When nature applies her own sharpening
The fractal bonds that grow between place, memory, and nature
My voiceover is again recorded outside; you may hear the roe buck barking in the background. Excuse the odd stumble.
Greetings from the moss. This week I thought I’d share something from those sub-zero nights I mentioned last time. The rollercoaster of temperatures has continued, swinging from -8C to plus +7C the next day. By the weekend +11C; this week below freezing again.
Tuesday. As darkness lingers, loathe to leave the morning, an image etched in memory surfaces. Like the skin—skim—of snow on the rooftops it traces a line between light and dark. An impression of a rose that I know will call me back to search without finding, but perhaps there will be others.
It is not a flower, but the fallen fruit of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris). The bones of fertility preserved in perfect architecture. This is the memory. Perhaps it is the confetti around it that pricked the idea of a rose, bells of ling silenced and sloughed by weight of the last snow.
Beyond memory there is something within that pulls me back; some part of the interwoven tangle of the moss has lodged between my ribs and tugs to be taken back to its watery domain. Perhaps I snagged a thorn when I was there, caught a thread, and pulled it home with me.
I sometimes wonder what, why, places bind us so, and what hole they serve to fill.
As hard drive capacity prompts me to tidy up my catalogue, I discover that a substantial body of images is growing. I may not yet have all the words or know their true meanings for this place, but the moss fascinates me. Visually I recognise that there is a complexity there that speaks to me, and yet there is also the option to simplify, to be selective, abstract, defocus, reassess.
When I was working on the writing that became my book A New Topography, I chose an underlying theme: deposition. I had in mind the geology of this place, the processes that shaped the landscape here. The fluidity of form. The connection with water as both process and presence. Thoughts turn to stone, till, alluvium.
I’m coming to realise that there are other depositions here too. That of the organics on, in, the moss. Last week as the night-time temperatures dropped well below freezing, I went out the next morning, the second such when I had the benefit of two nights of ice growth. It was as if nature had applied her own sharpening. I couldn’t separate what I was seeing from the parallel of (over) sharpening an image on the computer. Ice provided the contrast that I needed to notice and enjoy even the smallest of arrangements casually discarded on the ground beneath my feet; Nature’s litter.
Later I sit, again wondering why the moss draws me. To be fair, I have always wanted to see what is down a ginnel1, round a corner, to the perennial frustration of companions (unless they happen to be photographers). Perhaps I recognise something of myself in its busyness: the inner restlessness, the tangle of thoughts and ideas, the engine that refuses to idle or finish. The way that its mass, its secrets, are quietly hidden below the surface.
But there is too a sense that here is a place that resists us. There are aspects that I am coming to know, but there is much that will remain intangible, unreachable. The moss resists familiarity. It is relatively small, but at the scale of its parts it seems infinite. I can circle it, following the slender trails of deer, but not wander freely. If my awareness of its surface remains largely incomplete, what of its composition? Its depths? Storehouse, seedhouse. Collector.
Expansionist.
We can’t often perceive rates of growth in the landscape, but the moss seems impatient. In a wet year I have seen it green, soften, slip tendrils sideways, velvet and swell… and consume. As the deer’s hooves, the weight of red over and above roe, cut and churn the surface cover into dark peat, the moss in turn absorbs them. Earlier this year, on my regular passage, something was different. To the side of the trail, deer leg bones, still holding the last of its flesh, populated with carrion beetles. These too were new to me, an ancient looking retinue of servants. Later, I came across other scattered traces: two vertebrae; scanning ahead, a pale shape that turned out to be the skull, and so on.
Before leaving, I revisit what remains of the roe kid, and am shocked not only by the speed its bones are becoming part of the weave, but by their own greening. I have refrained from ‘collecting’: the bones belong here and I have no right to take a piece of this abbreviated life away as a souvenir. Yet curiosity prompts me to gently poke one of those teeth—still pearly white—to see if they have loosened. Its bite into the moss is still sharp and strong, the molars set firm in the jaw, seemingly about to consume a final meal. If it had been loose, would I?
If this is what I can see, what else is there here? Out of reach to our eyes, ears, nose and those grasping fingers with which humans try to appropriate everything?
If you’ve enjoyed reading this letter and it sparks something, please share it with someone you know who might enjoy it. If my writing is new to you and you’d like to catch up with recent posts you’ll find them on my home page.
Also new this week is an interview in
’s Sunday series:
Thank you for being here. Until next week,
Encore:
Another favourite read from the last week. I make no apology for repetition: this platform sparks the imagination, and encourages a growing community of artists and writers.
I hope you enjoy
’s meditation on being a nature writer:
All words and images are copyright © Michela Griffith except where otherwise noted
I enjoyed this rummaging through "nature's litter." Well done.
Michela, your writing is wonderful - I may have said this already, several times. But really, your use of language heightens the mystery of the natural world in a very beautiful way. I come away enhanced and entranced.