“I knew when I’d looked for a long time that I’d hardly begun to see”
Nan Shepherd
The temperature finally began to rise as water levels began to drop.
Winter Hill drifts out of focus in shades of blue and violet.
The water in the pools is warm with lots of activity so I have spent some time just listening to the aquatic world under and within the moss.
The wind patterns in the surface of the water are mesmerizing.
‘If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water’
Loren Eiseley
I am currently working on two projects simultaneously, this one (Carbon Synthesis) and Porosity (www.porosity.co.uk)
As part of Porosity I invited one of my guest writers on the project to join me on a virtual walk. Dr Penny Florence and I live over 300 miles apart, we each share a love of walking and wetlands. Due to on going pandemic travel challenges we decided to walk together/alone so connected via Zoom we each walked our local wetland and shared our thoughts and observations. My projects often drift in and out of each other; lines of enquiry blurred though practice and making.
You can read the blog post for this project here: https://porosity.co.uk/2021/07/06/remotewandering/
Between the rain showers there is drizzle.
Everything is a patchwork of green and brown.
Exposed sphagnum moss forms carpets of colour, turning lighter in colour as the water levels drop and sphagnum dries out.
Cotton grass is shedding its seeds covering everything in soft shimmering feathery seeds.
When the wind drops the drizzle brings a calm and stillness to everything.
Grasses and branches weighted heavily by droplets, like jewels in the early sun.
Leonardo da Vinci was fascinated by water and carefully observed its ‘stickiness’.
In 1508 he noted the shape of a pending droplet of water, just before it drops a neck of water is formed and only when this becomes too thin it drops. The visual battle of tension between the stickiness of the water and gravity.
Banks of cloud wrap around everything.
On days following the rain and drizzle, as I walk on to the moss, I can feel the heat rising up from the ground, the smell of the earth fills my head.
With water levels dropping you can see the skeletal shape of the earth.
I have the opportunity to bring the Lidar scanner to site to capture some images.
It has been 5 years since I last scanned the site. I hope to be able to create data drawings from these scans and combine them with my peat measurements over the coming months to visualize the living nature of the moss.
