Continued from Part Two…
Food manufacturers learned, long ago, that small children, sitting at the morning table to have their much-needed breakfasts, eagerly consume whatever reading material is in front of them.
My mother’s favourite breakfast for us was Scott’s Porridge Oats. The figure on the packaging of was dressed in Highland Games’ regalia. Quite why he is tossing the heavy ball towards the loch, below, is anyone’s guess, but the image remains in my consciousness.
Unlike, say, Cornflakes, you couldn’t have an instant breakfast with porridge. You had to wait patiently, while Mum did strange things with a cauldron-sized pan that bubbled like something from Macbeth, until the grey substance emerged onto the table in a large bowl, its top floating with milk and sugar, whose initial purpose was to cool it down to prevent small boys from scalding their mouths…
Happy memories. But there’s a serious side to this; Scotts were a clever company, driven by a Scottish ethic to educate as well as feed. During one period, the back of the pack featured dramatically illustrated images of huge ships floundering in icy seas, with under-equipped young sailors fighting for their lives in something called the ‘North Atlantic’.
Those images have stayed with me. Here, I was finally to come face to face with the reality…
I suspect most of us would fail the geography challenge. But if I asked a group of people to mark the outline of Russia on a map, (see below) we would draw the outlines of Norway and Sweden at the ‘top’, then possibly Finland, eventually moving to the north-western border of Russia. What we all tend to forget is that Russia sits over the top of all of them.
At this time of tension with Russia’s territorial aggression, that’s a terrifying piece of geography, but during WW2, Russia was allied with the West against the might of Nazi Germany. Helping Russia to win on the Eastern Front was vital to the future of a free Europe.
Britain’s part in this was to supply the Russian ports in the far north – Archangel and Murmansk (marked in red top right). To do this, Allied shipping had to brave not only the icy seas, but also the constant presence of Germany’s deadly U-boats. The Arctic convoys delivered over four million tons of vital supplies to the Soviet Union including tanks, fighter planes, food, fuel, medicines and boots.
Loch Ewe was a vital part of the war effort. It is a deep sea-loch with direct access to the north Atlantic Ocean. This made it a perfect base for the convoys. At times, up to ninety-five Merchant and Royal Navy ships anchored in the loch.
The ships were protected by anti-aircraft guns located at sites around the shore. Military personnel and local people manned lookout posts along the coastline to keep watch for enemy aircraft, submarines and ships.
The most direct route to the Soviet ports of Murmansk and Archangel was a hazardous two-week voyage. This took the ships into the Arctic Circle and east across the freezing Barents Sea. The convoys braved constant attacks by sea and air from German U-boats and aircraft flying from bases in Nazi-occupied Norway.
Each convoy was made up of Merchant ships protected by an escort of Royal Navy warships. They moved in a strict column formation and sailed only as fast as the slowest ship. Merchant ships were not designed for speed and the convoys were an easy target. They were exposed to relentless attacks from bomber aircraft during the polar summer, when the night sky was constantly light.
Fierce storms, blizzards, towering waves, gales and extreme cold were a constant threat during the long polar winters. The water was so cold that waves could turn to ice as they smashed against the ships. Men were known to freeze to death on watch. Crew had to constantly hack the ice that built up on the ships to stop it becoming so heavy that it would sink the ship. Extreme care had to be taken never to touch metal with bare hands as the skin would. literally, be torn off.
If the convoys made it to Russia, they still had to face the return journey. At the mercy of the Arctic weather and under threat of attack from above and below. More than three thousand Merchant Navy and Royal Navy sailors lost their lives.
Our rented cottage was on the very edge of Loch Ewe. Its peace today belies the violence and desperation of those times…
Loch Ewe was heavily fortified. A metal ‘boom net’ spanned the mouth of the loch and protected against enemy submarines and torpedoes. An underwater ‘Guard Loop’ laid across the entrance to the loch monitored changes in the electrical field. Controlled mines could be detonated if ships or submarines were detected.
Barrage balloons helped protect the skies from German bomber attack. They were used until storms blew most of them away – this is a volatile part of Scotland. So many were lost that a reward was posted for their return! At a time of severe rationing of food and materials, they made good hayrick covers and some even ended up as handbags and purses.
“I can remember entering Loch Ewe late on a fine evening at the end of August, It was a magnificent spectacle. The loch was crowded with merchant ships, the green fields of the crofts rose up from the shore and on the eastern horizon, the mountains of Wester Ross were outlined red in the sunset.
