Big Skies and Changeable Weather

Big Skies and Changeable Weather

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last week visiting various parts of the Kent coastline and going for walks. These walks haven’t been anything arduous. I think that it’s the ‘going out’ that is important.

John Muir was a Scottish naturalist, who moved over to America and created the first national parks, he said,

‘I went out for a walk, (and finally concluded to stay out till sundown), for going out I found was really going in’. John Muir

Going out, especially in the wintertime, when it’s snug and cosy indoors may not be the priority for most of us. Unless you have a dog to walk, or don’t have access to a car, it tends to be avoided. I am lucky enough to be able to drive, so I can choose quite easily where I will walk and recently it has been a case of picking friends up and driving to a favourite or new spot.

 

Walking with friends in all weathers.

A flask of coffee and biscuits or cake persuades most of them to join me on short, often wild, windy and wet walks along the coast.

Snow coming?

Of course I can walk from where I live and I do. Walking a well known route regularly has different benefits. The smaller details are recognised, such as the movement of something small along the path, for example: a glove that had been dropped onto the floor yesterday is now put up on a wall. This reminds me that others walk here too. Another day the glove may have gone, has it been reunited with its owner or is it in the bin?

My shadow finishes up on the beach!

Small manmade interventions happen every day and of course seasons change too. Nature reminds us of the time passing, if we care to take note we can watch a whole (plant)life cycle. I see the flowers of the Alexanders that thrive along the coast here bloom, fade and then their seeds appear. Dark black seeds denote where the plant thrived as its foliage shrinks back in the autumn. Now, most of the seeds have disappeared but a few remain and I snack on them and enjoy their Aniseed taste as I walk and I note that their foliage is regrowing now, (also edible!).

Detail of chalk cliffs at Westgate.

The artist J.M.W. Turner loved the big skies of the East Kent coast, particularly those of Thanet.

‘..the skies over Thanet are the loveliest in all Europe.’ Turner

The sky changes, as the weather rolls in or out. Recently we have had dramatic stormy skies to watch as we walk.

 

Wet weather approaching.

The huge clouds roll across and out to sea and mostly take all that wet weather out with them, but in the process they create the most wonderful reflections and optical effects on the beaches.

Deal seafront seeming to float in midair.

When the sun pierces through the clouds and shines brightly, it creates dramatic silhouettes and dark shadows.

 

Deal Castle.

This is a stark contrast to the glowing low brilliant light that reflects on the sea that can be so bright that I need to shade my eyes.

Walking is good for you!

Last Friday on Radio Four I caught the end of the Today programme. As often happens, the last six minutes were the most interesting. Apparently plentiful evidence, published in the publication ‘American Journal of Clinical Nutrition’ has proved that walking is good for us. To walk twenty minutes daily has been proven to add to our longevity.

 

Piers such as this one at Deal encourage walking out.

John Humphrys interviewed two writers, Claire Tomlin and Ian Sinclair and asked them if the study was correct, does walking allow them to think better too? 

I have written in this blog about Ian Sinclairs work as a psychogeographer, specifically his ode to the soulless ‘revamping’ of the East End of London in making way for the 2012 Olympic Park: ‘Swandown’.

Ian Sinclair and Andrew Kotting in the film 'Swandown'. Photo by Anonymous-Bosch

I had not discovered the biographer Claire Tomalin before, she described her walks along the Thames, literally in the footsteps of Samuel Pepys. She had been advised long ago to experience the landscape as her subject would have done, either on horseback or even better,she said 'by foot'.

‘You see the sky and the river in the same way as your subject did…it’s just very thrilling to feel you are covering the same ground.’ Claire Tomalin

She went on to say that Dickens, who walked 20 miles a day, often across Kent, thought it was essential. He had to walk in order to write, he felt there was a definite connection between walking and writing.

Seasalter Marshes, Dickens could have walked here too.

When Ian Sinclair is interviewed he explains that he does the same walk every day for 40 minutes through Hackney.

‘I walk as a kind of mediation between the state of sleeping and the state of arising…by doing the same thing there is no novelty, other than the small changes that happen day to day…’ Ian Sinclair

Claire Tomalin finishes off the interview by plainly stating that ideas ‘come to you as you walk’.

 

Walking physically and mentally opens up new vistas.

This is a great reminder for me for when I feel ‘stuck’ creatively and it is wet and rainy outside. By going out, I will go in and as that happens, walking, wandering and wondering begins.

 

 (I completed my MA in September 2014 and recorded the last two months of it in another blog called www.thesaltwayfarer.blogspot.co.uk

Please feel free to look at that anytime, as it is from that, that I am where I am now.)

Sunshine

Sunshine

When the sun shines at this time of year it is wonderful. The daylight hours are still getting shorter as we approach the Winter Solstice and any reminder of the bright, balmy sunny days of the summer make me glad.

Bright sunlight captures the beauty of the delicate details.

I have just come back from a fairly short walk along the promenade in Tankerton. I decided that on these rare bright sunny clear winter days, it is better to go out and walk for a short time rather than put off the event to another day. Yes, there are always more ‘useful’ things I could be doing, especially at this busy time of year, but needs must and I have a new reason to prioritise walking.

