Landslip…...’Wild Stone Heart’…. From ‘Unbound’….
by Bernie Bell - 10:20 on 16 December 2023
Landslip…...
Remember this?....
http://www.spanglefish.com/berniesblog/blog.asp?blogid=16609
As ‘Friends of’ we receive newsletters from Kilmartin Museum, and the most recent one includes this striking image…..
Photo: Argyll and Bute Council
…with an explanation of what caused it…
“Some of you will know that heavy rainfall at the start of October caused a major landslip (above) to the north of Kilmartin, closing the main road that links Kilmartin to Ardfern and Oban, as well as other issues. Staff and visitors alike have found travel to the Museum from the north challenging. We have been able to go by sea occasionally, utilising the school boat, and the local fish farm has been very helpful. The road is scheduled to reopen in mid December which will make travel easier for staff and visitors in 2024!”
Another item of interest from the Newsletter…
“Carnasserie Rock Art Excavation
We had an amazing time working alongside the team from Archaeology Scotland over two very wet weeks in September, excavating three rock art sites on Carnasserie Farm. Volunteers, students on placement, Guides and Brownies (pictured above), Young Archaeologists' Club members and school groups enthusiastically took part in finding out more about these enigmatic places. Some of the most exciting moments during the project involved the discovery of previously unrecorded carvings, as well as ancient pieces of worked flint and quartz. The teams from Kilmartin Museum and Archaeology Scotland are now analysing and writing up the results, and we will have much more to report about the findings in 2024.”
Memories of Carnasserie…
https://theorkneynews.scot/2017/10/04/bernie-bell-bernie-mikes-road-trip-spring-2017-6/
I wonder if the area that I mention was one of the places they investigated?
You can keep up with what’s happening at the Museum by following on Facebook and Instagram and checking their website for updates.
Or, contact by email .
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’Wild Stone Heart’….
I’ve just finished reading ‘Wild Stone Heart’ by Sharon Butala who writes well of many things – of the life in stones, the life in the land, the life in humans and how that interacts with the life in everything around us. Of how different sets of humans lack understanding of each other’s ways and impose their own way – even when that way doesn’t work with the place they have come to inhabit.
I’m thinking about ‘Conversations With Magic Stones’…
https://theorkneynews.scot/2017/07/09/circles-lines-tales-to-tell-and-roads-to-travel/
https://theorkneynews.scot/2017/07/24/conversations-with-magic-stones/
Of how John Rae and his crew survived because they were prepared to learn from the local inhabitants…..
https://theorkneynews.scot/2017/07/31/the-two-johns-a-personal-perspective/
And of how many settlers in other lands presumed that they ‘knew best’ and perished in a land of plenty – plenty that they couldn’t see and weren’t aware of.
I’m thinking of Malidoma Patrice Some’s book ‘Of Water and The Spirit’…
https://theorkneynews.scot/2021/06/10/we-be-of-one-blood-thou-and-i-the-jungle-book-rudyard-kipling/
….and of living with the Spirit world as the people who used to inhabit the area which became known as the Butala farm did.
And of the ancient people of Orkney and how they lived with the land, the sea and the sky and raised their stone circles and cairns to the dead – as the people of the Butala field did.
It’s a book which is well worth reading for many reasons – reasons which weave together as LIFE.
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From ‘Unbound’….
“WORDS FROM THE HEDGE
A HEDGELAYER'S VIEW OF THE COUNTRYSIDE
Richard Negus, with a foreword by John Lewis-Stempel
'Richard Negus shows us the wondrous life of the hedge, but above all how hedges, and the philosophy of human-nature partnership they embody, can mend the countryside. Hedges are the way ahead. And in Richard Negus they have their one true champion'
John Lewis-Stempel, author of The Running Hare and two-times winner of the Wainwright Prize
Hedges are as old as civilisation, as emblematic of the British countryside as chalk streams, hay meadows or oak trees and with as many regional variations as there are styles of traditional building. But whereas woods are protected and cherished as ‘the lungs of the land’, farmland hedges are too often taken for granted.
Not any more. In Words From The Hedge, the professional hedgelayer and coppicer Richard Negus takes us deep inside this ancient world. He shows how these ribbons of thorn and barb are more than mere decoration or boundary markers: they are the countryside’s vital arteries, sustaining an astonishing diversity of plant and animal species, linking farms and villages, wildlife and people together. Richard Negus wields his pen with as much dexterity as he does his billhook and chainsaw.
'I wrote Words From The Hedge because I felt our much loved, yet misunderstood, hedgerows needed a practical champion. These barriers of thorn, scrub and briar were planted, then laid, trimmed, cut or coppiced by man for agricultural purposes but they also provide a remarkable source of food, habitat and safety for wildlife. The book is written from my own first-hand experience as a professional hedge layer. It has mud under its nails and thorns wedged painfully in its palm.’
Richard Negus
Follow the link below to watch Richard talking from Flea Barn in Suffolk, about the dramatic impact Brexit has had on farming communities and practices in the UK.
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Here’s one I made earlier…. https://theorkneynews.scot/2021/10/06/lentil-coriander-soup/
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