Hello and welcome to the first proper letter in this limited series, A Fall in Time.
If you have no idea what this is about, or why you are receiving it, head to this introductory piece to read more.
The idea is, as this autumn/fall progresses, I shall continue to share daily updates on Substack Notes, posting text and photos and perhaps even (possibly very bad) video. You can view each day as a diary entry, telling you what I was doing out in the woods, one fall in time, thirteen years ago.
I am drawing on my journal entries, blog posts, photographs, and also a now-obsolete and private tumblr blog I kept, back in 2012, using these alongside my memory and current thoughts, to bring you this adventure with the added value of more than a decade of hindsight.
Each week, I shall send out a letter with each day’s post embedded, any related Notes, and an extra paragraph or two.
Although this particular adventure physically ended in December 2010, it continued to shape me, my beliefs, my journeys and my self, in all the years since.
Without further ado, here is the first week, covering the period of the 13th of September 2010 to the 21st of September. To read the whole of each entry, and view the photos, you’ll have to click on each (more on this below). You can also hit the share, restack, comment, or like buttons on each Note.
And now, on to you.
What do you think to this format? Would it be better to copy and paste the text here, with a link so you can optionally head to Notes to see the images? I’d rather not have to do the extra work, but if enough of you think it doesn’t work in this format, I’ll reconsider. Or does it work like this?
I would certainly like more people to start using Notes, commenting on my posts and joining me on this retrospective adventure. If I were to embed all the photos I have been sharing, this email would be far, far too large; it is already too long to show in some email clients, just with the embedded Notes.
I have one final favour to ask. If you have enjoyed this, please can you share it widely? This might mean forwarding the email to friends and family members, perhaps those who love nature, or Scotland, adventure, history, or bushcraft, or it might mean heading to Notes and restacking, or sharing on other social media channels.
It would be fun to have as many people reading this as possible as I post the different days. I welcome questions and comments too, and try very hard to respond to all of them.
Many thanks for reading, I hope you have enjoyed this first instalment in A Fall in Time.
I've not had a chance to read this properly yet - I'm looking forward to sitting down with a coffee and getting stuck in :)
I find your experience fascinating! I've never been to Scotland, but your photos tell the story of this land so well that I feel like I'm beginning to know it. I like how you have collected the links to the past week's Notes here in one post. In Notes, I have seen some of these, but missed others. I don't mind clicking each link to the different Notes, but I also enjoy seeing them all together and reading them sequentially. Thanks for what you're doing!