 

The sequel to 'The Artists Way'.

I have just started reading ‘Walking in this World’, by Julia Cameron. I have had the book for about 7 years, even through my MA, which focussed on how people encounter the world as they walk, but even then I did not think to pick it up and read it. But now is the time, going into the depths of winter and facing decreasing light, I know that this book will guide me.

Walking in this world.

I have got so much out of her other books, including ‘The Artists Way’, that I am really excited to be starting on this journey. I know it will be informative and enjoyable.

Another artist who I am hoping to work with in the New Year is also reading the book at the same time, so I am hoping we can compare notes. ‘Walking in this World’, encourages use of three tools to achieve greater creativity. These are ‘Morning Pages’, ‘Artists Date’ and ‘Weekly Walk’. I do the first two things as this was the practice set up years ago when I read her first book. The last ‘tool’, I have been doing anyway.

Bright sunshine and dark shadows.

So I am hoping that the book will be a good read in the dark evenings and the walks will be a delight in the precious daylight time we have during the winter.

‘Great artists are actually great amateurs,’ she writes in the introduction, ‘They have learned to wriggle out of the seriousness of rigid categorization and allow themselves to pursue the Pied Piper of Delight.’

Light and Shadow

I have thought a lot about my blog entry from last week when I wanted to write about perspectives, and how we can view something from another place.

Whilst walking up at Victory Wood, overlooking the Isle of Sheppey and the wonderful panoramic views that come from being in a new wood, with ‘baby’ trees, I recognised that each season of the year gives us a changing perspective of the place.

The sculpture frames the view back inland.

Myself and a couple of good friends walked up to the main sculpture that overlooks the view and we shared hot coffee and home made cake. It was so cold; we were wrapped up in scarves, gloves and hats. Back in the summer in that same place I had tried to get some shade and watched quietly as a stripy caterpillar worked its way slowly across the sculpture.

Prism people.

We didn’t hang around for long this week as even the dog started to shiver after just a few minutes, the wind coming off the sea was bitter and we knew we needed to walk to keep warm.

We walked around the plateau towards the established, older woodland at the West edge and went into it.

 

The woods on the west side of Victory Wood.

It was a real contrast from the last time I had ventured in. That time, it was a respite from the burning high sun, we went into the much needed cooler shade, following the path, but the woods scale was unknown, I hadn’t brought my map with me then and had no idea of the size. I remember I was wearing sandals that day and my feet were almost constantly being bitten by large wood ants if I stood still for any amount of time.

But on this cold winter day, as we entered the woods, I could immediately see through the bare skeleton trees to the surrounding hills. 

 

Clearer visibility through the trees allowed recognition of the surrounding hills.

The visibility was great; I was able to locate myself in the wood, recognising the topographical features in the distance, through the trees. Plus there were no ants that I could see that could target my toes and set me squealing and running away.

The sunlight created bright beams on the floor of the wood and trees themselves.

I was immediately aware of the sunlight driving a bright channel through the trees. It lit up lines across the leafy floor and shone brightly on tree trunks and other objects in its path.

The contrast of light and shade was fascinating.

The light shone strongly through the wood, it reached the furthest places, even if it was just a sliver of bright white reflected on the bark, it could be seen clearly in the distance.

Likewise shadows were cast around the wood, creating some very strong dynamic forms onto the horizontal and vertical surfaces.

 

Tree shadows on and over other trees.

The leaves themselves acted as a neutral colour to this strong play of light and dark, revealing a couple of times, wonderful inconspicuous gems.

Spot the mushroom!

I came across a mushroom poking its way through the  leaf ‘litter’, a yellow chestnut leaf in a sea of brown oak leaves and emerald green lichen ‘climbing’ its way up a tree trunk.

Bright green moss and lichen at the base of a tree, by the path.

Looking up as I walked along the path I could clearly see the sky where the trees were less dense and remembered this was an important marker for the path and reminded me of the only way I was able to find my way home one very dark night when I lived in Berkshire.

Path showing finer overhead tree canopy.

Salvation

Back then, the nearest pub was in a neighbouring village and we had walked there in the dusk, through the woods, with the greying sky reflected in the puddles along the track. On the way home, there was no moonlight at all; there was dark and a darker dark, which were the trees in the wood. We were able to find our way home by looking upward, following the track from above, seeing where the darkest dark, the trees, was the thinnest.

A beloved and dear friend who is now sadly no longer with us, also got lost in the woods that night. She ended up sitting by a tree, upset and forlorn, expecting to find her way back by first light. She delightedly told me the next day that her cats had saved her from a cold night in the woods. She had been resigned to wait but then she heard her cats meowing and called them to her. They then walked in front of her meowing the way forward until she saw her house. 

 

Time, seasons, scale, light and dark, all of these aspects and more can affect our perspective; it is not just the direction in which we are walking that can affect the view of where we are. Walking is a gift, if we are able to physically move, we must, and in doing so we can get a whole new perspective on life…  

Fungi, moss, lichen and light.

         

 (I completed my MA in September 2014 and recorded the last two months of it in another blog called www.thesaltwayfarer.blogspot.co.uk

Please feel free to look at that anytime, as it is from that, that I am where I am now.)