This is a style of post shamelessly borrowed from Christine at the Abbey of the Arts’ beautiful visual meditations.

I have often wanted to try something similar myself. I’ve also been wanting to experiment with some (simple) photo editing, if for no other reason than to get past the inner voice that says a photo ‘should’ be a representation and not tampered with… This seemed like a good opportunity for both experiments.

The photos are from Lindisfarne, the Holy Isle, just off the north east coast of England, where we were for a few days holiday last week.  (Only for a  few hours at Lindisfarne itself – you need to time your visit to co-incide with the tide times. The way it fluctuates between land and island is part of its enduring appeal.)

Some pictures are from the edge of the causeway, some looking back to Bamburgh, and some on the approach to and at St Cuthbert’s Isle (an island off an island off an island… the monks loved such places.)

I hope you like the photographs from what was a really special place.

It reminded me of something I read a month or so ago about landscapes flirting with us – sending out signals that demand and invite an appreciative, admiring response.

I can’t now remember where I read this – I’ll need to track back through my recent books borrowed from the library to find it. Unless of course any of you are familiar with this idea, and who might be writing about it?

It also reminded me of something I wrote recently as a bit of writing practice, describing the journey home. (This is a simple bit of writing practice to practice – I think there is something of the symbolism of the journeying, home, that helps the words to flow.)

It’s about the landscapes round here, in all their flirtatious glory. The photograph is of the landscape, curving, on my journey home.

I am driving home, from singing practice. The sky is grey to the left, blue to the right. The day is cold: it has the clear, bright look of a January day. It was raining, heavily, early in the morning, and the air is washed.

The landscape has been washed with January sunlight, and cold rain.

The hills to the left are showing their folds, their contours, like the most magnificent eastern princess, fat, sensual, curvaceous, enticing, lying back and waiting to be touched, to be admired.

To be fed grapes by gasping, drooling admirers.

To the left, the sky is dark, and a rainbow cuts through the sky, illuminating my passage.

the rolling fields of January,

bare, leafless,

colourless almost,

old fort hills and

soft muddy farmland

falling, breathing,

gently unexceptional.

hilltop trees mark the place you know is home:

