Wild scraps

I've been thinking and writing a bit lately about the development of my relationship with landscape since childhood. The following post consists of related scraps I sent in to the project Lone Women in Flashes of Wilderness, a new work being created by a most interesting writer Clare Archibald (clarearchibald.wordpress.com).

 Mont St-Michel de Brasparts

My instinct for wild landscape and unbridled thought has always been at odds with a persistent childhood fear of the dark and an allied, equally instinctive concern for personal safety. I have always envied men their freedom of movement and the resulting luxury of unfettered reflection.

Early childhood encounters of wild brought the raw open landscape of the Brecon Beacons into my mental prospect, an eye-opening contrast to the manicured over-farmed environment where I lived. The (apparent) emptiness had a siren call for me, the lure of expanse and a powerful sense of freedom from physical restriction.

This has evolved over a life-time into deep-rooted emotional connection to heaths and moors, where wide views equate with security and my mind can fly out over the heather into unrelieved space. Solitude is essential to my true self and draws the stronger connection with nature that I need for replenishment. I like that no-one knows where I am and that my immediate relationship is only within the scope of my footsteps.  This to me is wild: immunity from control, an intimacy with my surroundings that frees mind and body. Here I can meet my inner wildness, sprawl or soar.

By contrast, in the forest where I now live I feel at a basic level of instinct uneasy with the shifting perspectives, narrow sightlines and plethora of tiny movements. You never know if you are alone. My body subconsciously acknowledges the potential for danger, and holds back other process. Phrases and words for my work come to me among the trees, boulders and hilly streams, but ideas and what I call long thoughts are elusive.

Perhaps I have cultivated my own wildness on a physical scale: the balance would shift in extreme landscapes of mountains and deserts where humans can only be outsiders and interlopers. Savage wilderness is a degree beyond wild and here the proportions scare me. Except for the sky, that ultimate wilderness, my black moor, lit by firefly stars, untouchable and beyond intimacy.

Monts d'Arrée

Centenary

A.W.R.Thomas 1917-2010

My father was born on August 11th, 1917. Thinking of him deeply today with love and gratitude. We were estranged for the last few years of his life, but for one final meeting when one hour of connection dissolved all earlier issues. How lucky I was courageous enough to knock on his door that day. It was the last time I saw him, but he is in my heart every day, loved for his strengths and his weaknesses, held in sorrow for his struggles, and remembered in so many moments of my everyday life - all my interests and many of my beliefs derive from the time we shared and the things he taught me, all we discussed and read together and the many walks that bound me formatively to the landscape. Thanks, Dad.