Reuy Clarke – Ordinary Seaman, HMS Farndale
The Scott’s Porridge Oats boxes never sought to glorify the Navy’s war. I learned a lot from my boyhood reading of them. It was unexpected and moving to come across such confirmation of the bravery they conveyed in their dramatic pictures…
©Stephen Tanham 2022
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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Nowhere to go
nothing to do
Only to be
With the I
That was you…
Uig, Isle of Lewis
2Jun22
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Each of our landscape weekends follows the same pattern: a socially-oriented Friday afternoon with a hint of what’s to come; a full Saturday which contains the main body of the ‘work’ and ends with an early evening pub meal out in the countryside; finally, a relaxed but meaningful Sunday morning, ending with an informal snack lunch and farewells.
Saturday the 7th May dawned over Keswick as brightly as the Friday had been dark. There was a tangible sense of having ‘learned the lessons’ of Friday afternoon; of having realigned our intent to fit in with the guiding landscape, and not try to impose older, indoor workings upon the more expansive and intuitive outdoors.
After meeting up in the Cricket Club car park, the group began the walk along the river Greta and into Keswick’s town centre, which was bustling with visitors to the weekly market in Moot Square – a medieval word meaning ‘meet’.
During our recce day, a month prior, Bernie and I had walked the high path along the length of the ridge above Derwent Water to the famous Ashness Bridge – one of the most photographed places in The Lakes, and one offering unparalleled views back down the lake.
Our original plan for the Saturday morning had been to recreate this walk, knowing that the Companions would have been tired at this point… and concerned that they still had to walk back to Keswick before another journey into the Eden Valley in the afternoon.
What they wouldn’t know is that the ferries that circle Derwent Water stop at a jetty a few minutes’ walk from the bridge, enabling us all to travel back to Keswick in comfort – and providing an additional dimension to the weekend.
On the recce day we didn’t take the ferry because we had one more ‘fallback’ location to visit – the mysterious carved boulder known as the ‘Millennium Stone’.
This proved a wise investment…
After the rain-induced difficulties on the Friday of the weekend at the Castlerigg site, we didn’t want to risk other natural challenges to the success of each half-day. Ensuring that each segment of the programme had enough time to keep things leisurely and relaxed had become a priority.
In the light of this, Stuart and I reluctantly abandoned the idea of the ridge walk to Ashness Bridge – and its return boat ride – in favour of a shorter walk along the shore path of Derwent Water to the mystery stone. The weather was perfect: warm and bright but not too hot.
We crossed through the town, past the beautiful Crow Park, and to the start of the path by the rental rowing boats.
From here, the path winds along the shore of Derwent Water in a series of curves, some of them natural paths, others – across marshy places of natural diversity – created along boardwalks by the National Trust. For approximately one mile, it weaves in and out of a variety of habitats, to finally emerge, via a small copse of trees, onto the expanse of shore that hosts the Millennium Stone.
It was a delight to arrive at our destination…and to see the companions smile, leave the path and make their own way down the ‘beach’, and there examine the twin halves of the mysterious stone.
We asked the companions to divide into pairs, one representing the visible self, the other the invisible self. They were then to walk together to the water line and dip one hand into the lake. Upon their return each would address one of the matched labyrinths, tracing the pattern with a wet finger in step with each other and visualising that they were experiencing a twin life from beginning to end.
The close was symbolised by the pair moving back to the water and washing their hands, returning the ‘dust’ of the journey to the vast waters of life represented by the lake.
No-one wanted to leave the twin stones. It had been the perfect morning. But now we had to return to Keswick to take a quick snack before our journey by car into the heart of the Eden Valley… and a very mysterious encounter by a major river…
To be continued in Part Four
Other parts in this series:.
Part One, Part Two, Part Three
This is Part Four.
©Stephen Tanham 2022
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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Continued from Part One.
I should have known, really…that our luck would run out, one day.
According to a close friend, who loves journeys into Scotland as much as we do, we are a ‘talisman’ for good weather. No less than six trips in a row – over several years – have seen us bathed in sunshine for most of the week. There have been exceptions, but they left you with the feeling that most of it had been good.
Original image by the author, taken at Inverewe Gardens)
The same friend states that we have seen an entirely different Scotland from most travellers, whose furtive presences are usually to be seen huddled in doorways and rushing into small general stores to buy those forever seen but never bought ‘rain jackets in a pocket’.
Something like this:
Didn’t we always look at them and ask who would buy such things? Well, for those who are following my agonised journey to warmth, I have an update for my cynical former self… They are the sort of garment that could save your life…albeit at the cost of your reputation.