tears of recognition, dotted all over the horizon.

~~~

Carved out of one of my favourite poem making techniques: writing a piece of prose (in this case, about the journey home) and then cutting the lines up (literally) and moving them around, with further chopping if necessary, to form the shape, feel and sound of a poem.

And less opportunity to take winter wonderland photographs.

Still, the sun came out today, providing the chance to survey the scene, both the tree damage after the high winds, and the flooding in nearby fields. With the sunlight came blue skies, and with the blue skies came a patchwork of blues and greens as I took picture after picture, hungrily, of the rain soaked landscape.

The feeling that came with it can only be described as impossible gratitude for the gift of the sunlight, the colours, the rain soaked day.

Not only is this open moorland one of the landscapes that makes me feel most at home, it is also a place that hosts some public art.

There are statues located within, and now utterly part of, the landscape.

I was walking there yesterday, in a day of bright white icy sunshine.

I was thinking about how aware we are of the light, of brightness, of illumination, in these days that are the darkest days of winter. (It’s a leading up to the solstice thing I know, but also impossible not to feel: the light is so bright, the sun so warming on days of cold.)

As I walked up over the hill, I knew I was heading towards Epstein’s statue, The Visitation. I’ve seen it several times before, and it makes a lovely marker and turning point on the walk.

As I dropped down the other side of the hill, the path moved out of the light of the sun. The day darkened, and the temperature dropped. Ahead of me I could see the copse of pine trees, and the figure, standing lonely in amongst them.

She looks so cold, I thought.

I couldn’t help it, the reaction was instant: she looks so cold, so scared, so lonely. So vulnerable, so human.

I wanted to give her a blanket.

I wanted to give her my hand, and whisper that everything would be all right.

I wanted to give her a poem.

I could feel my heart lurch with the desire to care, to protect, to shelter. To offer a hand, just my hand, in comfort.

It was only later, thinking about it, and looking at my photos, imperfect remembrance of that moment, that lonely figure on the moor, that I figured:

this is what art says.

Art does not say: look at me, how clever I am, how artistic I am, how well I am crafted.

Art says: look, see, hear, feel how the world is.

Art says: I hear your human heart, beating, hurting, still.

Art says: Fetch a blanket. Tell a poem.

Stretch out your hand.

Lots of flooding in Scotland, and the river next to us spilled its banks (fortunately not in our direction – the flood waters go the other way).

The water levels have already subsided since yesterday, but the rains left a beautifully watery landscape to enjoy during a brief dry spell this morning. It seemed kind of appropriate for the national day of such a rainy country.

Here are some puddle landscapes for you to enjoy:

Rainbow illuminating the winter landscape at Gribton.

Waterlogged fields and deep puddles in front of Irongray Church.

Farm buildings reflected in field puddles at a nearby farm.

* the title is a reference to the line from ee cummings: the world is mud-luscious, and puddle-wonderful

The material is from largely unedited journal notes. It might eventually be cut down and edited into a poem… but for now, it is what is: a reflection on the power of the moment, and the landscapes of remembrance.

The Night Before Leaving Skye

It is the memories we carry of being human.
Yes, the memories that will flow with us, that we will carry with us when the time comes to leave the journey – the time of being human.
Writing and photography is part of the expression and the framing,
the heightening of the intensity of the moment
so it will be etched forever in your memory,
so you will remember,
always,
how you can turn a corner and see the Cuillins
framed under a line of curling white cloud,
dark and brooding and jagged,
and you must shout ‘stop!’ and ‘look!’
and breathe out ‘wow’, and cry.

How you may drive over the road and see the Tables,
blue and impossibly the same,
forever,
rising to greet you as you head back home and all tension
disappears
into the blue familiarity of the Tables,
rising on the horizon,
impossibly calmly blue,
forever.

These are the moments when we feel most alive,
when the heart wants to shout with abandon,
like Hafiz,
oh, I am so damned alive!

It is a wild, rich, intensity of feeling.
It can not last, it does not last,
we must be returned to our day to day preoccupations,
but this for me is what I will always return to,
it will be these moments that appear in the final moments of remembrance,
the way the light, glinted,
impossibly,
on the water,
the way the grasses roll brown-green gold-green amber-orange,
a colour there is no colour for,
no name for,
yet is every colour you have ever known,
every desire,
the heart of all desire.

To know that there is always this,
the possibility of returning,
the chance to walk along the loch side,
the chance to see the sea,
moving,
breathing,
growing,
groaning,
casting patterns of lightness and dark on the water,
reminding you how the island is breathing
always in and out, in and out
constant, recurring.

No matter what else
there is nothing that can undo your own personal, private recollection of that moment
the moment of recognition,
of delight,
of intense sweet wondering
when you know you are home
when you know,
even as it is time to leave,
that these moments will come with you
as undying as the shape of the Tables
returning
recurring
on the blue of the horizon
repeating:
forever.

I have recorded an audio version for those who like to listen. There is one line missing I’m afraid but you’d need to listen very closely to notice which! And it wasn’t important enough for me to redo the whole thing.

Just press the play button (arrow) below to listen to the piece. (If you can’t see it via your reader, pop over to the site and you’ll get it.)

The first photograph is of the Cuillins, the second the Tables (MacLeod’s Tables, or Healabhal).

This is the final post in the Skye series (until the next visit, clearly!)

Other posts in the series are

Lost in the Mist, Lost and Found: Allowing Room for Not Knowing

The Consolation of Patterns and Shapes

The Impetuous Tide

Poetry for the Journey: Reading on the Beach at Talisker

An t’Eilean: Forever Returning – Poetry of the Island