Over this morning's breakfast, we pulled out our written pages and read last night's efforts aloud. The prompt for these pieces? Vessel. Something that carries something else.
These reading sessions are, for me, the best part of any writing group. Thy are the moments when we suck up our perfectionism and fears of judgment and offer up our vulnerability in draft form. These pages are unedited and unproofed. Reading them an act of courage for most of us.
They are also how we build community over these ten days, listening to each other with compassion and showing interest each others' words. I've found read-backs to be a kind of communal glue that holds us together even when, inevitably, upsets happen. Although so far, it's been smooth sailing.
Here, on our second day, I enjoyed watching a beautiful shuffle: Six people skipping forward or slowing back along the path to get to know each other a little more. In seven miles, I had five excellent and wildly differing conversations — and so did everyone else.
The sun was bright over the golden brown farmlands as we marched by, the round hay bales stood like flaxen sculptures across fields. We pass by a stone farmhouse covered in vines, slightly leaning. I'm only slightly embarrassed to admit as we passed it Sinéad O'Connor's version of Outlander's "The Skye Boat Song" ran through my head.
We passed through St. Boswells golf course and along a grassy knoll near which a man on a tractor helpfully pointed us in the right direction, instructing us to "Mind the passing balls." From there, moved down near the River Tweed — one of the great Salmon rivers of the UK — to see herons, Great Cormorants, Goosanders, ducks, and various other waterfowl circle the sky or float or stand watch in the grass on one leg. When a picturesque mill house appeared on the opposite side of the river, I started looking for the 17th-century painter in the grass.
Eventually, we wound back up to farmland and strolled by rows upon rows of an unidentified brassica crop; what type was anyone's guess. I snatched a few leaves to balance out my second Full Scottish.
At Maxwell, the road took an ambling turn into a very saturated, alder-lined stretch where the only sound beyond chatting was the suck and glug of shoes in mud. What a sound when you really listen!
I walked at about half my average speed today to do just that: listen to the walk.
That was our prompt for the walk — to listen deeply and describe what we heard as viscerally as possible. At this slower pace, I heard (and saw) things I know I would have missed if I were doing what I too often do when I walk — which is to try to get there as fast as I can. As if the destination, in this case, our next stop in Jedburgh, is the goal.
I do this wherever I am, wherever I am going, not just when I walk. I race to the finish; I curse at the driver in front of me who's taking their time; I miss the experience and presence of moving forward in time as it happens; I often miss the joy of the navigation and discovery. Walking at my normal pace, I would have missed the beautiful grotto hiding in the side of a hill, it's burbling the sweetest music.
Listening hard, being present in this different way, I found that I arrived at a new there with each step on the path.
Here's what I heard along the path, described as best I can:
Voices lifting off the pages like enthusiastic crows
Cutlery click-clicking across the breakfast nook
Fear speaking to anxiety murmuring about going the wrong way
The deep thready hum of a lawn mower in the distance
The soft rustling of an almost wind breezing along river
The suck-glug of boot in mud
The fwish fwish of tall grass hitting thigh
The crackle of paper on the Pro-Meal bar in my pocket as I fiddled with it along the way
The fringed willow herb singing to the gunnera plant
The squeeze and gush and rush of the falls
Maple leaves chittering
Cars whiz-thundering across the bridge
Thuddup thuddup thuddup of feet down wooden stairs
Dog barking, pausing, barking
Water piddling in an eddy, a sound like a tinkling bell
Twill and cheet-cheet of birdsong —swallow?
Four birds converging in — caw, twerp, cheet-cheet, kercow kervow
So much birdsong!
Fall leaves, crunching underfoot as a chipmunk cracks and twips in the tree limb
"Scottish Holiday" by The Corries.
Discussion of real rent for Indiginous People
The fed fed fed of walking on soft dirt
A howling wind on a narrow country road
The metal-on-metal clink of a cow gate closing
Fighter planes screaming through the sky, which was not really planes but perhap a mill churning or a throng of geeze wheezing off in the distance. Loudly.
Just before Jedburgh we followed a side road to visit the Monteviot Gardens, part of a gorgeous country estate sitting above the river. Spread out through the 11 separate gardens we doubled up to engage in one of my favorite drawing exercises — “blind” single line face drawings. (Try this at home: Draw the face of a person sitting across from you or draw an object without looking at your drawing hand and without lifting your pen off the page. This exercise is a good tickle for the creative centers of the brain and great exercise in detail and trust (of self mostly). We’ll use these drawings as a prompt toward the end of our walk — so more on that later .
The map promised a 7-mile walk today, but by the time we arrived in Jedburgh, most of our devices had clocked 10 miles. We were tired, but the added thrill of having gone further than we expected to go kept us all buoyant as we chatted through a two hour dinner headlined by boards of local cheese. I don't know about the rest of the group, but as I crawled into bed I felt deeply satisfied in my mind and belly.
A PROMPT
Plan a long walk for today, preferably in nature, perhaps for an hour or more. Listen hard. Bring your phone with you and use a recording app and describe each sound you hear into it. Don't worry if the words are really, take down what you hear how you hear it. When you return to your writing place, take 30 minutes to write three stories that includes one or more of the sounds you heard. Here are the stories to write:
First write a story in six paragraphs (and only six paragraphs).
Next, write the same story in six sentences.
Then, write that six-sentence story in six words.
THE WRITING
Leaves (6 paragraphs)
By David Turner
Two leaves fell on the road. Their time in the tree had ended. The brown leaf, I cannot name. The green I believe to be a maple. Both announce the end of summer. The brown accepts its fate. Its timehas come and she longs for the sleep of winter.
The green has been struck down too soon. He failed to cling on and has the scar to prove it. He never donned scarlet red to wear at the harvest ball. Now both leaves will dissolve in the earth only to become grass next summer.
What is to be said for us to glean? Some will have the full long life. Others will not reach the prime they promised. I am now a decade older than my father when he died. Yet, I still think he was very old. Was he the brown leaf or the green? I dare not say.
In the end we and the leaf, brown or green will return to the earth from where we came. It matters not how long we live but how. My leaving will make new grass. I will leave my words behind.
A brown leaf and a green have fallen to the ground. Their end has come
The green fell before its time while the brown was ready.
My dad died old but not ancient. Death is the fate of us all.
Leaves fall, Death comes, All is well.
Leaves (6 sentences)
By David Turner
A brown leaf and a green have fallen to the ground. Their end has come
The green fell before its time while the brown was ready.
My dad died old but not ancient. Death is the fate of us all.
Leaves (6 words)
By David Turner
Leaves fall, Death comes, All is well.
Sound bathing
By Cheryl Murfin
Walking through woods
A sound bath
Without gong
Or mallet
The red-headed
Pileated woodpecker
Types a message
On oak trunk
While forrest mouse
Chit chit chits
In the underbrush
There are no sugar feeders here
No honeysuckle vines
No bee balms
No columbines
No hollyhocks
And yet
Beneath
this tender verdant canopy
Hangs a silence
As buzzing and invisible
As hummingbird wings
Is one sounding space
More sacred than another?
Can holy be heard
In the whirr of traffic
At the corner of Elm and Grove?
In the yapping
Of a neighbor’s dog
Or the hush of office gossip
Can it be heard
In the made up world of child’s play?
Perhaps
Perhaps
Holy is a symphony
Seated across my world
Walking through woods
A sound bath
Without gong
Or mallet
My footfall
Is a mantra
My breath a meditation
Between them
The rustling of bow
and needle and leaf
And even their absence in the calm
Is wind chimes
To the soul who listens hard enough.
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