This trip has seen us huddled into doorways, overhangs and barely watertight cafe extenstions (for that neglected breed – us dog owners) at least four times a day – when we have dared to get out of that warm capsule of transportation: the modern car.
We thought the spring would have arrived in the Scottish Highlands by the end of May. When we voice this in quiet, wet whispers, new-found friends, clutching their hands around large coffee mugs in hippy-themed cafes, smile at us, saying nothing. But we do notice they all have six layers of clothing…to our four.
I expected rain – it is Scotland, after all; but not so much cold. It’s relentless… As I sit here, writing at the kitchen table of our rented cottage in Poolewe (see last Tuesday’s post), the hailstones are bouncing off the roof of the nearby wooden shed belonging to the property.
But we’re not the kind of folk who sit in the house – our own or rented – moaning and dripping. One of the planned visits of our Scottish trip was to be Inverewe Botanical Gardens (pronounced ‘Inver – you’) , a famous horticultural landscape occupying the whole of one of the local headlands.
My wife, Bernie, is a qualified horticulturalist, and the botanical gardens at Inverewe were to be one of the highlights of this Scottish odyssey. It was early in our holiday, and even a wet walk along the curve of the bay seemed exciting, so we set off…
The estate is entered through the gates. The main gardens can optionally be entered by following the line of the shore. This – the walled garden – would have generated produce for the kitchen, and is not for decoration; but is a classic example of gardening organisation.
The 2,000 acre garden was created in 1862, on what used to be barren land, by Osgood Mackenzie. His rich mother bought him the land, presumably to set her son a challenge.
He set about tackling the difficulties inherent in a sea-facing setting; beginning with the establishment of a natural wind-break, then improving the soil to sustain the wide variety of planting he had in mind.
He began by planting a mixture of large trees and shrubs to form the windbreak. These included Corsican Pine, Douglas Fir and Rhododendrons.
This made feasible his further plans for a wide variety of exotic plants – many of which he had seen on his ‘grand tour’ of Europe and the Near East. Osgood Mackenzie died in 1922. The gardens continue to be developed by the Scottish National Trust.
The original Inverewe Lodge was destroyed by fire in 1914 and replaced in 1937 by the current Inverewe House. The current garden covers some 20 hectares (50 acres) and has over 2,500 exotic plants and flowers. There is a further 800 hectares (2,000 acres) of land managed for recreation and conservation.
The garden and estate has been the property of the National Trust for Scotland since it was given to the Trust along with a generous endowment for its future upkeep by Osgood’s daughter Mairi Sawyer in 1952.
The garden continues to be developed by the small garden team. There are currently 10 full-time gardeners. Inverewe has a noteworthy Rhododendron collection in flower throughout the year. There is also an extensive collection of Erythroniums. These flower in Spring; in recent years the garden has promoted an Erythronium festival.
In summer the walled garden and borders come into their own with many exotic plants from all over the world which grow here thanks to the influence of the Gulf Stream. There are even palm trees in nearby Plockton – setting for much of the dramatic film, ‘The Wicker Man’.
Even in winter Inverewe is colourful. The bark of many rhododendrons is delicately coloured and the collection of native and non-native trees, including Wollemu trees, adds to the variety.
The weather was foul throughout our visit, but we still enjoyed these magnificent gardens.
Assisted by a coffee and cake from the garden cafe, we enjoyed the trip; returning to hot showers and an afternoon of gentle reading, tea and snoozing…
My warm and waterproof coat was still several days away, but the fallback outfit: multiple layers of warm garments, topped by a versatile Berghaus wind-proof, was proving reliable. There was hope that I could tough and bluff it out till the weekend (see the previous post!)
©Stephen Tanham 2022
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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Seven Splendours
by Steve Tanham
The first week of our Scottish Highland trip is over. At the time of writing, I’m sitting in the back of the car, headed for Ullapool; the gateway to the Outer Hebrides. The ferry will take three hours to transport the four of us to Stornaway,, the capital town of the linked island of Lewis and Harris.
I’m glad to be moving on. The scenery has been magnificent, but the weather has been cold and unendingly wet. The four of us have spent the week in our winter gear, occasionally warmed by short bursts of bright May sun.
Time to share some of the best photos, most of them taken in the gaps between the rains.
It’s a beautiful land, but bring your long raincoat if you want to be comfortable.
©Stephen Tanham 2022
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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Continued from Part Two…
My phone wasn’t dead – it looked perfectly bright against the dark landscape, but it wasn’t responding to any finger gestures. And it contained my copy of the script, now locked away by the storm.
