Embercombe, 5 September 2016. Dark Mountain Base Camp. 03.43. The hour of the wolf.
I fell asleep after dinner. I had set my alarm but it hadn't woken me. There was a sense of sadness when I woke up because I had stayed last night to be able to talk to some people I wanted to spend some more time with. I had cancelled my train and booked a new one for tomorrow morning. But I thought of a quote from Christian Bobin straight away, the book I have been carrying with me for the last two years, The Very Lowly. "All good things start with sleep. All good things start at their thinnest edge."
I checked the time, my clock said 01.11. A magic number which didn't surprise me. I was in a yurt, it was dark. The rain was dripping on the roof.
I was still wearing the trousers and the vest. I put on the jacket and walked outside in the three-piece walking suit. The east yurt village was silent but I saw a light in my neighbour's home. I walked the path going down, following the bend in the road, staying in the middle to avoid getting caught by the big blackberry bushes on both sides I couldn't see but knew were there. It was too dark to see the path but I trusted my feet. I could only walk by touching the surface carefully, slowly, stroking the earth with the soles of my shoes almost.
I heard soft voices. There were four people in the Story Fire, the round clay structure with totem animals watching over the people in the middle. There was a fire. Of course there was a fire.
They invited me in and we talked about how to combine the modern way of living and thinking with the things the people before us had learned and thought and lived. We talked about the things we had done during the day. We talked about leaving and returning. And when they left to get some sleep I stayed.
I kept the fire burning. I listened to the rain on the roof. I found marshmellows next to the log I was sitting on and I looked for a branch to stick them on so I could hold them over the fire like the people who were here before me had done. They had left their sticks as traces.
I usually don't like eating things that are too sweet but the sweetness of the act was irresistable.
The days passed through my mind, not only the last two ones here but the ones before as well. The past ones and the future ones. The people I met here, the people I met on the road, the people back home, the friends I had planned to see last night in Exeter and London. The people I hope to see soon. The person I was and the person I will be and the one I am now.
I gave a workshop yesterday morning in this exact same place with Nick Hunt. We only met two days ago but I had the feeling we had known each other for a long time. Maybe because I have been walking in his footsteps off and on unintentionally during a 96 day walk from Amsterdam to a mountain in Austria two years ago. Crossing his path here and there where he had walked in the footsteps of another writer and walker, Patrick Leigh Fermor.
We talked, we walked. We were slow. We discovered where our stories touched. We listened to each other and to the people in the audience. At the end somebody asked if he could recite a poem. He waited a few seconds and then spoke the words I know by heart, just like he did. He spoke them in Spanish first and then in English. Machado's testament, Machado's words. "Caminante, son tus huellas, el camino y nada más; caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar." "Walker, your steps are the path and nothing more; walker, there is no road, the road is made by walking."
And afterwards, when everybody had wandered off, I watched the people across the path in the People's Circle learning about Rewilding yourself. They moved and laughed and while they were doing that three kids joined me and collected charcoal from yesterday's fire, mixed it with water and drew war stripes, camouflage stripes on each other's faces, rewilding themselves without even thinking about what they were doing. As always the children are the greatest teachers.
Many things happened after that, every day here has felt like seven days and it is good to be in the dark now, to be alone, to listen to the wind and look at the flames and feel the words coming. Feel them wanting to be written down. Knowing that if I write down now that I will stay here with the fire until the daylight comes back, it will happen. Or that it has already happened in another moment, another day, in another place.
The last thing we did yesterday as a group was drawing maps. We drew all the things on them we heard, saw and learned this weekend. We put down the knowledge we need to be able to navigate our way into the future. The Children's map had a big sun on it but also scary things. It is important to know what we are afraid of to be able to deal with it. We try to hide that when we get older but children know. The map I was "in charge of", the Map made by Walking and Singing had turned into a landscape itself, forming a mountain range where somebody had shaped the paper with her feet, there were traces of songs, animals and plants, gestures that had turned into words.
The Map of the Future had the most important navigation information on it. Words we all had heard earlier on in the weekend and if we hadn't heard them we had experienced them. We had been navigating all weekend by sticking to these words. This simple message: Be kind. But we also know that that isn't enough to get where we want to be. So therefore:
Be kind.
Be kind.
Be kind.
And protest.
My camera that was gone most of the weekend because I forgot it somewhere just after I arrived and lost it again first thing after it was returned on the second night, is back in my possession. I am hesitant to take a photo now but if there is any image I want to take away from this weekend, it is the image of this fire. This is how we survived. This is what our ancestors did. We have to keep the fire going.
When the other fire died, when the emerging daylight gave everything shape again, I walked around the site of Embercombe, my hands in my pockets, touching the four beans that had been there from the start of the weekend when Charlotte du Cann had introduced them as a symbol for growth, for potential, and had asked us to put some in our pockets. Four beans, the same number as people I had found in the middle of the night when I was looking for company before I was ready to enjoy my solitude.
I passed the lake, the Linhey cafe, memories of amazing food. I heard the first birds, the sheep, the chicken, the cows. I walked through the medicine garden where Mark had introduced me to some plants I didn't know, the west yurt village, the mount. I walked up to the top and saw the fog lifting, the clouds passing, the sky turning from grey to pink. I walked on and passed the Centre Fire where the big gatherings had taken place and where I had heard Martin Shaw tell a story about a prince who had fooled himself and had to be tied to a piece of wood in the middle of a river for 40 days to be able to let go of his old life and move into a new one, a story that had sent shivers down my spine and after which I could only think about my first long solo walk that had lasted 40 days.
I passed the campsite, the stone circle, the compost toilet, I walked from one end of the east yurt village to the other end and I found myself where I had woken up.
The day had started.
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