5. Green Is The Colour

Post 5 of A Journey On Foot – 5th July 2013

Green is the colour that fills my nostrils and brushes past my legs. Every shade of it is reaching and spreading its fingers to grasp the sun wholeheartedly. I have now arrived in England and been struck by the carefree abundance of vegetation that is Summer. I saw from the aeroplane the patchwork of hues that make up the fields and moors and stitch them together, and yesterday evening, I took my favourite ‘short walk’ from my back door in Lancaster. There I saw it in all its close up, sweet scented, humming beauty.

I am always puzzled when people ask how long a certain walk takes. It depends on what you stop to observe, or what characters you meet, or if the dappled warmth of the sun and the sound of the breeze through the grasses is just at that level of soporific that a nap is inevitable. When people tell me how long a walk takes, I always double it at the very least to take in my potential drifting.

I have always taken a camera with me on my walks (and when I don’t I kick myself for not). I do not find, as some do, that it distracts you from the full experience of being present. I find it focuses my attention more sharply – to forms, colours, relationships, and all the other sensory experience that comes with the seeing. I often have the privilege of being witness to hidden things I may have missed had I been purely walking, because of my curious eye.

Yesterday evening, the short walk took me away from the pavements where the green has taken hold regardless…

…Past the chaotic miracles of cultivation that are the local allotments…

…Past constellations mapped in Elder heads…

…Down a lane past an old stone farmhouse, where the blackbirds sing…

And into the community orchard where I checked to see how the apples are getting on.

Back in January we went wassailing in this orchard – a community effort in singing and banging on pots and pans to wake the trees up on their way out of winter, and ensure a good apple harvest. It seems to have worked well. I’ll wonder if I’ll be able to pick some before this journey is over? I’m blessed with good weather at the moment, which makes the wayfaring a delight even if I have not gone far yet.

Looking back at these wintry photographs, makes me starkly aware of how much potential there is stored up in everything, to see it now in all its verdant glory. Compared to winters in Iceland, of course, winter in Britain seemed very lush. But also the energy that must wane and build up again. We are human animals, and it is only natural that we should feel different at different times of year. The glass and concrete shelters us from that, I find, and the majority of us are expected to continue at the same pace, on the same kinds of work, in all seasons.

Being outdoors, and perhaps most so when you repeat a familiar, local walk, you become much more aware of these changes, of the times when certain edible plants become available, of the way different weathers smell. This year I was making wild garlic tzatziki back in March, earlier than usual. Living on a canal boat, as I did over winter, immersed me in these subtle changes. My neighbours were the owls and the kingfishers, and going into town sometimes felt like a big decision.

I’m very much looking forward to the possibility of this immersion on my wayfaring, but right now I’m still ‘in town’ sorting out camping equipment, travel passes, interviews on local radio and such. I shall keep you posted on these as they progress. In the meantime look out for me on the way (currently Lancaster & environs – I’ll have a sign on my backpack!), do come and say hello and please spread the word of this Journey On Foot. Your comments here on this page are also much appreciated. Thank you one and all, and have a great weekend, wherever your ways take you!

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A Midsummer Tale for the Midwinter Night

Happy Solstice all! And may this turning point blow in the winds of positive change for all things. In the midst of the darkness, I bring you light and colour – a tale of summer.

Like a film flickering in a cinema hall, the bright images of my summer perforate the darkness as the winter evenings draw ever closer, infiltrating the deeper places as I take the time to sit. So as we gather round our hearths in the northern hemisphere, here I shall share some of the colour painted into my evenings. This, like the last post, was also written a while ago in Iceland.

~  ~  ~

As always, my Icelandic summer was a period of hyperactivity. This year it was especially so as, on 23rd June (Midsummer’s Night, or Jónsmessunott as it is called in Iceland), I gladly wed my man Orri. And what a festival it was! Months of planning and dreaming were woven with the many journeys taken by our dear ones from all over the world to converge in something that shall stay with us forever.

Years ago, when we first met and were beginning our relationship across the seas, I made him this collage. I have always collected images and textures that interest me, and sporadically they make themselves into something, especially when there is love flowing through it.

“It lingers in the heart like a piece of haunting music”.

