I can relate to this. The landscape I grew up in is so changed as to be unrecognizable, except for a piece here and there. The broken pieces I carry in my heart unbroken. They are the earth in which I am rooted.
I think this is spot on. We carry our own landscapes with us, unbroken and layered. I've often considered the world through which I've moved--whether as a child or an adult--as adding to a constantly churning compost heap, a rich and warm bed which is mine and mine alone, no matter what time and others do to the landscape I have known and moved through. I think I was only in my early 20s when I first uttered the phrase 'I remember when it was all fields around here...'.
I remember that, too. It's devastating to see urban sprawl taking over the cherished fields of my childhood, but in my imagination I can recall and run through them again.
I remember, when I was visiting my Granny as a child (when we lived in Orkney, and she in Lincolnshire), developers started to lay out pegs and measurements in the field behind her house. Every evening, after they’d gone, we children would sneak out, pull up the pegs and string, and throw them into the hedge bottom… They’d have to come and remeasure again the next day. I suspect this only delayed work by a very small time, but I also think that I learnt the value of direct action at that point, even if it meant little in the big scheme of things.
I had forgotten that! What year do you think that was? Those summers all seem to meld together in my memory, though the (long-suffering) tree at the bottom of the garden is integral to all of them.
Yes, those summers do indeed meld. I do remember the tree (a willow) had been planted by Granny from a (Easter?) cross, which always struck me as remarkable at the time, how someone could plant a thing which was so big... I suspect that year was around about 1993 or thereabouts? Not sure, though! It was still a field when we played quarterstaffs with Simon...
Yes, I remembered that story, too - I loved it (still do)! Weirdly, I was thinking about the quarterstaffs the other day (I found two branches for the girls, perfect miniature staff height with some light pruning), and how potentially dangerous that was... Ah, well - that's childhood!
A lovely thought "The broken pieces I carry in my heart unbroken." It reminds me of Diana Athill’s observations in her book, Alive, Alive Oh! In her old age she had moved to a retirement home. This is a quote from her book.
She realised that sometimes she "'sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits’: I have forgotten who it is who is supposed to have said that, but it is a good description of a state quite often observed in a retirement home, and considered pitiable. Disconcertingly, I recently realised that I myself (not often, just now and then) might say those very words if someone asked me what I was doing. It is not a welcome thought, but less dreadful than it might be because I now know from experience that the state is not necessarily pitiable at all. It is even rather pleasant — or it can be. That probably depends on the nature of the person sitting. To me it has been, because the thinking turns out to be about events in the past which were enjoyable, and when my mind relaxes itself it is those same events which float in and out of it."
Thank you. Personally, I think anyone who can't sit and think is more pitiable than one who can and does. Just sitting means being in the here and now, hardly a pitiable state.
I agree, but having worked in many nursing homes in the past (hopefully they are better now) seeing elderly people sitting in chairs, staring into space and looking so helpless, did seem sad. It is true that many of us have lost the skill of being in the here and now.
I think about how we create those stories quite often, whether consciously, or otherwise, adding characters such as the landscape, or a soundtrack (of waves and wind, perhaps), to all we lay down as memory, and Lyd really encapsulated that in this piece. I'm glad you'll keep that lens to add to your own tools!
That's exactly it. It really is a symbiotic relationship! Really enjoyed Lyd's essay too, I love how everyone who has shared things does so in their own style and way, that makes me happy.
Alex and Lydia, thank you, this is such beautifully layered piece of writing incorporating your memories into the now in terms of relationships with the landscape around you. We make the landscape our own by paying attention and in the words of Mary Oliver, 'telling about it' you have done so beautifully!
Thank you - and I love that idea! I need to read more of Mary Oliver's works - she always makes me stop and think when I come across her words. And I agree with you: I think, in this day more than ever, that concept of paying attention - and the respect it implies - is so important.
Thanks Susie! I have thought about Lyd's piece since reading it, which is a pretty good testament to how important it is. I love the idea of 'telling about it', we should all do that--share those observations in our own way.
I often think about your Hill (which is forever capitalised in my head), and your ongoing walking meditations with her, how you lay down and layer memory upon memory. Having shared your own telling for this long only makes me want to keep adding to my own understanding of that place, something which feels truly real and magical, all at the same time. How many of these stories have there been? How many others don't tell, or simply do not see in the same way? It is a marvel, really.
