Monday 20 December 2021

Green leaves and stillness

 

Green Leaves And Stillness

walking in the woods of Buxton




Grinlow Woods, summer 2020

I don’t walk in these woods as often as I would like…or even as often as I intend to. There is that moment when something calls me back to a screen just as I was getting ready to go. Or when I get to my “run away to the woods” bit in the diary and the clouds fall out of the sky*. Again.


But I do get here. It’s only 10 minutes up the hill, and another 10 into the woods and a stone, a bench, a tree root to sit on.


And yes, I will plug my headphones in, and even plug them into my ears as well. Doesn’t mean I am disconnected (thank you, judgemental dogwalker). 




        
Grinlow Woods, November 2021

Now, 

  • notes are leaves or tree trunks or flowers, or pebbles or ripples on a stream’s pool.
  • chords are movement, or distance, a moment seen through the trees
  • songs unwrap landscapes, or maybe wrap me into a landscape
  • lyrics often don’t matter much, maybe the emotion is more important. It pushes
 
And silence is an echo, the pause between tracks, a breath between verses. A fading note will do it, too. Everything stops.

 

 These woods open me, draw me out, take me in.

 

A chance to observe. 

To feel.

To experience.

No analysis needed. No cataloguing of bird, birdsong, flowers, trees, fungi. 

Just being.

O, with a note book

 


Grinlow Woods are managed by the Buxton Civic Association and are one of the treasures of our town! The BCA's Stronger Roots project is working on the management of the woods and inviting greater, wider and inventive access to the woods





Sunday 12 December 2021

Winter woods and glowing lights


Winter lights
free events with a glowing promise

Buxton, Derbyshire
18th and 19th December 

 a tracery of branches, a snowy scene, some winter leaves or Santa stuck in the chimney: box lanterns and shining bottles with Creeping Toad! 

Winter has arrived and here in Buxton and we’ve been having days of rain and wind and occasional snow. Summer seems to be a long ago memory and the beauty of these cold months is dripping itself into the puddles


In our ongoing efforts to entertain, engage and delight the woodland people of Buxton, the Stronger Roots team and Creeping Toad have arranged a couple of free events in the weekend of 18th and 19th December to remind us of our the beauty of our woods and the wonders of winter.


Saturday 18th December

Winter Woodland Lanterns

10.30 - 13:00

Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, Terrace Rd, Buxton, SK17 6DA


Join us at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery to make a lantern and take a little of the wonder of woodlands home for the festive season

 

Made of card and paper, these lanterns will stand on a table and glow with a warm light shining through the lantern’s “windows” decorated with images of tree branches, woodland animals or the colours of stained glass leaves…join us for some thinking and drawing, colour, glue and delight

 

Venue: Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, Terrace Rd, Buxton, SK17 6DA


This event is free and materials are provided but tickets are limited so please book a timed slot


Booking tickets: this is the Stronger Roots eventbrite page - please don’t try to book through the Museum as it will just confuse us all!



   


Sunday 19
th December

Bottle Lanterns at the Green Man Gallery

11:00 – 15:00 

The Green Man Gallery, Hardwick Studios (formerly Hardwick Hall), Hardwick square South, Buxton, SK17 6PY


Drop in at the Green Man and make your own moment of Midwinter to celebrate the woods of our town. Using leaves, feathers, drawings and glue, we’ll be turning bottles into small lanterns. Glowing like jewels, these can stand on a table or window ledge or hang from a branch and bring a whisper of the wildwood into your home for the festive season

 

The Gallery will be open at the same time for viewing the artists’ Christmas collections and the Gallery shop offers beautiful cards and unique gifts

 

Activity: takes about 15 minutes

Joining in: free, no tickets needed just turn up and join in

Materials: materials are provided but if you can bring a clean plastic bottle with you that would help

Booking: you do not need to book for this event: just drop by and join in. There is an eventbrite page if you want to check details, here











 


Tuesday 30 November 2021

with dreams of poets and the songs of seals

with the dreams of poems and the songs of seals

Totem Latamat
Return to the Earth Ceremony at The Crichton

The sweeping blast, the sky o’ercast,
The joyless winter-day,
Let others fear, to me more dear
Than all the pride of May….
(Robert Burns, Winter: a Dirge)




Totem Latamat’s story began long before Jun Tiburcio and the people of Cuhumatlan approached a cedar tree in the woods of Vera Cruz. For us, this story really started then with images carved out of that scented wood, images that embodied elements of Jun’s culture and carried a message from them to the rest of the world as represented by the gathering of parliaments, countries, cultures, optimism and faiths at COP26


Indigenous artwork, Totem Latamat has traveled over 9,000km from Mexico to UK for COP26. Moving up the country, the 4.5m Indigenous Mexican response to climate change is travelling to important cultural hubs across the UK including London, Coventry, Milton Keynes and Manchester drawing powerful links between Indigenous experience and local heritage. From the Border Crossings Origins Festival news about Totem Latamat. Find out more here


There is a personal account of the Totem’s travels by Graham Harvey here. Graham visited the Totem in most of its venues across the UK

At the end of COP26, at Jun’s request, Totem Latamat was to be given to the earth: a gift from the earth of Mexico to that of Scotland. With this gesture, the Totem would invite continued reflection on the connections between communities, facing challenges and processes that cross boundaries, defy politics and affect everyone and everything: human and non-human alike.