This one certainly made itself, and little did I know back then just how much like my wedding day this would look. It is as if, with every cut and laying down, I was creating a blueprint for a future time. I was reminded of this beautiful quote:

When the soul wishes to experience something

she throws an image of the experience out before her

and enters into her own image.

~ Meister Eckhart ~

Photo: Roman Garba

It was at once the most exciting and challenging creative act I have ever pulled off, to make a myriad of threads come together in a foreign culture. It is a culturally accepted norm that Icelanders can be incredibly last minute about everything. But they are fortunately also some of the most resourceful people I know. Added to that, there is a different take on commitment to arrangements. Somebody may agree to something, but if circumstances change, that agreement is not necessarily honoured, or an alternative found. It is deemed that the circumstance having changed is a sufficient excuse. So ‘believe it when you see it’ is the basis on which you make ‘plans’.  Or, as the Icelanders put  it, “Þetta reddast” (that will work itself out). I hate to generalise about entire cultures but ask anyone who lives there, and that will be quoted as one of the most often used phrases! I have become used to this in the day to day, but for a wedding it was a little more precarious!

My now husband and I live our lives frugally and with respect to the earth – reusing, inventing, creating as we go – and this wedding was the ultimate expression of our DIY/low impact values: we did almost everything ourselves, off grid, and managed to leave a very light footprint. Partly so that we could afford to live our dream with integrity but also because I don’t know who else could make those many particular threads come together. And it was a very rich experience to have such beautiful canvas to plant our ideas in, once the snow had melted.

The house where Orri’s father was born. Photo: Norbert Pilters

The place we chose was the land where my man Orri’s father grew up. It lies along the black sandy shore of a long fjord in the Westfjords of Iceland. On it is the house were he was born which Orri’s parents transformed into a ‘guesthouse’ and campsite for our guests. About a kilometre down the shore, a summerhouse (with a very special history which I wrote about way back when) became the kitchen, bridal suite and site of the festivities.

What to do when your man is jewellery phobic.

Non weather dependent preparations started months beforehand. My man feels claustrophobic in rings or any sort of jewellery, so I had the idea that the act of wrapping him in a shawl and fastening it with a bespoke hand wrought brooch would be an appropriate symbol for a life cycle of care and companionship. Luckily there is a self-taught blacksmith in a neighbouring village who expertly translated my design, loosely based on Jörmungandr and The Ouruboros , using an iron rod and an old nail.

Important things like Norse pagan officiants (of which there are only three in Iceland that can conduct marriages) were booked, a rather unusual form of bridal transport (a Viking ship) found, and a wedding outfit hunt spanning several countries embarked upon. Not to mention renovating a guestroom, kitchen, living room and sleeping loft ourselves, suitable for all the guests that would be staying at our house!

But there were many things that just had to wait until the snow had melted, and the ground had thawed. This doesn’t happen until May this far north. We wanted an entirely outdoor wedding, but with the weather being as changeable as it can be we knew we would need some sort of shelter. Rental marquees were rather unattractive, expensive and had to be brought up from the capital, Reykjavik. So my man decided to build one. Finding long wooden poles in a largely treeless land is no mean feat. But, in a stroke of genius and foresight, back on January 6th 2012 when Christmas was danced to its close by elves, my father-in-law to be laid claim to the town’s two Christmas trees – a good five metres of pole each. And the rest were found here and there in the town refuse dump and the scout hut, and retrieved from an avalanche guard construction site.  Orri’s brilliant design had a roll up tarpaulin roof, open to the skies if the weather was good, but creating shelter if the wind or rain came. We of course had all weathers, except (thankfully) snow.

Dancing in the end of Christmas: there’s our tree at the back.

Stock piling long wooden things – a rare commodity in Iceland!

Wedding tent under construction

Wedding tent – the aftermath! Photo: Col Atkinson
(sometime after 2am on Midsummer’s Night)

Portaloos are also ugly and expensive, and full of chemicals. No thank you! So we built luxury compost toilets with vanity area (!) from reclaimed wood…

Friends helped us paint signs onto wood we found hiding in the corner of a charity shop…

Photo: Roman Garba

And the stage was made with discarded palettes.

