Morven Gregor, 2013
a walk
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This an informal record of our walk along the John Muir Way, planting pairs of trees whose species are defined by the initial and end letters of a poem-motto, composed after a phrase drawn from Muir’s writings.
A free booklet outlining the project is available if you send an A5 SAE to the address at the foot of this blog-post; you can also collect one at the readings in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
i.m. Martin Lucas
The walk is dedicated to the memory of our friend, the poet and publisher Martin Lucas, whose death was announced shortly before we set off. Martin shared his love of haiku and renga with many people in these islands, and his loss is being marked by poets around the world – as here, in a tribute by Tito, Kyoto. He was as fond a figure to friends in the birding community.
now that you've gone
the rose
that you planted
in the window-box
has flowered at last
ML, Moonrock, 2002
preparations
Luke Allan, 2014
The seeds that Gerry and Morven collected in the Autumn are being carried in a hollowed-out hardback copy of Muir’s The Mountains of California.
Andrew smuggled apple pips on the plane, hidden inside his gloves, a homage to Muir's 'lost years', managing orchards in the Alhambra Valley
HIDDEN
FUTURE
seed
FUTURE
seed
Our first task was to decide whether the order of planting should follow our walking, east–west, or travel in the direction of reading, west-east. The Way can be walked in either direction, but language, in the west, grows towards the sunrise. Therefore the poem reads:
from the apples
of Helensburgh
to the Scots Pines
of Dunbar
(AF)
We tried to characterise the weather of April in Scotland for our American friends, suggesting rainsnowsun, or, perhaps, a day of sunrainagain, all the while maintaining an air of calm. We look forward to seeing what gear they bring.
Hannah Devereux, 2014
Gerry and Morven trialled a westerly arm of the Way, up the old Coffin Road and over the moor to Ben Bowie, where the markers went missing and the route had to be improvised. Much like climbing a wet ladder, says the poet.
butterbur and
a woodpigeon so fat
I thought it was two
(GL)
sheep affect flora
in the same way
as glaciers & lava
(AF)
Ecila
The first contribution to the walk is this new photographic portrait, from a series by Alice Landenburg, made alongside a Scots Pine in the Botanic Garden, Edinburgh. Muir was a great believer in hand- and head-stands as an aid to perception of the landscape.
a new law:
COMPULSORY RECREATION
Events
We begin with an informal Come-All-Ye in Dunbar, on Wednesday 16th April, organized by Colin Will, where we share a few poems with local writers.
A WALK WITH
AN OPENING
saunter
Day One (Dunbar to Dirleton)
A double-breakfast day. Bolstered for the way with hot-cross buns, muesli, fresh fruit and coffee at John Muir House.
X
the community buns
bear crosses
as if to mark
an Easter journey
(AF)
Hannah Devereux, 2014
There would be other breakfasts, but none so pastoral.
Hannah Devereux, 2014
We head out into a billowy day in the East, applying the weather-test: hoods up, waterproofs on, zips down, hats on, hats off. Call it “changeable”.
The poets have got their pointy fingers out.
Hannah Devereux, 2014
A ladybird sheltering under burdock, early primroses, a patch of butterbur; the swallows and martins just in; by the strand at Belhaven a determined skylark calls down at us through the wind.
Biel Water, Hannah Devereux, 2014
The first bridge, the first island: conversation pieces.
this is where we start
cockleshell
Skittery Burn
(GL)
Scots pine, Hedderwick Hill, Hannah Devereux, 2014
The first seed planted: a Scots Pine, in Hedderwick Hill Woods.
