Riding on a tiger...Buxton Wild Weeks, 2023

Riding on a tiger
Peak Dale Primary School
Creeping Toad and Buxton Wild Weeks, 2023

This summer, I am working with Buxton Wild Weeks who set out to "bring full weeks of nature-focussed activities to Buxton schools". There are wider community centred activities as well and like the school included in this report, schools that are coming in for a taster day or two this year and hopefully a deeper relationship in the future. To find out more, it's probably easiest to follow BWW on their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/buxtonwildweeks

But me? I'm a storyteller, artist and provoker of imaginations so in our day at Peak Dale Primary School, we tended to get carried away

A WALK IN THE WOODS

If we went for a walk in the woods,

We'd like to find

A fox to stroke,

A squirrel climbing a tree,

A rabbit hopping,

Bumblebees buzzing,

Beautiful flowers with bright butterflies

If we went for a walk in the woods,

We'd like to find

A dancing monkey clinging to a branch,

A werewolf at midnight,

Sharks in a stream.

If we went for a walk in the woods,

We/d like to come back,

Riding on a tiger.

With other classes, we were perhaps focussed more locally, but we did wander a bit....

EAGLE

Eyes of yellow

And

Grasping claws

Let nothing escape,

Ever.

We were experimenting with ways of drawings and colouring, enjoying working with stabilo and water colour pencils...

smudging colours with a damp finger

using a sharpie for finishing touches

We played with riddles and thoughtful moments.

FOX

Fire furred,

On silent feet,

yellow eyed,

Rabbit killer

FROG

On a sunny day,

The pond leaper with a sticky tongue

And grass green skin,

Watches the world

Through black and gold eyes,

And remembers when he was a tadpole,

And the world was wet and cold.

I really like this Grasshopper acrostic

GRASSHOPPER

Grass green,

Racing and jumping,

Away from danger to the

Safety of

Shadows under leaves, where

Happy hoppers,

Only in summer can have

Parties away from 

Parrots and

Every other danger from

Rain to

Snow.

And then there are always ...

MICE

With long tails and twitching whiskers,

Nibbling teeth and sharp claws,

Mice are the world's best,

Thieves of cheese

Some drawings told stories all in themselves...we had two stoats who found each other by following footprints (right across the class) and, old friends, were reunited 

And then there are the hedgehogs....

With many thanks to all the Buxton Wild Weeks Team and to all the staff, artists and poets of Peakdale Primary School

Sacred Animals: new book

Sacred Animals: 

reconnecting with the natural world

 

Gordon MacLellan

ISBN 978-1-915580-07-8

Green Magic Publishing, https://greenmagicpublishing.com/

 

GET A COPY NOW AND BE READY FOR AN ANIMAL-RICH SUMMER!

TO ORDER:

Sacred Animals: 1 copy, £15:00 includes postage

Sacred Animals + 2 Creeping Toad postcards: £16:00, includes postage

Email: creepingtoad@btinternet.com

FACEBOOK:  Gordon MacLellan or Creeping Toad 

DETAIL: your name, address, email and how many copies

PAYMENT:

PAYPAL: creepingtoad@btinternet.com

BACS: I can email details

CHEQUES: to Creeping Toad, 51-d West, Rd, Buxton, SK17 6HQ

 

BULK ORDERS through your own book distributors 

INTERNATIONAL ORDERS: contact me directly or go a local bookseller

EBAY: Sacred Animals will shortly be available through ebay and the (new, when I get it sorted) shop on the Creeping Toad website

PUBLISHER: Green Magic Publishing website

 

WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?

How do we refresh, renew, replenish, revitalise our connections with the animal worlds?  

Or how do we simply recognise our relationships with the world around us?

 

Sacred Animals is a book about inspiration and exploration, inviting readers to reflect upon their relationships with animals and explore that relationship creatively and practically. Written from an animist perspective (Gordon is an animist, an artist and a zoologist), this is a book about personal spirituality that encourages readers to find their own language to express their connections with animals. Activities are designed to challenge and be flexible: from simply sitting and watching the world around us to writing our own poems, designing our own ceremonies, or committing to action on behalf of particular species, Sacred Animals offers no ready-made totem-packages or guaranteed spells, prayers or enchantments.

 

Readers can adapt activities to suit their own philosophical stance. Those animist principles of shared consciousness and ceremony run through the book but there is no assumption that this should be how the reader uses the book: activities should suit you whether you follow a pagan practice, belong to an organised religion or encounter the world through a faith-free stance. It would work just as well for the animal-lover who simply wants to look at different ways of expressing their feelings for the animals they care about.

 

Sacred Animals asks us to look at the animals we care about, to deepen those relationships, and to find new ways of supporting those animals and through our connections with them, the wider world we all live in. A book that mixes creativity, spirituality and environmental commitment. A book to keep you busy….

 

This is a new edition of Sacred Animals first published in 1997 by Capall Bann

Chapters and topics include

• Hop, crawl, slither, fly and swim
• Trees of the First Forest
• Totems and etiquette
• Asking permission
• The importance of integrity
• Becoming active
• Shaping a ceremony

IMAGES

• front cover
• line drawings are illustrations by G MacLellan from within the Sacred Animals text 

Last of the lost cats

 

Setting our Lost Cats free

Would it be wonderful to see them

In Pavilion Gardens catching fish?

Would it be wonderful

For them to be free?