Photo: Roman Garba

The table flowers were beautifully arranged by my friend Alyssa using wildflowers from our garden, which seem to sing loudest on Midsummer’s day…

Photos: Roman Garba

The bouquet and ornamental flowers were grown in a geothermal greenhouse in the south of Iceland, where one of Orri’s many aunties works. I was stunned by the variety and freshness of them. I had asked her to bring rejects from the ‘not straight enough for sale’ pile, but she ended up bringing the best of exactly what I had dreamed of!

Photo: Col Atkinson

The wedding feast was supplied by various friends and relatives, who reared, slaughtered and prepared it themselves. We were given two lambs by one of Orri’s aunties, a whole lamb by family friend, and two extra emergency mutton thighs by a friend when, rather disconcertingly, a lamb was lost in a chaotic cold store 3 days before the wedding. It emerged in the nick of time, to defrost before being spit roasted. Needless to say we had enough for the feast and many many meals afterwards.

Photos: Roman Garba

Monkfish was caught by Orri during his days at sea. Lake trout was caught by Orri’s cousin on the farm where Orri’s mother grew up. We were given 2

two wild geese to make into canapes by a chef friend who, in yet another classic Icelandic moment, turned up with them whole, frozen solid, with the feathers still on, in a supermarket shopping bag! Wild sorrel and dandelion leaf salads were gathered from the hillsides and prepared by Orri’s mum and aunty.

And on a rare moment of calm togetherness in the days before the wedding, Orri and I gathered some wild mountain thyme from above our house to use in the lamb marinade. By chance, when I asked my cousin and uncle to sing a song during the ceremony, Wild Mountain Thyme was exactly the song they had up their sleeve!

Making cake plates

Photo: Norbert Pilters

Three different flavours of wedding cakes loosely symbolising Yggdrasil , the Norse Pagan world tree, were baked by yet another of Orri’s aunties, and stunningly decorated at the very last minute by my hugely talented aunty Pauline Thomas .  The bottom layer – chocolate and beetroot – referred to its roots; the middle layer – black forest gateau – to its fruits; and the top – lemon and birch polenta cake – to its leaves and the life inhabiting its branches.  These were all laid out on cake plates we made by sawing up unusually large tree trunks a neighbor had cut down.

Photo: Roman Garba

The festivities were deeply rooted in various elements of Icelandic ‘tradition’, though very few Icelanders have a wedding like this one. But I also wanted to express some of my own journey which includes being English and having grown up and lived in equatorial climes. My parents (who still live in Kenya) cut out and stitched many many metres of bunting (an unmistakeably English addition!) from kangas and kikois which are both typically East African fabrics. Kangas are brightly coloured printed cotton cloths worn by women which always include in their design a Kiswahili saying. These are a woman’s means of expressing (often very obliquely and through metaphor) how they are feeling to the rest of the community. My mother chose such classic sayings as Our marriage is a light that shines and everyone sees it and  I love you truly. The world is witness!

Photo: Ed Aldcroft

And, in a delightfully serendipitous chance encounter in southern Iceland many months ago, we found an Ethiopian restaurant in a place that is effectively The Middle of Nowhere. It is known mainly for the geothermal greenhouses where we had been looking at the flowers that were available. We had a delicious meal cooked by the lovely Azeb, and the most gentle, strong coffee I have had in a long time. We thought it would be lovely to have her and her coffee at our wedding. She had never been to the Westfjords before, and was game for an adventure!

She kept the coffee flowing all night and created a lovely coffee ceremony space in the ruins of an old stone boat shed.

Another magical lady who is always up for an adventure, was film maker Alba Sotorra Clua, who I met at the Worldfilm Festival in Estonia. At the closing party, she said “I want to come to your wedding”. After considering her rather direct request for a while, I thought it might be fun to have someone film the wedding, given everything that had gone into it. She went one step further and came a week before to film the final preparations. This would have been fun if it didn’t involve a death in the family, a chef cancelling last minute, a lost sheep and 2 sleepless nights. All great material for a documentary, but a little more challenging when it is your life and you have a house full of guests! I was interested to experience how it feels to be filmed. But I had no idea what a week was in store for us. I only hope it’s entertaining now the storm has passed! There certainly were many beautiful moments, which we shall now have the opportunity to appreciate.

