Landscape As Personal Tapestry

An AWE Guest Walk by Lydia Crow

To many of you, at least those who have read The Crow’s Nest for a while, my sister

Lydia Crow

will need little introduction. The second eldest of my five sisters (all of whom are younger than me), Lydia lives on the Black Isle in the Highlands of Scotland (really-rather-close to

Lynn Fraser

, who recently shared a walk of her own). Not only is Lyd my sister, she is my friend—something she herself touched on in this post she crafted for my Fall in Time¹ series last year—and also my some- / oft-time editor, a role in which she excels.

Many of our research interests—or just ‘interests’, as I prefer to think of them—align, especially, for example, in the fields of folklore and place, topics in which Lyd also has a PhD. As such, I was delighted when she said she had crafted a piece based on her own walks, as per the idea I shared with you here.

The title, if you excuse the pun, is a carefully woven one, the tapestry a theme which runs through Lydia’s work (along with my own). It fits neatly and, I suspect, it will be a theme to which we shall both continue to return. The first three photographs below are Lydia’s own.

This piece is about time and layers, depth and self, and several other things, too. It is wise, and bears rereading. Like all good thoughts distilled in this fashion, it makes the reader think too, about their own world, and their own place within it, in time, memory, and space.

Osa

Landscape as Personal Tapestry

My walks are so seldom my own, these days. I usually have three walks a day, during the week. Walking Auri to school, and collecting her later. And walking Scapa at lunchtime. The return from school in the morning and the walk to school in the afternoon are the only times that I usually have to myself.

I love each leg of my walks, for very different reasons. On my own (or walking Scapa, generally), I can let my mind wander, and it isn’t surprising that entire creative projects have sprung into being during these times. Sometimes, there are so many ideas I need to jot them down on my ‘phone so I don’t forget all the details. On the walk to and from school, I love looking across the firth to Ben Wyvis, and the hills nestled between the two landmarks. The weather fronts are breathtaking at times and can never quite be done justice with a camera. On occasion, I just have to stop and take it all in, sequences of words spinning through my mind, trying to map it all, remember it all.

When we first moved to this village, a year ago, it took some effort getting Auri to walk to school and back without dragging her heels or complaining. To make things more interesting, we mapped out our walk: the neighbour’s house, her friend’s house, the grass bank, the bench, the farm, the burn, the bus stop, the traffic lights. We would recite them, pointing out other landmarks along the way. Auri’s first name is Araucaria (the genus to which the monkey puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana) belongs), and every time we see one on a journey, we have to announce it. “Araucaria!” There is a monkey puzzle in the garden next door, and I can’t pass it without at least whispering the word in my head – or out loud, if Auri is with me (assuming she doesn’t beat me to it).

The grass bank tells its own stories. The grass on top is worn down from children walking over it for what must be years. There was a point last year when the nettles poking out of the hedge alongside, backing onto someone’s garden, grew so high it became tricky for Auri to navigate. Last school year, Auri would leap towards me to catch her when she reached the end of the bank. Earlier this school year, she was already running down it on her own.

We sometimes still recite our map as we go to and from school, but already time has moved on. Auri likes to take her scooter, so more often than not I have to jog alongside her as she races on. The other morning, she was a little bit ahead of me with two other girls cycling alongside, looking like a miniature biker gang. Thoughts of The Them from Good Omens sprung into my head, along with a rush of emotion at all the experiences Auri has ahead of her: those moments she will spend growing in this landscape, shaping it around her in her own head, making it her very own iteration of the village.

I’ll remember that sight of the three girls racing to school and, without thinking about it, it will become a layer to the landscape (my landscape). Sometimes, such memories are triggered by places, others by other sensory experiences. It’s funny when they pop back up again. The ripple of a certain kind of spring breeze, the first bite of winter.

I was reminded of this when walking Scapa later that day at lunchtime. Throughout the entire walk, I could feel flickers buffeting me. It took about fifty minutes for these to take shape enough for me to translate these into specific memories, and feelings attached to memories. A childhood in Orkney, and that moment at the start of the spring or summer term when the Stenness Primary School minibus, driven by Billy, started picking us and the Irelands from next door up at the end of the road rather than outside our house, as happened in winter. Something about being a young teenager and the thrill of the first warmth of the year, promising a summer full of (at times probably ill-advised) fun. Buying penny sweets (which still cost a penny, back then) and walking round the village with friends. Later, something from my time in the south-east of England, and a sense of freedom walking to work early on a summer’s day. Beer gardens, days in London, and something I couldn’t quite catch from the same time period stretching into the evening. Then, later still, when I lived in Edinburgh, time spent in the evening in Dunbar’s Close Garden after the gates were locked. Drinking Elderflower Gin Liqueur, the Fringe around the corner. Even last spring, here in this village, enjoying a glass of wine in our work-in-progress garden on a May evening, people across the road enjoying the same from the pub beer garden, and a neighbour on the other side singing happily along to the radio.