Hedderwick
Hedderwick
we could have planted
an oar here
but we stitched
the land
a palimpest
an ecology of utterance
place of heather
(GL)
our walk begins
full moon invisible
(GL)
Baldrick's well, East Linton
6th c. period St Baldrick of Bass
built his church by a spring, why?
used the water for baptism?
children have gone down that lane for centuries
in search of ferrys? Toadstools?
gannet, chaffinch, woodpigeon or pippet?
thorny gorse smells
of sweet bitter almond the clock tower
potato leek soup crisps tea fruit cake
Hannah Devereux, 2014
Gerry looking through the Essential Burns
Creeley edited it –
"See what he chose"
Traprain is a law
(AS)
Corinthians, Hannah Devereux, 2014
Houston Mill
a broken willow branch
& her blue eyes
walk with us
our time collapsed
our vanities
the Way
a route from here to there
(GL)
Hannah Devereux, 2014
Hannah Devereux, 2014
Day Two (Dirleton Castle to Edinburgh)
This walk is via the bird sanctuary at Aberlady, Cockenzie Power Station and two harbours.
this morning's yaffle
laughs at us
and the doocot
(GL)
There’s a sneaky shortcut in Musselburgh; after all, John Muir kept his common-sense and he was not above hitching a ride in a wagon to rest his weary legs.
North Woods
this is the way of it
war after war
deer scut
northern woods
grow slowly
round coastal concrete
defence blocks
(GL)
We see the ruins come closer through the far-off eyes of our American friends.
We head into the sun all day long, because it is there. The sun-block stayed safe and cool where it was packed, in Hanna’s rucksack, so the last smile is left on Gerry’s face, which turns a ruddy shade.
He is our Thoreau, seeing the world with the same clarity of mind, pointing, in so many of the walk photographs, to some flower of interest which, as if nodding to a pal on the street, he offers its name.
Craigmoor
visions of a land
denuded of history
leaving only parted lips
refrain
for miners
for shepherds
pollen for bees
(GL)
AS, Hannah Devereux, 2014
Andrew’s poetic credo is bioregionalism and the lore of locality. Writing does its best work within a watershed. Poets do well to know the names of rivers and the whereabouts of their sources, the equilibrium of woodland, varieties of lichen, cloud formations, the habits of the mountain lion. Putting his poetics in our terms, he is our Jen on Shetland, Gerry and Morven at the Carbeth hut, Alice Oswald’s drift down the Dart, Gerry Cambridge’s bird poems, the Kathleen Jamie of Findings and the alpine poet-gardening of G. F. Dutton.
Andrew means us to bring back the wolf. Some stewards and landowners are thinking of that for Scotland, with beavers – bears too?
He thinks, perhaps, our poets do bioregionalism better than theirs. I’m not so sure. He’s the one who lives in a cabin at 8,000 feet.
For these nine days he is adjusting to our ways.
Andrew means us to bring back the wolf. Some stewards and landowners are thinking of that for Scotland, with beavers – bears too?
He thinks, perhaps, our poets do bioregionalism better than theirs. I’m not so sure. He’s the one who lives in a cabin at 8,000 feet.
For these nine days he is adjusting to our ways.
Back in Colorado, Andrew helped to assemble a coalition against a gigantic Christo and Marie-Claude 6.7 mile long wrapping project across the Arkansas River, 2 years in the making, and using 2400 concrete bollards. “Now is the time to recognize that art can be resoundingly Imperialist. It can be as invasive as commerce, industry, mining, tourism, or military adventure.” Schelling’s counter-proposal: a poetry reading.
The National Geographic monumentalism of Christo’s US plan twins with the mock Neolithic lawns and knot gardens of Capability Jencks, and the open-cast mines they finesse. How strange it is to hear such a paucity of ecology described as eco-art, or hear of such schemes as “growing out of place, people and landscape”, as if words could be taped on with gaffer tape, and their meanings would endure such category errors.
Muir is asking us, does art have to be BIG? Our proposal for Gretna: a poetry reading.
Hannah Devereux, 2014
On this walk we share a belief in poetry as a deceletory art.
A poem can transform a canyon, or characterize a mountain, without the need for tons of coloured fabric.
A poem can become part of a Way.
It’s the question we formed that now confronts us, as a culture: how can we slow down; how can we use less; how can we find the means to still the cravings that rage within us.
Cregg’s Wood
of timber
leaves and light
what’s manifest
in timber
cruck and book
and cradlecradle
hazel, Hannah Devereux, 2014
Today the bioregional poet is planting a poem into the landscape.
The H of hazel.
The poem that we are planting is a mesostic, an abridgement of language, interchanging seeds and letters.