Return to the Earth

T
otem Latamat, we welcome you
With air and breath,
With fire and hope,
With stone and death
With love and passion 

 (From Welcoming, 1)

This sense of earth-reaching-to-earth and a gift that is offered to all communities informed a ceremony that came from an environmental (animist) awareness of the world. Creeping Toad, Border Crossings and other friends created a ceremony that belonged to no particular religious tradition but where there was space for individuals to find their own sense of connection and prayer as they wished. The imagery used was of these islands: speaking of weather and wildlife, of music and laughter, children playing and watchful grandparents. From fungi to birds, everyone was drawn into our reception of Totem Latamat.


Michael Walling from Border Crossings setting the scene

The Totem spent a week standing in the grounds of The Crichton in Dumfries and being used as a focus for discussions and workshops. With its expanding role as a centre for community activity, The Crichton offers the Totem a resting place where it will remain a centre for discussion, challenge and inspiration.


taking the strain

Totem Latamat, we rejoice in you
with playing children
with resting birds
with rooted fungi
with burrowing grubs 

(From Reception: how will we receive Totem)

On a wind-swept Saturday morning in the middle of November, we gathered round the Totem, speaking words of welcome and words of reception. Robbie Burns’ wonderful Winter Dirge” set the scene. Reaching out from human perspectives to the wider landscape, we invited the environs of The Crichton to embrace Totem, to welcome it into this world of wind and rain, high skies and flying geese.

Totem Latamat,
With the earth of our land,
The bones of our people,
The dreams of our poets,
The songs of our seals,
We embrace you. 

(From Embracing: a wider and older landscape than us)

We recognised the invitation and acknowledged the challenge that the Totem brings: inviting us to become our own Hummingbird messengers and challenging us to be the wide-seeing eagles with strength under their wings.

Totem under snow, late November 2021


Totem Latamat, may
Our dreamers,
Our thinkers,
Our talkers,
Our singers,
Our storytellers,
Our warriors,
Our poets,
Our grandmothers,
Our grandchildren,
All our people,
Each of our people,
Totem Latamat,
May all our folk
Be inspired by you 

(from inspiration, acknowledging and accepting )


And we toppled Totem so that when the ropes were dropped, Totem lay on the ground ready for flowers to grow around the hummingbirds, an open door for the wasps we found looking for somewhere to hibernate, an adventure ground for a cuddly rabbit and a child’s inquisitive fingers. The Totem will rest there on the lawns of The Crichton as the lawns around it are planted with wildflowers. There are already plans for a seasonal cycle of visiting workshops, creating new stories of connections between people and place, hearing of people’s hummingbird moments and their eagle resolution, of the ideas and actions they have planted of the upraised arms they have offered to their family, friends and the rest of the world.



some of the ceremony team

Totem Latamat,
Here, we offer you
Our friendship,
Our laughter,
Our silence,
Our reflection.

Totem Latamat,
Here we offer you
A long slow sleep on grass,
Under sun,
Under moon,
Under our wind and rain,

Here we offer
Dissolution,
The slow dance of decay
Of becoming everything else who visits you 
(from: Reception: what do we offer)

Visitors stayed. Lingered. Stopped to touch, to talk, to wonder. We found our first new residents of the Totem with the wasp queens mentioned above: looking for somewhere to hibernate. Reciprocity and respect lie within the Totem's messages and within many indigenous understandings of our relationship with the earth and it was encouraging to watch and listen and share with people their awareness of our need to give back - to acknowledge what is given to us so freely by the world around us. Without us saying anything, people left gifts: tokens from pockets and bags. People simply touched, stroked wood, felt the curves of a hummingbird's head, the folds of a wing's feathers and went away with a token in return: a red rag, a strip of cloth to wear as a bracelet, to tie up hair, to hide ina pocket until cloth, story and resolution are shared somewhere else.

Totem Latamat might have "retired" but it is still telling stories. Its hummingbirds are still sharing messages.

