new cultural journeys

inspired by this blog today

A place with few roads

Apparently roads are quite a new concept in this place! (Sheep's Head peninsular, north side) ....
when you find one, you can drive slowly for miles, escorted by swallows, meeting - no-one.
Journeys would have been by boat.

Stone circles tend to be in the lee of the hills. You don't see them till you stumble on them.

The whole peninsular is crossed by hundreds of waymarked footpaths, down old boreens and up mountain tracks. Some tending towards the ficititous. Thrushes and blackbirds sing till nearly midnight leading the way across twilit mountainside down to groves of trees.

Whitesheet PhotoMontageMovie

Just found this lovely sequence from my summer 2008 mediascape on Whitesheet Hill - 'Something More' and thought I'd put it up here as a reminder of things past and things to come...

I like this photo-montage-movie technique as a way to capture movement and snippets of attention within a panoramic landscape.

(No audio - make your own accompaniment!)

snowlines

We were exploring animal tracks on the snowy wood margin. Hare, deer, fox, badger. All seemed to do the same thing - meander - round and round - it's not just humans and dogs then!

The joy of being in the landscape, crunch of snow, just going from here - to there - with no sense of arriving. Another kind of journey.

Lots of human trods too, way away from anywhere, doing the same thing - meandering. Making snowlines.

Music for mediascape

Challenges! Today I think the music should not intrude, but sit lightly - or even float above. But it could drive you on, or make you turn, or turn with you: it could stop and wonder,  re-inforce a moment, and maybe linger long after.

magical....mistily....tor

You are meant to keep your eyes on the road whilst driving.
Its the landmarks that break the journey though isn't it?

Most westward journeys take me down the A 361, so I'm lucky - its things like
- mistleltoe orchard
- starlings in trees
- Quantock Hills maybe Dunkery Beacon on a clear day
- and of course, Glasotnbury Tor.

Yesterday it wasn't there! Strange. Even from close up, it was completely invisible in its own pod of freezing fog. Everything else was bright and pretty normal.

Just enough to be slightly unsettling .... it reminded me of this picture, anyway. (Same place, different weather)
You never know what is on the other side - unless you float above it.
Don't rely always on your sightlines. Even a bird may be confused.

smoke

This is this view from our kitchen window on a December morning.

This morning there was woodsmoke coming up from the valley and failing to rise in the cold still air.

It's not a place I've seen smoke before. There's no house there but there are some very old coke ovens by two ponds  which were once associated with a small coal mine. I suppose someone is coppicing and clearing and keeping warm with a fire.

I want to add smoke in the landscape as another sightline. Smoke is people, a fire, a focus. 

If we are aligning journeys by topographical features, then smoke would once have indicated the way between the hilltops and landmarks : hearths, warmth, welcome.

In a sparsely populated and wooded landscape, imagine the spicy smell of a bright blackthorn or hazel fire, smelt, seen, heard: refuge and company.