As poets we’re fond of the poetics of organic forms of growth, seed syllables, A’s and H’s that make arches, U’s and V’s that rise and fall as waves. The arches of letters and flourishing curves of ligatures are of less importance on this trip than the punctuation marks of seeds , . , .
For each of us, whatever here is is an act of imagination, or its lack. Whether it’s the news or a prod towards prophecy, the walking poets have come to tell you:
a seed, certainly
and a hazel
maybe someday
(AF)
Hannah Devereux, 2014
Peffer Bank
perhaps
in irony
honesty
seeds itself
at the gate
of the
Big House
(GL)
Aberlady
26,000 pink-footed geese
were counted –
who by?
(AF)
26,000 pink-footed geese
were counted –
who by?
(AF)
STILTS
ON
SILT
curlew
(AF)
Cockenzie & Port Seton
east harbour
creel boats & fishers 12
pleasure boats 0
west harbour
creelers & fishing boats 6
pleasure craft 0
Day Three (Leith to Cramond)
A short walk for the third day, from Alec’s house to take tea and talk books at the Scottish Poetry Library, and a quick tour of the Mushroom Trust garden. We endorse the selfless stance of those who give to this charitable cause, for they have chosen to remain nameless.Then it’s downhill to Cramond.
Luke Allan, 2014
We're hosted by our old pal, the poet Ken Cockburn, at his monthly writing spot, the Japanese garden at Lauriston Castle, known as 'castle garden of water to beyond'.
GL, Hannah Devereux, 2014Paddling, planting, poem-labelling and readings ensue. The sap from the pine is melting and the small pool is cooling hot feet.
Then Ken reads ‘Forth’, because it was written in Dunbar, for the Northlight Festival. He plays on a line from Muir’s A Boyhood in Scotland: "we loved to watch the passing ships and make guesses as to the ports they had come from.”
a coracle of willow and skins beneath a changeable sky
a Roman flotilla edging north to Ultima Thule
a Viking longship breaking open the honied south
a Genoese galley blockading the castle
the Great Michael floating the woods of Fife
Sir Patrick Spens sailing the king’s guid scrip
the widowed queen’s fleet arriving in thick mist
the brig Covenant of Dysart bound for the Carolinas
the clipper Isabella bringing tea into Leith
a herring-laden zulu tacking for Fisherrow
a U-boat periscope scanning the waves
the crude oil tanker Seadancer flying a flag of convenience
(KC)
Afterwards we sit in a circle and share some poems, and Hanna gives us a song blending blackbirds and cuckoos. Gerry invites us to follow the Japanese custom of blossom toasting. Whisky, not pink gin.
two gardens
(I) morning
two bay leaves
stolen from
the Mushroom
Trust garden
(II) evening
in the Castle Garden
of Water To Beyond
Talisker under
cherry blossom
(GL)
Castle Garden of Water Beyond
the night sky
is studded
women are singing
a last song stolen from time
what is the ground
of making
of proving
(GL)
HD, Castle Garden of Water to Beyond, Luke Allan, 2014
WHAT WE GO
THROUGH
gate
poem AF, photo LA, 2014
AS & HD, Luke Allan, 2014
Day Four (Cramond to Boness)
Along the Frith from Cramond, this, the fourth day, is a weary one, and lengthened by the loss of Hannah, who took the wrong way for half an hour amid the metropolis of Boness, with its holiday convention of bikers. Andrew happily found her. A heavy plant was helped across the road.
Ballad of Hannah
from Peggy's Mill til Cramond Brig
we walked a stragglin line
long I sat at Cramond Brig
thinking of blude red wine
half an hour, half an hour
Hannah has lost her way
half an hour, half an hour
two more have gone astray
(GL)
Planting becomes the cadence of the walk; the seeds our common task.
UTILIZABLE
GARMENTS
trees
(AF, after John Muir)
Rather then getting to such-and-such in time for tea and a bath, there’s always a discussion to be had, and a choice to be made, of where to give the next seed, and the next letter of the poem, a home. The poets keep half an eye on the right setting: is this suitable soil? Is there moisture here? Are these companionable species for our tree to be among in the years to come?
