in old pirate tales, marking the tree for death.
Also! There was this incredible bit of fungus on a tree. Everyone went around asking each other if they'd seen the gross slime for a while. Observe:
Scrub - Hawthorn, Blackthorn
Trees - Willow, Small leafed lime, scarce alder.
Hard work, but incredibly fun to get into the rhythm of it. A gloriously sunny day with views down the valley. It felt good to be staying in one place and doing something. I’m so used to walking around stopping only to observe and to rest that to stay in a place for an extended time was a treat. You start to get to know it a bit more intimately. Where the ground dries quicker, where some work took place an age ago so there are more stones (bad for digging!). A very lovely soup was served to volunteers also, and though I wasn't feeling particularly social that day it was nice to be surrounded by people gently chatting as I read.
Also very nice to be out volunteering again after the trio of battering storms. I heard it take down a few branches in the night but the damage doesn't seem as bad as the big one we had a while ago.
My first day volunteering with Slow the Flow. A perfectly wet rainy day. According to my housemates while I was out it was hailing but being in the woods the trees must have protected us because I didn't notice it. I very much appreciated being able to get stuck right in, and slightly less appreciated being stuck right in the mud.
Those most eager to be macho went straight for the saws and logs so i did a lot of branch collecting and moving, getting to shore up and build the shape of the dams