Memories and Reflections

Creating stories in nature.

Hello again,

I am safely home from a wild and wind swept Harris. The wonders of a CalMac Ferry with stabilisers made the voyage across the Minch to Isle of Skye a pleasant one, especially as they ran an extra early ferry Sunday morning. There was a lot of destruction wreaked by the storm all along our journey, and many places still had no power. It is lovely to be home, surrounded by familiar scenes and a sense of calm.

If a picture paints a thousand words, how many words does it take to paint a memory?

My brain fizzed as I listened to a reflections podcast, guest written by Mike Crawford, on Neale James Patreon channel “The Extra Mile”. Mike was describing a photograph that he didn’t take. My version of his non photograph is like this;

A fox walks up a dark path to a church. Bright yellow light streams from the door, pooling on the pathway, there are deep shadows, a rainy urban landscape. A second fox appears, and one of them enters the door, soon to scurry back out.

Ah now I’ve made it into a video, combining my interpretation of aspects of the story that Mike told. As I listened, in my mind I could see my version of the photograph, and yet I have never had this experience, my mind created it for me, only for me, no AI involved. In fact, so beautiful was Mikes original description, that it has now become my memory, not the moment of course, my interpretation, the story telling.

When I think back to my time on the Isle of Harris, it will be the memories more than the photographs that mark it out for me. Luskentyre beach, shadows lengthening, with the approaching sunset, weather too good to miss. I walk onto the footprint covered sand, intending to create photographs, composed a couple of shots, clicked the shutter. My memory though will always be, walking along the beach directly towards the bright silvery sun low in the sky, readying itself to set across the still waters of a shimmering bay. Billy ecstatic, waiting for his green ball, chasing it through the sand, digging holes to bury it, dropping it in the puddles pooling along the low tide mark. Billy, electrified with excitement waiting for me to throw it again. Those are the moments that will be in my mind forever. I snapped iPhone images to share with family, and you of course. My smile though, a huge grin, was for Billy, and Billy alone, one moment together.

Luskentyre Memories ©Sarah Moorcroft

This week I am home again, and wandering in Kintyre’s temperate rainforests. Damp, muddy and orange and yellow. Perfect woodland conditions, although the light fades quickly now. This was a work trip, I add that just so that you know that clearly I do work hard in my retirement, such a chore to walk in an autumn woods. My friend and I were taking a filmmaker into one of my favourite woods to shoot environmental footage for a video that we are making in conjunction with Glasgow School of Art. It’s about community environmental projects, a few different ones across Scotland. I showed Alasdair around, introduced him to the tumbling burn, to my favourite Oak. We stopped to look at lichen, and moss, and fungi, and colours, and water, and bracken draped in glorious autumnal orange, fronds dying back, giving access to the woods again. The sound was of the river, the wind, and the sea on the shore way down below. Arran glowed in the distance as patches of mountainside were lit up by muted rays of sunlight, reflecting off the clouds.

Scenes from Cloanaig Oakwoods, Kintyre ©Sarah Moorcroft

I breathed deeply, touched the trees reverently. The noise and disarray of Storm Amy messed with my sense of ease, and I revelled in the scents and shapes of the trees, the familiarity of their forms. I was saddened that an old birch, bent double as it was had snapped finally, unlikely I fear to recover. There were mushrooms dotted amongst the understory, lining roots, nestled on moss covered branches, weaving their magic in, across and throughout the woods, creating a tangle of connections. I wandered downhill towards the thundering waterfall, to check on another oak, boughs laden with moss and liverworts, polypody and filmy ferns too. The woodland floor was thick humus, fallen leaves, and crackling with twigs and detritus not just from Amy, but many storms that have raged over the many many years. Here water is absorbed and stored, little evidence on the ground of the scarring effect of water on a ravaged landscape. We tarried a few hours amongst the trees, I had no Billy with me, and long to return just him, me and a camera with time to breathe the sweet smells of a damp woods, and wonder at the beauty of it all. We will be back soon.

A short video from Cloanaig Oak Woods for a moment of peace (4 mins) music from Pixabay

©Sarah Moorcroft

Thank you as always for reading my ramblings. You know how much it means when you have a moment to comment and share, it feels such a treat to exchange thoughts with you.

Until next time

Much love

Sarah