Alex, I often ask myself how many others stories I am adding layers to through my love of this tiny speck of paradise I have found myself living on. If there are others though I have never found them, either they never told or they simply didn't notice, either way a fact that makes me even more determined (read obsessed) in recording every tiny detail.
Perhaps, I hope, there will be another like me in the future, perhaps my daughter, my son or their children, who will be equally astonished and add to my findings... I can only pray and continue.
I do hope you're fully recovered now, you've probably mentioned somewhere in the noise and busyness that is Notes, alas, I have no time to check! xx
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to discover a diary from many years ago, full of observations and minutiae? I’ve often thought about this idea, ever since reading Penelope Lively’s Ghost of Thomas Kempe, in which such a found diary plays a role.
That said, I also think the stories are there, layered into the landscape itself—one of my favourite things to study when I was at Uni was the landscape aspect of archaeology, how we leave marks which are often overlooked, but tell such a long and varied story. I love how you observe and share those details, it is a powerful thing.
We’re better here! Well, I am (just tired still, and currently suffering the effects of a migraine) and Ailsa is, finally. Aurélie is still under the weather, with sporadic fever returning, which is frustrating for her—we suspect it is because of her asthma, the flu hangs around longer. I’ve not really been on Notes (or the internet, for that matter) much, of late, but returning now. I think my winter hermitting period is over! Shall have to catch up with your own work, too. That’s always a joy to look forward to.
I'm glad to hear you're feeling better Alex, what a rotten variant it is, I don't know anyone that hasn't caught it except William and Seth but... time will tell and I hope they avoid it but based on what I've seen so far I fear their days are numbered. My colleague has had the same problem as Aurélie, she returned for two days and then had to take two off again, it seems to be the nature of the virus.
When we bought this house there were boxes of diaries in the loft space, I was so excited to find them but they were terribly old and had become mouse damaged and damp over many years of being forgotten, most just disintegrated when we picked them up, the rest were so stuck together the pages tore when we tried to open them. I would love to have known what was written within the pages. I think it is a wonderful thing to discover in actual written records any history of family and land, of course you are right about the archeological layers too but this can take years of study to understand and interpret as you know so well... both are powerful and informative though.
It will be good to see you back Alex, you are sorely missed here my friend.
Fingers crossed William and Seth continue to avoid it!
Oh that’s so sad about the diaries disintegrating like that. It’s such a lot of work to conserve and then read things like that too. Do you still have them or were they beyond saving? Imagine the tales which could be told!
You’re right about the time needed to learn a landscape from an archaeological perspective, too—as everywhere is different, what might look exactly the same as something in another place could, in fact, be completely different.
I remember being on fieldwork in Spain, driving to the area we were surveying, and the professor who was leading it decided to pause and take a closer look at some field boundaries he had passed dozens of times. The light was just right to see more lumps and bumps and, after poking around a little, he got really excited, realising they were not modern, or late medieval, as he had thought, but probably Iron Age or even earlier. When someone who has literally written the book on the subject still misses things, it makes me realise how much is out there, undiscovered, untranslated. Our world is full of marvels.
Thank you for this lovely essay, and such emotive descriptions of the walk to and from school over the years. You say it so well, your daughter is ‘layering her life’ with memories and experiences.
It is so true that when you see things as an adult, they seem so small. As children my cousin and I used to slide down a huge rock in a burn. As adults we went to find it, and it took a while for us to recognise the place, and that the tiny stone in the burn was our ‘massive’ rock!
I hope you and Ailsa are beginning to feel better.
Thank you! Even though I know things will be that much smaller when revisited as an adult, I am always surprised by how much - it makes me realise how much children make entire constellations out of the smallest things. I think there's a particular type of beauty in that.
Isn't it remarkable, how the world we grow with so swiftly becomes hard to find once more? Scale alters, but memory remains. It is something I am sure other animals also have to deal with, too--the giant dog looking mildly confused and embarrassed when it realises it can no longer curl up comfortably on a lap it grew with, for example.
Our 'own' burn, in Stenness, is a place I have not returned to as an adult and I wonder if I ever will. A part of me would like to, but a part wonders if it is best to keep those memories at the scale they were formed, rather than confuse things!
