a changed land

Before the field trip I was worrying about my ability to create the ‘right’ ritual. My awareness of his apprehension and my nervousness. I had suddenly thought of the chestnut tree as this was something that remained unadulterated, all else had been interfered with taken away with no love or respect for what it had been. Maybe the ritual could centre around the tree. I looked at tree rituals of tying rags and leaving stones….hmm they don’t feel quite right. I wonder if my desire to take a clay impression is just the comfort of a familiar process? But I have turning in me the article he wrote where he wrote about feeling he was becoming transparent….I want to make that visual. ” I get a feeling of panic, that my whole existence is thinned as the spaces of the past have been eradicated. They are mapped into my memory, re-form in my dreams, and form hybrid landscapes with other places I have known or know now”. I also have something turning in me about time being a deep pool rather than linear…I think from Meghan O’ Rourke. My sense is O needs to forgive himself for not being able to change what happened and to see that it was positively formative in his passion for the Severn and his desire to protect the beauty and fragility of this land. We walked the land, talking, listening and a plan formed involving an exhibition in the local cafe and the creation of field name signs to hook over the street name signs. I took the clay impression of one of three trees that stand outside the shopping centre now.