There was one truly indulgent part to the proceedings: my arrival in a replica Viking longboat! A carpenter in a neighbouring village spent many days making this beauty which sadly doesn’t get used enough. As I am an útlendingar (outlander) I thought it would be fitting to arrive from across the seas with my family. He and his wife liked our idea and agreed to make the three day round voyage it would entail. That’s one of the things I love most about Icelanders…they are ready to try anything!

Photo: Norbert Pilters

Photos: Roman Garba

It all felt otherworldly, and yet perfectly natural. The magic of the day was heightened perhaps by it being Midsummer’s night – the date when the sun never sets, when the cows are said to speak, and the seals are said to remove their skins to reveal their true human form.

My experience of our wedding was as if it was a strange and magical beast that we had been leading around for many months. When the day came, we were finally able to mount its back and view the landscape we had traversed and the gardens we had planted, as a whole. I felt suspended in a dream. You see before you all your dearest people, in this wild place in the middle of nowhere. It does not seem possible. It seems even less possible to put any of it into words, and nor do you want to try. Perhaps that’s why I haven’t, for so long.

It just is, and you drink it in. Days later you wake from the dream and remember that this friend and that relative was right here in this spot with you. You wish that they still were, now that your mouth is able to form words again. But, as my dear friend and ‘best man’ Aitan so beautifully put it, in this age where friends are scattered far and wide, and many relationships are largely sustained remotely, “There is something very strengthening about spending time in three dimensions.”

Photo: Norbert Pilters

On this day, the opposite of the day these words were written about, it is the time to gestate these images, this intensity of feeling, and retreat into the embrace of the darkness as it tips its balance.

This winter, though, we have decided to make our boundaries clear to the darkness. I have spent two winters feeling what it really is to be an extension of the landscape. And when the landscape is frozen and dark, it means your energy also slugs into submission. As beasts, we should be hibernating and attempting to carry on as normal feels absurd. I do not want to do as many do: take pills and sit in front of an SAD lamp at the hospital.  I have decided that the darkness may not creep all the way into the middle of my day anymore. We cannot stop the darkness doing its wild thing, and nor do we want to. Like the birds, we can only move our bodies to where it cannot touch us for so long. A lot has brought us to this decision, and we do not know yet what it will yield. But often, committing to change what you do not want is enough to begin with. There are many many ways in which this landscape and culture have shaped me, but that will have to be another story.

 
In the midst of the darkness this year, there is promised to be many spectacular dances of light –  the aurora borealis being at their most intense in fifty years. There is even a great website where you can check what they’re up to, though my advice would be to just go. If there’s a clear night they’ll likely make an appearance at some point. We have been busy making our handmade, heart-loved home into a guesthouse/ home stay. It is now ready to welcome guests and we have had some very happy ones already. If the thought of a Nordic winter journey, with aurora in the skies and the crunch of snow at your feet, is something that rings bells in your heart, we welcome you to base yourselves within the lamp glowed reindeer skins of our Little Icelandic House. Please spread the word…quietly!

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I went out for a walk…

I went out for a walk this Summer and found in it so many places and so many things: I found my garden and its unfolding. Small islands across the sea that all winter had lain unknown to me. I found England again and train journeys across new terrain. And Spain: friends and endless roaming through labyrinthine streets and flea markets. I found Kenya: a journey of the heart and feet. The midnight sun, many moons (one eclipsed), snow, rain, birth, death, marriage, reunion, equators, arctic circles, seas, deserts, journeying far and being still. Summer. Such a simple name for so many things, and yet, it is that simple. At any given moment across the earth manifold stories are telling themselves, and mine is but one. It has been a particularly eventful year for the earth as a whole, too, and I am feeling it. Feeling something shifting. It is time to empty the contents of my pockets onto the table and see what my walk yielded.

A summer in Iceland feels like you are living a whole year in three months. The rush of adrenaline and motivation that comes with having hours of daylight sees you sometimes living your days in your nights and your nights in your days, and sometimes the gossamer thread that holds them together and apart unravels. Sleep when you’re tired and eat when you’re hungry: that’s the only guideline.

11pm Early August

It is a season of limitless possibility and activity, and the plants, birds and animals all feel it too.