You can watch a short film of the totem at the Crichton on the centre's website:   https://www.crichton.co.uk/totem-latamat-has-retired-to-the-crichton/


The full text of the ceremony will be available if anyone wants to see it, be annoyed by it, or adapt it for their own use shortly. A link for a download will be posted here

A big thank you
  • to the Return to the Earth team: Michael Walling, Ian Buckley and Graham Harvey
  • To Alex Alberda from Manchester Museum for deft application of ideas and scissors
  • To the Open University for being there, supporting, encouraging, joining in
  • To The Crichton team for their hospitality, warmth and imagination
  • To the Border Crossings Origins Team for drawing all this together
  • And to Jun Tiburcio, the artists, and the people of Cuhumatlan in Vera Cruz, Mexico who gave us the travelling wonder that is the Totem Latamat
Photos c/o The Crichton, Dumfries and Mike Bolam Photography

Notes

1: All these verses come from different sections of the Return to the Earth. Ceremony held at The Crichton on Saturday 20th November 2021




 


Saturday 27 November 2021

The Edge of Winter

 


When the snow comes


The first day the snow comes, the first night, the first day the roads close, is always special. Mid-week, it brings those “will I get out in the morning? When do I phone and say I can’t make it” questions. This year, the snow came on a Friday night and Saturday became a comfortable “O, well, not to worry” day. All plans dissolved. The Farmer’s Market in Bakewell. A big food shop. A drive out to walk on a hill. In busier days, weekend snow would still have woken anxiety – move the car at the first opportunity, be ready to get out for next week’s storying. But while my business is still here, the busy-ness isn’t: rebuilding is slow, so the snow comes without worries for once and offers a chance to simply pause and appreciate.

 

This first day of snow becomes a morning for small jobs, frittering things that can be interrupted in a moment by the call of the world beyond the window. It’s that transformation that enchants. A world gone monochrome. And the muffled silence the snow brings. And the emptied streets with an occasional car creeping along. A 4WD goes past boldly, too boldly, and slides round a corner. But pedestrians can stride along the road where those few car tracks make for easier progress.

 


I can’t resist that call. I have to stop and simply stand and watch. Watch nothing really. The tall larch letting the snow slide off its branches. The black snowflakes of jackdaws blowing across the sky. Next door’s garden, its edges blanketed smooth. I keep an eye on Corbar Edge rising beyond the town. Cloud gathers above the hills in a backdrop and I know that if the grey spills over, a wave breaking through the trees, swallowing that horizon, there will be more snow on the way.

 

Tidying the library. Rearranging books in their piles. Trying to trim and failing. How do I compare a 1940s guide to “Wayside and Woodland Trees” with a book about unicorns and Bob Trubshaw’s Sacred Landscapes? I don’t, of course, I just shuffle them and leave them to watch the cold gather.

 

I don’t resist for that long. The day isn’t that long. And by mid-afternoon the temperature is dropping again, the slush growing crusts, the air clearing, brittle. It is windy and the trees on the hill sway like kelp. The wind has combed them vigorously. Twigs and branches litter the ground. Deep in the woods, there have been bigger casualties. Beeches uprooted. I feel vulnerable here, watching a new fall. Just a branch but its fall is silent. No warning. There have been other people here: footprints everywhere. The parallel scores of a small sled. A single tread. Someone rode a bike through this?

 

Now, as the afternoon fades, I have the woods to myself. The woodland edge, where it opens onto a hillside field is a sledging run with attendant shouts, screams, laughter, over-excited dogs and tumbling people. But for now, the enchantment of the woods under snow is mine and I can walk into a silence that echoes through the woods and fills me with the edge of winter.




Tuesday 23 November 2021

Rabbits, wolves and deer: Totem Latamat at The Crichton





Rabbits for quickness of thinking

Totem Latamat at the Crichton

Totem Latamat came the The Crichton to share a story, to offer an invitation and a challenge

The Totem’s story started in a wood on the eastern coast of Mexico with a prayer and a ceremony to a cedar tree. The story continued through a village carving its words as images, memories, hopes and fears into the wood and sailing the tall carved Totem, across the wide seas to the UK. Over the autumn, the Totem has travelled the UK, reaching Glasgow in time to stand in the Hidden Garden throughout COP26. Then, Totem Latamat arrived at The Crichton in Dumfries.

 

This isn’t the place to go into all the details of the Totem – you can explore the wonder of its travels on facebook or through its own page on the Border Crossings Origins Festival website.

 

The Totem carries figures: a rattlesnake, a skull, a person with her arms upraised, a cluster of hummingbirds. An eagle supports the whole edifice....Every figure, from plaited rope seedlings to that climbing snake, hold their own stories, their own messages to share. Here, I want to pick up the Totem’s invitation to become Hummingbirds – to become the messengers who speak, who share, who inspire; and the challenge to become Eagles. To be an Eagle is to act with strength and honour and to see the wider picture, to see the world as a whole, not as lots of individual people or towns or countries but as a wider connected world, where everything is connected to everything else, however distant.

