A final thought from November 2017
If last year was “Looking for Thursbitch,” this year the trip, the project for Wild Spaces, Wild Magic has been looking for Ludchurch.
This poem, created on the last evening – and actually drawing on an unfinished one from last year – can stand as a sort of headline to more obvious reportage in subsequent pages.
We ar in [th]is valay verily our one.
It was a silence behind the tap of wood
Beyond the scrape of wind on stone
Beyond the fall of birch leaves in the dusk
Where do those eyes look? My thin soul
Is just a moment, this poor butterfly
That sighs and pulses, glitters at his feet.
All this skein of years, migrating hopes
Pass overhead, a bird call in the dark-
Talis vita hominum – such is our life –
And so I read the silence
In the geology of his gaze.
More photos, all sorts else, will follow in due course, and my very personal account of Mat and my visit to Thoon above Thursbitch is already up, as of Sunday 12th Nov 2017. The source for the Latin is Bede, well worn for me and the Middle English is from Gawain, where the Green Knight gets down to the business of his challenge; I chose it after my solitary last visit as the light faded in the Ludchurch chasm, looking at the familiar face in the rock as the woods fell silent and the walls dripped.
We are truly on our own in this valley.
nicktomjoe 