We have prowled to the end of our Lost Cats of Buxton project. There have been drawings and beautiful puppets on strings to dance across the museum’s carpets. We released wild cats into Grinlow Woods, and watched worrying Prehistoric Mice taking shape. There were masks and more masks and a giant Scimitar-toothed Cat (a Homotherium – you can visit their memory in Buxton Museum and Art Gallery and find out more, here). In schools, we wrote poems and shaped ancient landscapes, made masks and more masks and released a few mammoths. We danced our cats through the streets of Buxton

 

Now pictures of our wonderful creatures are appearing in The Wild Escape Creature Gallery. Inspired by the Wild Escape initiative, right from the start, Lost Cats set out to encourage people to look at museum collections and use that inspiration to go exploring and get to know their local landscapes better. 

 

Follow this link to visit the Wild World

 

Pictures are coded by 3 word locations.

Some of ours can be found at these locations

·      wet violet roll

·      dark rain gallop

·      dull candles say

·      heavy olives care

·      violet tools knock

·      tall houses yell

·      twenty animals open

 

The animals shown bear no connection to the words that map their places! There are more to follow so this list will get longer

 

We’re going to close these #LostCats posts with two more poems from Burbage Primary School. These poems grew out of words and phrases collected and comments said during workshops at the school

 

BEAR

found in a bear's cave

They come

From dark, gloomy caves,

And the shadows under the trees.

Dangerous,

Strong,

Intimidating apex predators,

But

Sort of cute,

And

Sort of cuddly.

From a distance.

Would it be wonderful to see them

In Pavilion Gardens catching fish?

Would it be wonderful

For them to be free?

 

MICE

Running, running,

Whiskers twitching,

Scampering,

Scuttling,

Following noses

Tracking scents.

Acorn, apple,

Chewy Chestnut and

Wild wheat,

The dark-juice of berries

And precious plums.

There is no escape

The mice are coming.

 

With many thanks to all our artists, makers, maskers, mice and monsters (you can decide who you are) and especial thanks to Babbling Vagabonds, 2 Left Hands (samba - find them on facebook), Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, Buxton Our Street, Buxton Civic Association, Buxton Crescent Heritage Trust and the Wild Escape for setting us all a’growling in the first place!

 

Schools involved

Earl Sterndale C of E Primary School

Buxton Junior School

Burbage Primary School

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lost Cats came back

the Carnival of Lost Cats

When I look in the windows
I catch the reflection of a mammoth behind me
That is no longer there.

 

The drums played, the bells range, the cats yowled and the mice chittered. And when she was pecking, the scimitar-tooth ate members of the company

The Carnival of Lost Cats dared the rain (it stayed away until we were finished and the mice had scuttled back to their homes in other people’s wellington boots) and the dragon-killing legacy of St George to prowl through Spring Gardens in Buxton on Sunday 23^rd April

 

This was the conclusion of our Lost Cats of Buxton project where we had been celebrating the animals that once lived here. We had concentrated on the big cats for no good reason beyond ‘they’re very exciting” – cave lions, scimitar-tooths (Homotherium) and lynx whose fossils can be seen in Buxton Museum. Being a generous bunch, we were quite happy when bears, mammoths and wild horses cantered into the mix as well. Part of the Wild Escape initiative, Lost Cats set out to encourage people to look at museum collections and use that inspiration to go exploring and get to know their local landscapes better. In our case this meant you might meet revived big cats prowling through Grinlow Woods on the edge of town. 

 

Funded largely by the Buxton Our Streets project, we brought the memory of our cats to Spring Gardens, prowling along the street, staring hungrily into shop windows and reflecting on change.  We talked about loss and extinction and the way our world is changing now: another challenge to look at the world around us and think about what was, what is and what might be

 

Rather than rambling on, let’s share a couple of poems that grew from collections of thoughts, images and conversations at Burbage Primary School….

 

With many thanks to all our artists, makers, maskers, mice and monsters (you can decide who you are) and especial thanks to Babbling Vagabonds, 2 Left Hands (samba - find them on facebook: TwoLeftHands or Twitter: @twolefthands3), Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, Buxton Our Street, Buxton Civic Association, Buxton Crescent Heritage Trust and the Wild Escape for setting us all a’growling in the first place!

 

Schools involved

Earl Sterndale C of E Primary School

Buxton Junior School

Burbage Primary School

 

LOST CATS POEMS FROM BURBAGE PRIMARY SCHOOL

 

1. THE LOST CATS

With huge teeth and evil smiles,

Fierce and strong and dangerous,

They only hunt,

They don’t get hunted.

 

Lynx and lion and scimitar-tooth.

What would we do if we saw them,

Running across the school field?

What would we do if we heard them?

Growling through Grinlow Woods.

What would we do if they saw us,

Those silent assassins?

 

Looking good,

They would bring action to Buxton

And excitement to all our lives.

 

Lying in the shade,

Cool and prehistoric,

If they came back to the streets of our town,

It would be an honour.

 

 

2. OTHER ANIMALS

the hyenas have gone as well

Otters,

Playing in the river.

Bears,

Catching fish in Pavilion Gardens.

Wild horses,

Drinking from the river.

Mammoths, 

Walking silently, swinging tusks and trunks,

Elephant giants with wide tusks

That wouldn’t fit through our garden gate.

Bison running past,

Thundering through Burbage

Wolves howling on Bishop’s Lane,

There are so many animals we have lost.

 

Extinct,

I have never seen them before.

I could never see them now,

In Spring Gardens,

In Pavilion Gardens

On the peak of Kinder Scout,

But when I walk past the shops,

When I look in the windows

I catch the reflection of a mammoth behind me

That is no longer there.