Becoming indigenous

Indigenous
From pond to stream, to wood, to hill, to city street, to urban garden, this blog came out of time spent just being and an awareness of belonging that runs so far below the surface of my self, it is beyond debate and discussion and shapes my very being….

When our sense of belonging goes deeper than enjoying a view or appreciating a flower, when it lies so deep that we can no longer separate joy, sorrow and the land, then, maybe, we belong.

The twisted heather stalks of my nerves,

a heart reach from small...

Are threaded with veins,
Pickled by generations of whisky.

Clouded skies reflect in clouded eyes,
And I am bound to these hills,
So closely, i can no longer
Separate bone from stone.

My joy burned out with the heather,
Delight drifting on the smoke
Withering with scorched fur and scales,
But I am still here,
As skin sifts into sand,
And sand into skin,
And flesh slips into earth.

But soul,
Soul and spirit dissolve
Into mist and a sunset
Burning long and bright behind northern hills.

G MacLellan, June 2016

to wide horizons

Home with cowries

North Uist, 

September 2014

O, long golden beaches and long cold winds, strandlines of kelp and shelldrifts to forage in...returning home after after a few days writing, walking and laughing on North Uist

There are a set of new poems growing out of blue waters, wide horizons and a sky determinedly empty of eagles. But they'll have to wait a bit while the poems finish germinating

But the journey back from the outer edge of Scotland to my home here in the middle of England felt like traveling through timezones or phases of reality or regular shifts in paradigms. To open the door here was to step back into welcome spaces and welcome animals (the axolotls were looking particularly swimmy) but also into the need to pick up my pace and get onto booking venues and finalising plans for the autumn's work

adventurous dog!

Never mind, there is a dish of cowries to carry me back across the water

Exciting news about articles:

Link: the magazine for Wildlife Watch, the junior wing of the The Wildlife Trusts are using a post froma few months ago on Making Prehistoric Rockpools as a piece in an upcoming issue of the magazine

Revista Textura: a Brazilian environmental education journal has published a piece by me called "A broad, broken bow of a bridge: using classic literature and the outdoors to inspire poetry with children"
This link will take you to a pdf of the article. I am pleased with the article: it gave me a chance to really think about the background, activities and implications of a project (the Gawain project from summer 2013)  after its completion which doesn't often happen! Usually, I finish one project and then hope for enough time to breathe before the next one closes in on the diary!

and a few gratuitous pictures of beautiful places....

Dun an Sticir

Sticir is causewayed

lichen-hairy rocks!