Surprisingly, my sleep has been just as deep as in winter, but with a tiredness borne of the fullness of my days rather than wool-lined lethargy.

My light-emotions were rather confused by a hop, skip and jump to Kenya in late May. Here in Iceland it had finally begun to feel like summer was in sight, after all these months of waiting. And despite my much brighter destination, I felt like I was missing the very thing I had so anticipated. But a grandmother’s 90th birthday and good friends’ weddings and birth-givings should not be missed, so off I went.

Tragically my grandmother’s birthday celebrations became her funeral, and as prepared as you may think you are for a dear one’s death, the act itself and everything that comes with it takes many moons to process. I found that my experience of working with death and grief in my last film, helped me enormously.

Thankfully, inspiration and support can tumble into your path when you really need it. I came across a post on this fascinating blog written by Daniela Othieno, who, following the death of her mother, has come to perceive life as The Great Compost Heap. She is, as I have been, greatly inspired by David Abram’s book The Spell of The Sensuous. It is a clarion call for us to actively engage with the more-than-human world that we live in, and are part of, and not to view nature as something separate from ourselves. I have never been so physically affected by my surroundings as here in Iceland, and it is a dance that I must continually improvise. There is so little development here that your experience of nature is direct; immediate. It is awe-inspiring but can also be brutal, as you are tossed around in its changeable winds. A passage from the book echoes this sentiment beautifully:

My life and the world’s life are deeply intertwined; when I wake up one morning to find that a week-long illness has subsided and that my strength has returned, the world, when I step outside, fairly crackles with energy and activity: swallows are swooping by in vivid flight; waves of heat rise from the newly paved road smelling strongly of tar; the old red barn across the field juts into the sky at an intense angle. Likewise, when a haze descends upon the valley in which I dwell, it descends upon my awareness as well, muddling my thoughts, making my muscles yearn for sleep. The world and I reciprocate one another. The landscape as I directly experience it is hardly a determinate object; it is an ambiguous realm that responds to my emotions and calls forth feelings from me in turn.
p. 33

It is a precious handbook for a fuller experience of our lives, which I have delved into and come out of so many times, as each chapter, each paragraph is a reawakening of a sense you always knew but didn’t realise you had forgotten. It compels you to lay down the book and go and walk in life with this fresh reimagining of place and our place in it.

Iceland

Kenya

England

I have been inspired lately also by the doings of the Dark Mountain folk, who have just published their second book (of which David Abrams is a contributor) of stories, essays, poems, images, conversations and recipes all urging us to stop pretending. These times may be confusing; frightening even. But we can still find and create beauty and hope when we look it plainly in the face. We humans have proved ourselves to be excellent adaptors but we must adapt to an honest vision of what our reality is. The book, so I hear, is a kind of inspiration-toolbox filled with reflections on how we might live in, and through, these times. I await the arrival of my copy in the hands of some visitors like I look forward to my man coming back from the sea. I look forward to sitting in bed with both of them.

There was also a Dark Mountain festival a couple of weekends ago where interesting and interested folk gathered to discuss, play and dance with ideas for a possible future. What makes it unique is that it is a stimulating environment within which it is alright to be confused and challenged. A space is created to ask questions without the agenda necessarily being to find answers. Reading some reports, it seemed to be an indescribable experience where many went through a kind of limen and will be putting the pieces of themselves back together for months to come. We all need to do that. It is the way of nature, which is also us: cycles. I only wish I had not been so many miles away from it!

The first thing that resonates with me about their philosophy is the notion of acceptance of death and decay (of individuals, systems, economies) and moving on in that reality rather than one of denial. It is an obvious and simple thing which is overlooked by the majority, and one of the fundamental reasons why I left London just over two years ago to dive into an uncertain, but honest, life on the edge of the Arctic Circle. Of course, London has its magic and there are many very interesting things going on there that can only emerge from the melting pot of ideas and backgrounds that a nexus like London accommodates. But on a quotidian level, I felt the immediately visible layer of society was careering around (pun not intended but apt all the same) arranging their priorities to a very different list than mine, because they are trying to create a security that doesn’t exist. I also found the lack of time distinctly uncomfortable, and the knock-on effect that has on one’s attentiveness, pace, abilities and resourcefulness.

