Walking with Sue Palmer

I had a great day walking

Last night I made some head notes and try to write them here in response to
the walk:

Just to walk is the good thing to do for body and mind
The rhythm of the heart, the pace of the feet
Afterward it always feels good, strong, like something's really happened -what is that something?
I liked the cows following us the other side of the hedge, the horses noses and all the breathing, the orange spikey caterpillar on the road that we stopped the car for, and then found out about another kind of pilgrimage for a bomb falling. The wealthy fences, the dreamy heat haze, the still dense air, the lunch stop under the tree, with the man opening the gate for his dog and then climbing over himself.
The sun always coming through the clouds for a late summer atmosphere, heavy over dorset, soft on the fields, soft, dense, radiance. Bonfire smoke, cautious people full of not funny banter, weathervanes, house signs, the inevitable countryside.
The 'dead reckoning' moment with Donna turning the stick like the monk on the moor. The atmosphere between us three at that point was very joined, relaxed, present.



Donna telling the stories of going back the other way, of hospitality and strangers, of sadness and being alone as a young woman, I liked hearing of the vulnerability of that walk, the endeavour. Tim, at the end of a talking stream saying: 'I hate Dartington' right as we're walking towards it.
When I got home to bed I thought of not being able to go into the bothy, or the studios or the library and that made me feel very sad I hadn't felt sad on the walk, but afterwards I felt very sad. It won't happen, the end of Dartington until it's happened I thought.





And today I thought about walking paths, and that moment of coming to the end of the field with the impossibly overgrown stile and meeting the people coming the other way, and we talked through calling rather than seeing each other and we went over the derelict round straw bales and helped each other cross the barbed wire with the hazel stick woven into the fence. As if the
walk had been moving towards that exchange the whole time, and then subsequently away from that moment of exchange. Brilliant. It was kind of an amazing moment where we helped each other cross at the hardest moment, going in opposite directions making the most of the heat and light. And afterwards I thought about the act of walking as re-making the land,
re-treading the paths that cross the land, that cross our cultural space.
The landowners leave them and they semi erase themselves through thistles, nettles and brambles (all 'barrier' plants yet essential and highly productive to other non human species, especially butterflies), and we're finding ways through and re-membering the walking rhythm of the landscape joining London Dartington. Shadowing the railway line that runs an hour from the city, we're slowing the pace, slowing thought, waking up.

I had a great day. It was dreamy.

Love sue xxx