The walk leads between moments, themselves poetic in the way they cluster time into a wee rite: the seeds gently fingered into the earth. It is as if the seed itself had drenched us in a brief shower of reality, making the surrounding leaves glisten and the grass along the edge of the path quicken.
we leave a world
just like the world
we found
only a little different
(AF)
As for poems, they can only hope to prove that the fittingness of words has no more, or less, importance than the rightness of a planting.
watching butterflies
on the mossy knoll
eating falafel
(MG)
Sparrowhawk, mottled and russet
stoops forty feet from us
lifts off the meadow
clasping a mouse
"And read thy lot in yon celestial sign"
(AS)
Hopetoun House, Hannah Devereux, 2014
Day Five (Boness to Castlecary)
"Only sequoias are slow enough"
– Ezra Pound, ‘Canto LXXXVII’
The fifth day begins at Boness and features a picnic at Callendar Park, where the collection of sequoias are big, and familiar for Andrew.
ANTEDILUVIAN
WINDOWS
sequoia
(AF, after John Muir)
From now on, as well as seeds, the walk is punctuated with portions of Simnel cake baked by Morven. The ratio of weight carried on your back to sugar energy gained is a finely balanced affair.
After lunch Luke joins the party, walking barefoot, very much the young philosopher.
Along the Canal to the Big Wheel in Falkirk, gasping for a cup of tea, the poets arrived as the wee cafe closed its doors.
The highlight of the day are the arch windows that look back to Rome.
Viaduct
the eye’s
reverie and rest
each limb
of each tree
underlit in
evening in
luminous energy
Falkirk, Luke Allan, 2014
AS, Luke Allan, 2014
HD, AS, AF, Morven Gregor, Falkirk, Luke Allan, 2014
The gentle Avon, whose name is held in common with rivers across these isles and Europe, whose source is the Indo-European root, or, er, that which flows.
by Fisher's Brae
six mills to grind
and volt the wind
by Gilston Burn
six seeds to sow and sough
and sing a gale
(GL)
Gilston
right there
a high wind
hover folds
herself to earth
a vole is pierced
nothing
is claimed
(GL)
Day Six (Castlecary to Lennoxtown)
Finally some relief to the terrain; no longer just flat the trail follows the old wall and goes over Bar Hill, where a sequoia was planted in the rain.
Bar Hill
the stride
is longer
in the long grass
we ride the world
we tumble it
with our tread
caress of our feet
(GL)
AS & GL, Hannah Devereux, 2014
At Croy Gerry introduced the walkers to tattie scone roll (with brown sauce), steak pie and bridies - Scottish folk cuisine at its finest ¬– eaten sitting at an old kerbstone on the Way.
Hannah Devereux, 2014
The Antonine Wall her is best preserved in it earthwork, straight up Croy Hill. The fort here once held a garrison of 450. That fort had replaced a Neolithic fortlet, once held by the Damnonii people. Just over the crest is a Bronze age fort. Both command fine views over miles of countryside.
The Antonine Wall her is best preserved in it earthwork, straight up Croy Hill. The fort here once held a garrison of 450. That fort had replaced a Neolithic fortlet, once held by the Damnonii people. Just over the crest is a Bronze age fort. Both command fine views over miles of countryside.
If
Antoninus's Wall survives
2000
years in fragments
then
thrive little sequoia
thrive
these
Scots outlast empires
redwoods
outlast empires
some
have stood
since Roman
times
(AS)
Names and the eras they command. As with the windflower turbines on the Braes o’ Doune. Or the trees, named for Douglas and Menzies. They do not know their names, or genus.
Names are our desire.
Hannah Devereux, 2014
Hannah Devereux, 2014
I once spent an afternoon skating around the ice on Goose Pond happily thinking it was Walden Pond. One name brought me to another.
The poem we have buried along the way may germinate in some your minds, un-earthing an imagination of the trees locations in years to come – as much as the stones of the Mile Castles are known to persist, lodged in dykes and walls, or in the way that a grassy bank comes to delineate a hill fort, whose existence we are pointed toward by someone in the know.
Not every seed will grow from out the dark. Even if
the first pine takes, it is lodged in a wood of pines. But now you know where
the poem is: along the Way.