I am reminded of this everywhere. This I found written in a puppet museum on my way south at the beginning of Summer.

I never thought it would be easy in Iceland, and I am by no means saying it holds all the answers.  Everything remains an experiment here, but I am certainly more aware of myself and my relationship to nature. It is an experience that sees me ride the highs and lows of my possibilities, all the time knowing that however it feels in the moment it is an invaluable layer to my skin. I shall leave for another post my reflections on where I feel I am and how this experience has shaped me. At the moment I am still processing it, and phases of that processing seem to align with the shifting seasons: as Summer turns to Autumn I am still ‘outside’ and beginning to turn in.

Beans in progress and our shiny new roof.

This year (while I was away thankfully) it snowed in June so it was hardly a ‘typical’ set of conditions for our outdoor doings, on garden and house. Poor Orri was left with a roofless house in the snow after he had removed the old corrugated iron to replace it, thinking June was safe. We pressed ahead with our vegetable growing experiments nonetheless to see what would happen. The green sea of indoor propagated seedlings become a rather less numerous variety of earth dwelling beings: from straggly otherworldly spinach (the likes of which I have never seen) to butternut squash plants that flowered happily indoors then resented leaving the warmth of our bathroom windowsill, to beans that nearly died but had a second try at life and now wonder whether it is worth climbing the pole any further now that they can feel Autumn in the wind. But there is still hope for potatoes, carrots and brocolli. We were not scientific in our approach, and knew that much of it would die, but adopted the characteristically Icelandic approach of “bara prófa” (just try).

The vegetable adventures have been joined by feathered ones: we have acquired four ‘rescue hens’. They were unwanted by a previous owner as  their egg laying was halted by their distress following a dog attack. It has been a wonder to see them grow calmer, day by day, and start to lay. Yesterday I got four eggs which is a miracle from these girls!

Adopting an entwined birch and a pine who were meant to be together, and remain so.

Another corner of our garden has had some trees walk into it, thanks to another twist of fate. Large trees take many years to grow in these climes, and due to a classic Icelandic omission of long term planning, a one time reforestation programme is to become an avalanche guard zone resulting in all the trees needing to be dug up and re-homed. I feel much happier having some shelter against the northwest wind, and the possibility to listen to the sound of wind on leaves.

I have been working as a guide for French- and  English-speaking visitors to this corner of the world. I rather like the Icelandic term for this role, leiðsögumaður, which literally means ‘way-storyteller’. At first I felt that I didn’t know enough ‘facts’ about the region to tell others about it, as life is not lived through facts but through experience. So I talked about my experience and they all seemed to find that much more interesting. Doing this reminded me of how story telling cuts across boundaries. A group of initially stiff retirees would be warmed by tales of my coming here and the love I found, and genuinely wish me well on my adventure as they left the bus, pressing some coins into my hand as if to be part of it and telling me I should write a book.

With the tourists in town almost doubling the population and the locals being in a summer head space, there are a lot more festivities and goings on and opportunities to sell our wares. I had made a new selection of jewellery inspired by Iceland to go alongside my more equatorial curiosities, and Orri had been busy whittling some weird and wonderful sculptures from wood, stone and cement.

And of course, with the many hours of sun to shine on our faces, we have been outside a lot living the summer life. With the head fog of winter cleared firmly away, thoughts and ideas flow like the snow-melt rivers.

I went out for a walk…to a tucked away lighthouse where no road goes, where artists had created an exhibition.

I saw cloud shadowed valleys gouged out by glaciers….

and otherworldly roots that crept off the pages of a fairytale…

and what happens in nature when no humans or sheep live there…

I went out for a walk…along a road that an isolated farmer, tired of being cut off from the world, dug by himself out of the rocky cliffs.

Later, it seems, he left to join the rest of the world anyway…

…but, as if to remain rooted in that place, he left his shoes behind him.

And now, we (and most of the community it seems) are going for a walk to pick bilberries, for this is the season. Our raven has just returned from his summer’s wayfaring. He is dancing on the fence asking why we haven’t left him any food on his rock, and meanwhile trying to pick apart the compost bin with his beak. Autumn has come. Where did your walks bring you to this summer?

I went out for a walk and stayed out til sundown, for going out I found I was really going in.  – John Muir –

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