And thanks! Ailsa rebounded swiftly, which is great. I am healed, but still think I am a bit tired. January does that! As the days get longer once more, and there are hints of spring in the sun, I slowly come back to life. Sometimes I really think I should just hibernate.
Thank you for the update. I am glad to hear that you are both better, though the dreich winter weather does have an impact. Hibernation would be a great idea!
I am very much looking forward to the return of the sun—in the mornings, it hides behind the mountain to our east, then dips below the ridge to the west in the evenings at this point in the year, but then the days suddenly get longer and brighter, once it reaches a certain point in the calendar. Cannot wait!
I agree with you. Although there are compensations in winter. At the moment the dawn is after I wake up, so I can see the sun rise, and sometimes some beautifully colourful skies.
I really miss beautifully colourful skies! Here, the dawn and sunset are both hidden from view by the mountains. I do still love watching the sky brighten, however, and how quickly that seems to happen—or, perhaps, quickly and slowly at the same time. This morning, the woods were alive with birdsong, the first time I’ve heard such a chorus this year, up until now it’s just been a handful of birds, so I’m taking this as a sign spring is ready to burst into action!
A little slow to respond to this but I absolutely love it - I love it for what it is for Lydia and her children's shared experience of their familiar landscape, but also because it's such an echo of my own building of relationship to place in a very similar context (in my case a park and a city farm), and how I felt compelled to note and honour it, but almost 40 years ago! I do hope this doesn't seem like I'm saying "Yeah, been there and done that before" it's just that the stories chimed so sweetly across the decades - I hope you both (Lydia and Alex) enjoy it! (needs to be looked at on a computer screen rather than a phone for legibility!) https://lizmilner.blog/wp-content/uploads/1999/09/journey-all.jpg
Oh, I love this! I am on my mobile right now, so I will have a proper look on my laptop in the morning - but this is right up my street. Thank you for sharing!
I can relate to this. The landscape I grew up in is so changed as to be unrecognizable, except for a piece here and there. The broken pieces I carry in my heart unbroken. They are the earth in which I am rooted.
And that rootedness is so important - and is something that can't be taken away.
I think this is spot on. We carry our own landscapes with us, unbroken and layered. I've often considered the world through which I've moved--whether as a child or an adult--as adding to a constantly churning compost heap, a rich and warm bed which is mine and mine alone, no matter what time and others do to the landscape I have known and moved through. I think I was only in my early 20s when I first uttered the phrase 'I remember when it was all fields around here...'.
I remember that, too. It's devastating to see urban sprawl taking over the cherished fields of my childhood, but in my imagination I can recall and run through them again.
I remember, when I was visiting my Granny as a child (when we lived in Orkney, and she in Lincolnshire), developers started to lay out pegs and measurements in the field behind her house. Every evening, after they’d gone, we children would sneak out, pull up the pegs and string, and throw them into the hedge bottom… They’d have to come and remeasure again the next day. I suspect this only delayed work by a very small time, but I also think that I learnt the value of direct action at that point, even if it meant little in the big scheme of things.
I had forgotten that! What year do you think that was? Those summers all seem to meld together in my memory, though the (long-suffering) tree at the bottom of the garden is integral to all of them.
Yes, those summers do indeed meld. I do remember the tree (a willow) had been planted by Granny from a (Easter?) cross, which always struck me as remarkable at the time, how someone could plant a thing which was so big... I suspect that year was around about 1993 or thereabouts? Not sure, though! It was still a field when we played quarterstaffs with Simon...
Yes, I remembered that story, too - I loved it (still do)! Weirdly, I was thinking about the quarterstaffs the other day (I found two branches for the girls, perfect miniature staff height with some light pruning), and how potentially dangerous that was... Ah, well - that's childhood!
A lovely thought "The broken pieces I carry in my heart unbroken." It reminds me of Diana Athill’s observations in her book, Alive, Alive Oh! In her old age she had moved to a retirement home. This is a quote from her book.
She realised that sometimes she "'sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits’: I have forgotten who it is who is supposed to have said that, but it is a good description of a state quite often observed in a retirement home, and considered pitiable. Disconcertingly, I recently realised that I myself (not often, just now and then) might say those very words if someone asked me what I was doing. It is not a welcome thought, but less dreadful than it might be because I now know from experience that the state is not necessarily pitiable at all. It is even rather pleasant — or it can be. That probably depends on the nature of the person sitting. To me it has been, because the thinking turns out to be about events in the past which were enjoyable, and when my mind relaxes itself it is those same events which float in and out of it."
