Field Notes

This is a funny time. Both my children are now in full time school. With this comes a strange mix of feelings both of loss and, with some guilt – a sense of new found freedom.

The drawing workshops at Stevenage Museum started last Thursday and the planning and preparation for these has taken up most of my time since the start of term. I have much to write and reflect on but am too busy doing at the moment to sit down at the computer long enough to make a proper go of it. I have been meaning to start a separate blog purely for these. Which I will soon, I hope.

My daily walks to the field are still a constant but they have not had enough of my attention. I pass through the field and am really not quite present. Automatic walking, feels the most accurate description. Engaging means time and I’m treating time with contempt at the moment.

I was decisive this morning, packed my rucksack and walked straight down to the over grown area at the far end of the field (the farthest point from the dump).

I come here and pretend it’s a little forest. I have started using an app called iNaturalist, which allows me to upload a photo of something and  then use it to identify, said thing in nature.

It’s like a super power. I can learn the names of wildflowers, butterflies, caterpillars and feel like I know something. You then save this identification and can build up a whole catalogue of things you have seen. Collecting again. It’s so appealing to collect. It becomes more about the collecting than the thing itself.

I sat on a log, trying to fend off midges and drew the trees above me. Then my phone rang and I had to abort my mission and talk to a friend for an hour. How protective should I be of the field time? It is quickly eroded and is becoming less daily and more weekly now. There is this creeping suspicion that I am not committed enough.

Each day my little window to work feels smaller and smaller. I am good at making plans but not so good at prioritising time. A common complaint, I am sure. I am determined to stay anchored to this field, though. Here, all things meet for me and that includes my failings.

As you enter the field from the south end, you pass the dump. On Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s it’s closed and this is often, conveniently one of the days I find I have a bit more time to explore. As you go through the entrance to the field you can either follow a path that branches one side to the left (up the hill) and one side to the right (running alongside the railway line). Before you get to this branch, immediately to the right is well worn path snaking through the undergrowth alongside the dump boundary.

It looks so well established. In the winter when everything was bare you hardly noticed it, but now it is the perfect invitation. Before you get to the the dump there is a curious area fenced off. It is a large rectangular ditch and since all the rain, it has filled up with brown sludgy, stagnant water. It’s something to do with Anglian Water at some point, so the sign says. In the water is an array of discarded objects and bits of rubbish. A perfect fly tipping spot obviously, for those who almost made it there.

Further up the path, I feel a bit of uneasiness rising in my stomach. It’s not my usual time, it’s approaching dusk and as I follow the path, I notice how still and secluded it has become. The undergrowth grows taller and forms a roof above my head as I duck through. The path leads along the palisade fencing and I can peer through at the huge metal containers inside the tip.

I can see two camping gas canisters strewn on the path up ahead and wonder. What on earth am I doing? One day I’m going to get myself in a situation I wish I hadn’t. Is it irrational to feel scared or plan stupid to keep poking about in these places? A lone woman pushing herself into dark, lonely places. Am I a thrill seeker after all?  Either way my curiosity about the site means I can’t leave it. Also, I comfort myself with my track record. I have been hanging out quite regularly in these places for sometime and not really been confronted by another dweller, in person, despite the endless clues and traces that tell me they exist.

Anyway, I push myself in and the path closes down to impassable. Only to the left there is a kind of small opening. A tiny clearing that looks inhabitable. I push in, crouching down and squat by the base of a tree. I am completely surrounded. I pause to notice my feelings about being here. It is so calm, quiet and secluded. Like sitting in a little cocoon, sheltered  and protected by the thorny, tangled armour of under growth.

I snap away at some finds, some half buried, some hanging from trees. Their randomness like some kind of poetry. It is this excitement that keeps me poking about in these places. It’s the finds that lure me in. The promise of another object who’s identity can never be predicted. This is the main part of the thrill. Finding. An encounter with another place and another life.

I’ve come to the laptop not really knowing what I want to write today. Having just arrived back from my daily walk at the field I can trace back a series of different thoughts that accompanied my ambling, but not one clear thread that stood out. This morning my brain was quite content to quietly squint out over the cattle grazing and absorb.

I have held the field at a distance these last few weeks, partly just circumstance I think, half term, kids parties, jobs to get done but also something else. There is sometimes an effort to go, like approaching it, going there, requires a certain energy and this energy is a particular type. I sometimes find myself looking for excuses why I can’t make that day and I am curious about this avoidance impulse, because when I go, the time I spend there is never not positive. It never doesn’t enliven my feelings of curiosity and I always come away dreaming of a time when I can extend the length of these visits, venture further and explore different times, new paths. But there is another side that wants to shut this all down and I have to be vigilant of it. Perhaps, why I have come in the first place.

I have another project that I have been working on with a friend over the last year too. Part of coming to the lowest point in my artistic non-career meant looking at what I really wanted to achieve in the first place, before I even contemplated starting again. About 2 years ago I started searching possibilities and considering where I would most like to push forward and use my creative abilities.

It led me to dementia. It was something I knew little about, only that my nan had it and we as a family didn’t have any idea what we were dealing with and no-one really wants to talk about it, ever. My first thought when it came up on my google search was… it is the worst thing that can happen to you and my second was it can’t end at that thought. Then I came across the most amazing charity called Arts4dementia, who hold training days for artists. I booked on with no idea what I could have to offer or where it would lead, but since the workshop in September 2017 with Arts4dementia, I have thought about little else.

For almost two years now I have volunteered with a local dementia group and got to know the most wonderful people in the most difficult of circumstances. Within this group of people, those living with dementia and their loved ones, we all come together and the most amazing moments happen. Being there each week, is being part of something special.

The project that myself and my good friend and artist Anji Archer have  had in the planning stage for what feels like forever, yesterday had confirmation of Arts Council funding. This feels momentous! We can now make our drawing workshops happen for people living with a dementia and their carers, at Stevenage Museum this September.

I will start another blog alongside this one to keep a record of the progress of this project.

The corners of the field are becoming particularly over grown right now. Spring is in full flourish. I feel I could bring a blanket out and spend the whole day laying and listening. Is there any feasible excuse I could find to do this?

On my walk this morning I thought about mental health and the idea of nature deficit and considered this idea of being in nature for its psychologically effect on us, it’s healing potential. The world health organisation say ‘access to green spaces can reduce health inequalities, improve wellbeing and aid in the treatment of mental illness’

Eva Wiseman’s article in the Observer last weekend interested me greatly. Her discussion of nature being used as a symbol of privilege, where deprived areas have more restricted access, while others flaunt it endlessly on social media as a symbol of spiritual depth and wellness. It being framed and ‘cleanly repackaged as valuable, a wellness product to sit alongside jade eggs and yoga mats.‘

She so eloquently points out…

‘despite its happy side-affects, nature is not for us. It exists in spite of us. It persist greenly, finding new ways to grow around our awfulness’

I love that ‘finding new ways to grow around our awfulness’. I want to ponder on this sentence.

I walk down the hill with skylarks in full swing, baby bunnies darting in and out of the hedges, two red kites gliding over my head, sparrows chasing each other along the fencing, with the warm morning sun in my face. Sunny, easy, mornings like this package well. All I need is for some little birds to perch themselves on my shoulder and I’ll break into song.