Plantings and poems are matters of the living-changing face of language.
planting Scots Pine, Hannah Devereux, 2014
Kelvinhead
when lucidity fails
the green leaf
becomes brown
the brown leaf
becomes blown
down
earth as one
(GL)
Bird migration
people pilgrimage
we, the inaugural walkers
along the forth and clyde canal
crow perforates an ale can
with it's beak
"than longen folk to goon on pilgrimage"
(AS)
the nettle inspector
is satisfied
(GL)
With Walden, the mile-castle and Neolithic dûns in our thoughts, we chatted about the new bothy on Eigg, where Hannah has just been, and Gerry, Morven, Hanna and I are soon to go. As Dee Heddon has it in her blog [link], staying at Sweeney’s much of the day is taken up with the everyday tasks, lighting the fire for coffee, cutting fresh kindling, fetching the milk from the plant pot on the stoop, tending the stove, and doing the messages. Kathleen Jamie, another resident, fulfils the poet’s traditional job of just noticing things:
from ‘star’, Atlantic Sonnets
I'm waiting for the star to rise
perhaps a planet
that tangles itself in the still leafless branches
of the sycamore
framed by the smallest window.
(KJ)
In a wee hut, on an island, the weather really matters, just as it did for the hikers, who were lucky enough to have less than the usual share of April rain.
Day Seven (Lennoxtown to Croftamie)
A gentle walk from Lennoxtown where a local person had turned the signpost round, leading to a mile-long walk in the wrong direction. We reach Carbeth happily and easily after that, greeted at the hut door by Morven and Larry (Butler) with Morven's soup and nettle bread and an array of cheeses.
Rain and standing stones by Dumgoyach where we discover the wind, probably at Dunbar, has taken the wee packet of Douglas fir seeds. We did an "empty" planting, mark the spot, and Gerry promises to return with extra seeds – left as extra weight at the Carbeth hut – and sow in that precise spot.
On to Glengoyne distillery, "the first of the Highland Scotches", in steadying rain, closed to the public, but the lads give us an impromptu tour anyway.
Hannah Devereux, 2014
We talk intermittently of YES, or NO, as everyone does with interested visitors in these epochal days. In their wee way the trees seem to relate to this historical moment, just thinking of the future they may see.
And, if these trees can be planted, then the same question always follows: why not more?
the sign post has been turned
it's rustic humour
(GL)
across from
Glengoyne Distillery;
two just-born lambs
flop on the meadow like
rag dolls
(AS)
Hannah Devereux, 2014
(Just to let you know that the "missing" Douglas fir seeds were planted yesterday by Morven & me at the spot chosen – opposite the standing stones at Dumgoyach – with due ceremony in a fine smirr of rain for a good start. i)
Standing Stones
a letter to a lover
of exile’s shadow
or shadow’s unlifting
of the long sorrow of land
of the cuckoo
of how love
survives if we can
(GL)
Dumgoyach
nothing is broken
a buzzard mewls
there are winds
treeline covers
the summit
sky softly
laverock
(GL)
Hannah Devereux, 2014
Hannah Devereux, 2014
Day Eight (Croftamie to Balloch)
On to Balloch with mackerel clouds over Loch Lomond. Ben Lomond and The Cobbler to the north. At Ledrisberg apple pips both Scottish and North American.
Hannah Devereux, 2014
What will emerge?
Hannah Devereux, 2014
Apples are all grafted so the "mother trees" have gotten unpredictable. "An apple branch, or sometimes a single apple...was the passport to the Celtic Otherworld."
Hannah Devereux, 2014
Croftamie to Balloch over the muir. Mostly pavement walking - an easy day. Picnic lunch in Balloch. Fine views from Loch Lomond level of the Bens in the distance, patchy snow still there.
Loch Lomond, Hannah Devereux, 2014
poem & photo: AF, 2014
Day Nine (Balloch to Helensburgh)
Links & credits
For a free 4-page booklet outlining the project, send an A5 SAE to: Studio Alec Finlay, 53 Prince Regent Street, Edinburgh, EH6 4AR. Copies of these will also be available at the readings.
The John Muir Way (Scottish Natural Heritage)
John Muir Festival 2014 (UZ Arts)
John Muir House Museum
Alec Finlay home page