Thank you. Personally, I think anyone who can't sit and think is more pitiable than one who can and does. Just sitting means being in the here and now, hardly a pitiable state.
I agree, but having worked in many nursing homes in the past (hopefully they are better now) seeing elderly people sitting in chairs, staring into space and looking so helpless, did seem sad. It is true that many of us have lost the skill of being in the here and now.
I love this! Especially viewing the landscape we exist within as a main character in our lives. A lens I will carry with me now 😊
Thank you - so glad you enjoyed it!
I think about how we create those stories quite often, whether consciously, or otherwise, adding characters such as the landscape, or a soundtrack (of waves and wind, perhaps), to all we lay down as memory, and Lyd really encapsulated that in this piece. I'm glad you'll keep that lens to add to your own tools!
A lovely essay from Lydia! I think we have a symbiotic relationship with the landscape: we imbue it with stories and in turn it reveals stories to us.
Exactly! It really does seem like a form of reciprocal trust, in some way. I'm glad you enjoyed it!
That's exactly it. It really is a symbiotic relationship! Really enjoyed Lyd's essay too, I love how everyone who has shared things does so in their own style and way, that makes me happy.
Alex and Lydia, thank you, this is such beautifully layered piece of writing incorporating your memories into the now in terms of relationships with the landscape around you. We make the landscape our own by paying attention and in the words of Mary Oliver, 'telling about it' you have done so beautifully!
Thank you - and I love that idea! I need to read more of Mary Oliver's works - she always makes me stop and think when I come across her words. And I agree with you: I think, in this day more than ever, that concept of paying attention - and the respect it implies - is so important.
Paying attention and searching out the beauty amidst all that is so cruel… it really is important work.
Yes! I think it is essential, more so than ever. Too many simply don’t, and that makes me sad.
Thanks Susie! I have thought about Lyd's piece since reading it, which is a pretty good testament to how important it is. I love the idea of 'telling about it', we should all do that--share those observations in our own way.
I often think about your Hill (which is forever capitalised in my head), and your ongoing walking meditations with her, how you lay down and layer memory upon memory. Having shared your own telling for this long only makes me want to keep adding to my own understanding of that place, something which feels truly real and magical, all at the same time. How many of these stories have there been? How many others don't tell, or simply do not see in the same way? It is a marvel, really.
Alex, I often ask myself how many others stories I am adding layers to through my love of this tiny speck of paradise I have found myself living on. If there are others though I have never found them, either they never told or they simply didn't notice, either way a fact that makes me even more determined (read obsessed) in recording every tiny detail.
Perhaps, I hope, there will be another like me in the future, perhaps my daughter, my son or their children, who will be equally astonished and add to my findings... I can only pray and continue.
I do hope you're fully recovered now, you've probably mentioned somewhere in the noise and busyness that is Notes, alas, I have no time to check! xx
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to discover a diary from many years ago, full of observations and minutiae? I’ve often thought about this idea, ever since reading Penelope Lively’s Ghost of Thomas Kempe, in which such a found diary plays a role.
That said, I also think the stories are there, layered into the landscape itself—one of my favourite things to study when I was at Uni was the landscape aspect of archaeology, how we leave marks which are often overlooked, but tell such a long and varied story. I love how you observe and share those details, it is a powerful thing.
We’re better here! Well, I am (just tired still, and currently suffering the effects of a migraine) and Ailsa is, finally. Aurélie is still under the weather, with sporadic fever returning, which is frustrating for her—we suspect it is because of her asthma, the flu hangs around longer. I’ve not really been on Notes (or the internet, for that matter) much, of late, but returning now. I think my winter hermitting period is over! Shall have to catch up with your own work, too. That’s always a joy to look forward to.
I'm glad to hear you're feeling better Alex, what a rotten variant it is, I don't know anyone that hasn't caught it except William and Seth but... time will tell and I hope they avoid it but based on what I've seen so far I fear their days are numbered. My colleague has had the same problem as Aurélie, she returned for two days and then had to take two off again, it seems to be the nature of the virus.