The Millennium Clock Tower, National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh

Just as there is so much more to notice in a landscape than we can possibly hope to see, there is also so much to understand that we just can’t see at all. The layers of history, of a place’s folklore, its very essence of being. That personal sense of place, and all that is tipped into that murky bucket that no-one can quite define objectively. We all have our own places, and even though lines on a map might suggest they are the same, they are not. How we experience them, how we relate to them; it is as subjective as it comes. When I visit places I have grown up and loved (and continue to love), I sometimes find myself momentarily lost. Experiencing something so many years further on, I realise how much has been shaped and sized by the person I was then. When I visited Orkney again some years ago, I was amused to find that the mammoth drop to the street from the pavement outside the bank in Stromness required just a single step rather than a leap. I remember sitting eating liquorice with my mum (with my sister, Ginny, in the buggy) down by the harbour, on the way to collect Alex and Holly from school. Somewhere nearby in Stromness there will undoubtedly be a modest verge that used to be a huge, grassy hill that I ran down, breathless with the excitement of being almost out of control.

Watching Auri scooter home (disappearing on her own down “The Gap”, a cut-through between houses that meets back up with the main path, and a favourite of children eager for snatches of independence), it struck me again that she is doing so much more than just experiencing the here and now. She is layering her life, now and the future, with memories and experiences which will no doubt resurface at sometimes surprising points in the many decades to come. These paths she walks are her own, she is making the village her own, and I will never quite know what that village is, though I enjoy being there for these formative stages and look forward to sharing it with her through her comments now and then, the ones which often catch me off-guard with their inquisitive and surprisingly considered reflection.

To be a parent is to live in a perpetual state of mild panic, possibly terror, that you might not make life as magical as it could be for your children. But I sometimes think it is easy to forget how the landscape around us plays its part in that. Not just as a backdrop, but as a main character. The land itself, the stories it shares. It inspires, it encourages, it teaches lessons. And it keeps our secrets, hoarding them like the treasure they are. Every day, we create more of these layers without even realising it, peppering our landscapes and places and creating our unique multiples over single patches of shared earth. We shape our own personal landscapes—physically and metaphysically—as much as they shape us, and throughout our lives we remain equally haunted by each other.

My walks might rarely be my own these days, but the landscape through which I move is mine and mine alone.

Stromness

Finally

If you would also like to share a walk of your own, then do have a read through the original post I shared on this topic. The idea is a simple one, to make you and the reader look at a landscape through a different lens, and how you interpret the subject is entirely up to you. I want people to share a personal take on the germ of the idea and, so far, each of the walks shared has done exactly that.

If you like the idea of sharing your own walk, then do get in touch, either by replying to this email, leaving a comment, or sending me a DM on Substack Notes.

Do head on over to Lydia’s Scribbles and Sketches² (she’ll be sharing details of the seventh of these wonderful notebooks today); her most recent project here on Substack, Simply This³; her brand new and shiny not-on-Substack newsletter, Vignettes; or her website (note to self: sort yours out, Alex!): lydiacrow.com. There is much to enjoy here, much to ponder, much to absorb, and much to subsequently pass along to others. You will not be disappointed. (And thank you Lyd, for sharing this.)

I have been slowed down by illness this year, both my own and also looking after a sick Ailsa, but I am glad I have been able to keep up with my weekly dose of fiction through this time (the final part of Dancing With Death goes out next week), and have had slivers of moments in which to add to my notes and journals and drafts. Normal—whatever that means—service will hopefully resume soon (which includes much-neglected comments and replies). Amongst several things, expect talk of hope—and talk of how to hope, how to continue when all feels dark and cruel. (Sneak advance peek: you are not alone, you have power, and you can use these things to help others. Indeed, to do so creates momentum, it can banish despair, and it can change the world.)

Many thanks for reading.

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Thanks again,

Alex

(Lastly, I couldn’t resist adding my own photo of a self portrait with the Millennium Clock Tower, a place I always try to visit when I am in the capital. Mirrors reflect more than simple light, after all. How many such portraits exist in the world, do you think? It almost makes me want to create a tiny project, reaching out to fellow such portrait takers, sharing them, somehow, someplace… As niche as it comes. Layers and layers.)

1. In case you don’t know, A Fall in Time is a series of journal notes, photos, diary entries, thoughts, and even the odd video, all about and from the first time I spent alone, living somewhat wild, out in the woods of western Scotland, for several months.

2. “A series of seasonal notebooks, four a year, each lasting a calendar month and following a single theme, which may be predominantly textual or predominantly visual. Perhaps some may include audio or video. Don't expect polish.”

3. “A year-long project, featuring suggestions of fun and interesting things to do. Expect bursts of nostalgia, old-fashioned fun in its simplest state, and a not insignificant amount of cheerful daftness.”