 





Here, we will celebrate one day of the Totem’s journey: marking the responses of the children of Holywood Primary School in Dumfries. They spent the day with us on Friday at The Crichton, enjoying the grounds (best visitor shop ever, we were told. And it’s free! Triumphant pockets stuffed with pine cones, conkers and acorns), meeting the Totem: drawing it, touching it, talking about it…...…..what is the message? If they were telling this story what animals would children choose to best embody – not the action that is needed (reduce, reuse, recycle, etc) but the qualities we need to find and foster in ourselves to make those actions viable, embedded, enduring….

 

  • Rabbit brings thinking quickly, acting fast, solving problems (well, you try keep in them out of your vegetables!)
  • Wolves remind us that we are strongest when we work together
  • Lions, likewise, need the family, need the support of their friends
  • Godzilla tells us that sometimes we need to be fierce
  • Mice remind us that we can always find a way into a situation
  • Deer help us be strong and know when to watch, when to run
  • Hedgehogs will bring cleverness, bravery and being ready to be loud
  • And the Octopus will help us be intelligent, solve problems, be strong, and as an octopus you can help protect the world







There will be more Totem posts shortly, but for now, I would like to thanks:
  • the artists and storytellers of Holywood Primary School, Dumfries
  • To the Open University for being there, supporting, encouraging, joining in
  • To The Crichton team for their hospitality, warmth and imagination
  • To the Border Crossings Origins team for drawing all this together
  • And to Jun Tiburcio, the artists, and the people of Cuhumatlan in Vera Cruz, Mexico who gave us the travelling wonder that is the Totem Latamat





Thursday 7 October 2021

Autumn woodland

 

Autumn woods after rain

Borderland Voices visit Buxton Country Park


Autumn sunshine after days of rain and that October light caught the changing colours of the leaves, burning through them like stained glass…a day for wandering in woods and wondering


That’s what we did. When Borderland Voices visited the Stronger Roots project at Buxton Country Park, we wandered. And talked. And listened. And drew; building our own ways of remembering different trees and their stories. From woodland management and the signs of ash dieback to the fine differences between elm and wych elm, our day took a relaxed path through the woods and brought….

leaf print in progress

TREES

Off on an outing today,

A nice little jaunt,
Although not so far away

We’re off to Buxton to look at the trees.

Maybe there will be fine weather;

Sunny with a bit of breeze.

Maybe the trees will be pleased to see us too.

After all, they are living things.

I think it’s the least we can do

To give them respect.

To nurture, replenish, recognise

Their worth

For indeed they are the lungs of the Earth.
Silently they emerge from their evergreen rug.

Let us love them.

Let us bless them.

"just" drawing
Let us give them a hug.


Pauline


photo c/o A Collins

photo c/o A Collins



  • Thanks to Frag from the Stronger Roots project for guiding us through the woods and their management
  • Thanks to the artists and poets of Borderland Voices: it was a delight to see you all again and to work with you!
    leaf print
block print




printing a woodland floor
mixed composition



leaf rubbing











Tuesday 5 October 2021

Autumn richness and worrying woodlands



Autumn Richness and Fierce Forest Faces
October events with Creeping Toad


As the season changes, if we still had bears they'd be heading for their deep cold caves for a winter of reaming. As it is, our hedgehogs are looking for good places for along sleep, the amphibians are settling into pond mud and tucking into hollows under old walls and fallen logs...the wild world prepares for winter.

As part of the Buxton Civic Association's Stronger Roots project, Creeping Toad have been coordinating creative events through 2021, inviting people to explore the woods of Buxton in new ways and remind themselves of the wonder and value that lives on our doorsteps

find a cosy corner....


Autumn Richness weekend


The leaves are turning golden, the berries are ripening and we’ll celebrate the changing season with a weekend of autumn activities. Join us at Buxton Country Park and make your own autumn wildlife book (then go exploring in the woods to see what wildlife you can find). You could also weave a panel of grass, leaves, wools and feathers. We’ll celebrate REC Theatre’s performance of Mr Fox (#fantasticmrfox) on Sunday 10th with our own woodland animal wall-panels decorated with leaves grass, and drawings sharp fox faces, rabbit smiles or clever crows...or you might prefer a colourful toadstool panel, a treasury of berries


Mr Fox performances: find out more on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RecYouthTheatreCompany/





Fierce Forest Faces

  • 26th October (Tuesday)
  • Buxton Country Park, Green Lane, Buxton, SK17 9DH
  • 10:30 - 13:00
  • The event is free and materials are provided
  • Here is a link for booking spaces but drop-ins are welcomed too!
  • facebook: @creepingtoad
  • twitter: @creepingtoad

Take a story from the woods home for Hallowe’en…inspired by our local trees, we will create some tree-people or animal masks. There will be faces that could fit in a window and glare at passers-by or you might make a mask to turn you into someone else... Will a fox face to keep your house safe? or a staring tree? A owl with wings outspread to chase dangerous mice away?