When we bought this house there were boxes of diaries in the loft space, I was so excited to find them but they were terribly old and had become mouse damaged and damp over many years of being forgotten, most just disintegrated when we picked them up, the rest were so stuck together the pages tore when we tried to open them. I would love to have known what was written within the pages. I think it is a wonderful thing to discover in actual written records any history of family and land, of course you are right about the archeological layers too but this can take years of study to understand and interpret as you know so well... both are powerful and informative though.
It will be good to see you back Alex, you are sorely missed here my friend.
Fingers crossed William and Seth continue to avoid it!
Oh that’s so sad about the diaries disintegrating like that. It’s such a lot of work to conserve and then read things like that too. Do you still have them or were they beyond saving? Imagine the tales which could be told!
You’re right about the time needed to learn a landscape from an archaeological perspective, too—as everywhere is different, what might look exactly the same as something in another place could, in fact, be completely different.
I remember being on fieldwork in Spain, driving to the area we were surveying, and the professor who was leading it decided to pause and take a closer look at some field boundaries he had passed dozens of times. The light was just right to see more lumps and bumps and, after poking around a little, he got really excited, realising they were not modern, or late medieval, as he had thought, but probably Iron Age or even earlier. When someone who has literally written the book on the subject still misses things, it makes me realise how much is out there, undiscovered, untranslated. Our world is full of marvels.
Thank you for this lovely essay, and such emotive descriptions of the walk to and from school over the years. You say it so well, your daughter is ‘layering her life’ with memories and experiences.
It is so true that when you see things as an adult, they seem so small. As children my cousin and I used to slide down a huge rock in a burn. As adults we went to find it, and it took a while for us to recognise the place, and that the tiny stone in the burn was our ‘massive’ rock!
I hope you and Ailsa are beginning to feel better.
Thank you! Even though I know things will be that much smaller when revisited as an adult, I am always surprised by how much - it makes me realise how much children make entire constellations out of the smallest things. I think there's a particular type of beauty in that.
Constellations is the right word. Ailsa certainly does this, noting the tiniest of details, which makes me happy.
Isn't it remarkable, how the world we grow with so swiftly becomes hard to find once more? Scale alters, but memory remains. It is something I am sure other animals also have to deal with, too--the giant dog looking mildly confused and embarrassed when it realises it can no longer curl up comfortably on a lap it grew with, for example.
Our 'own' burn, in Stenness, is a place I have not returned to as an adult and I wonder if I ever will. A part of me would like to, but a part wonders if it is best to keep those memories at the scale they were formed, rather than confuse things!
And thanks! Ailsa rebounded swiftly, which is great. I am healed, but still think I am a bit tired. January does that! As the days get longer once more, and there are hints of spring in the sun, I slowly come back to life. Sometimes I really think I should just hibernate.
Thank you for the update. I am glad to hear that you are both better, though the dreich winter weather does have an impact. Hibernation would be a great idea!
I am very much looking forward to the return of the sun—in the mornings, it hides behind the mountain to our east, then dips below the ridge to the west in the evenings at this point in the year, but then the days suddenly get longer and brighter, once it reaches a certain point in the calendar. Cannot wait!
I agree with you. Although there are compensations in winter. At the moment the dawn is after I wake up, so I can see the sun rise, and sometimes some beautifully colourful skies.
I really miss beautifully colourful skies! Here, the dawn and sunset are both hidden from view by the mountains. I do still love watching the sky brighten, however, and how quickly that seems to happen—or, perhaps, quickly and slowly at the same time. This morning, the woods were alive with birdsong, the first time I’ve heard such a chorus this year, up until now it’s just been a handful of birds, so I’m taking this as a sign spring is ready to burst into action!
A little slow to respond to this but I absolutely love it - I love it for what it is for Lydia and her children's shared experience of their familiar landscape, but also because it's such an echo of my own building of relationship to place in a very similar context (in my case a park and a city farm), and how I felt compelled to note and honour it, but almost 40 years ago! I do hope this doesn't seem like I'm saying "Yeah, been there and done that before" it's just that the stories chimed so sweetly across the decades - I hope you both (Lydia and Alex) enjoy it! (needs to be looked at on a computer screen rather than a phone for legibility!) https://lizmilner.blog/wp-content/uploads/1999/09/journey-all.jpg
Oh, I love this! I am on my mobile right now, so I will have a proper look on my laptop in the morning - but this is right up my street. Thank you for sharing!