I reached into my ‘Fool’s’ kit bag, a sturdy old canvas friend that I’ve used for years. Often in the run up to workshops, I will, at the last minute, throw in a paper version of a script as an absolute backup. My wet fingers encountered paper and I extracted what turned out to be a last but one version. That would be okay, as long as I remembered the final changes we had made.
With the help of a mentor, the hero will cross a guarded threshold, leading them to a supernatural world, where familiar laws and order do not apply.
I held it up at chest level and began reading. The group let out a collective sigh of relief, but they couldn’t see the heavy raindrops dissolving the ink and melting the paper as it became increasingly saturated.
I had the idea to memorise the next few lines, then fold the paper along its original creases and hold its axis vertical to the descending water. It worked – after a fashion – but every time I reopened it, the text was less legible and the paper itself had continued its journey to mush.
We have survived a few scrapes; Stuart, Sue and I, and found that it’s not unusual for something unseen to come to the aid of the drowning performer. But in this case, only we had the scripts. Our companions were being guided by our words, alone. Their faces expressed empathy, but they were powerless to help.
It’s difficult to remember at exactly what point I abandoned the ‘toilet paper’, as Stuart later christened it. He could see the change, he said, because I began to relax… simply letting what we have always called ‘the flow’ take over. And trusting…
…simply letting what we have always called ‘the flow’ take over. And trusting…
It did… Instead of behaving like someone reading a book, I let the flow take me and improvised in the moment, thankfully recalling from memory what we needed the Fool/Magician to do to get the companions through to the final gate and release them into their symbolic strange, new world, where – within the context of our play – nothing would behave as it had in the previous place. A fitting tribute to what we had just endured.
Somewhat post-storm, we left the Castlerigg circle. We would return here for the final act in our landscape play, but not before seeing the site from a mystery great height – fitting for a Hero looking down on the end of the quest.
The rain was abating but we had another problem. One of our companions – who had confirmed and paid for his attendance – was missing. During the damp ceremonials, I had thought he might be sitting it out in the car, having arrived late. But he was nowhere to be seen.
I didn’t have his mobile number but sent him an email as we left the circle. He had the information sheet and would know where we were headed next.
We had two important things to do…
The first was to escort everyone to a specific car park on the outskirts of Keswick. This would be our meeting point for the rest of the weekend, and it was essential that everyone knew its location.
The second was to have an early dinner. Weather, tension and stress had taken their toll… We were starving.
Our usual format for a first evening in Keswick is to have an inexpensive fish and chip supper. The central Moot Square boasts a fine chippy with upstairs restaurant, which offers vegetarian options. The small convoy drove the short distance to the car park and, now on foot, we followed the path of the river along the park and over the bridge into Keswick centre.
Dinner was a joyous affair. We laughed about the difficulties of open-air mystical theatre and resolved to learn the lessons of the day. This will be covered in the next post. Part way through the meal, the evening was brightened by the arrival of our missing companion. He had endured a nightmare journey up the M6 motorway with tyres that had been wrongly inflated by a defective pump at a service station near his home. At one point he felt the car was ‘floating’ and going to crash. He had the good sense to stop at the next services and get the problem diagnosed and fixed. But it had cost him the afternoon.
Stuart and I both had the thought that we might be able to do something creative about that…
The skies were clearing. The evening sun was mellow and promised a better day tomorrow. We had little idea how much better, though the long Saturday would not be without its challenges…
To be continued in Part Four.
Previous parts in this series:
Part One, Part Two
©Stephen Tanham 2022
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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A what? I can hear you think…
I’d never heard of it, either. Poolewe is a small lochside community between Ullapool and Gairloch in the far north-west of Scotland.
If you were to sail due west – which you can’t because the loch points acutely north-west, bordered on both sides – you’d come to the island of Lewis and Harris, the major part of the Outer Hebrides; see map, above.
It’s very northerly, and has a climate to match. This morning, our first after yesterday’s ten-hour journey, we awoke to a combined sea-mist and drizzle, necessitating a hat for the statutory early dog walk. Why just a hat, you rightly ask?
It’s a quiet place with a vibrant community centre and a weekly market. There are also signs for wonderful local events such as this:
The four of us – we’re travelling with another couple – are booky people, so we’ll be visiting Ron’s Book Bothy between rain storms.
I remember from my A-Level geology course that the rocks around here are some of the oldest in the world… the word ‘Pre-Cambrian’ comes to mind. A five with so many zeroes only Donald Trump could make sense of it… Rishi Sunak, possibly…
From this morning’s walk, I can see that my best friend of the trip is going to be my ‘pork pie’ rain hat. It’s one of those (only) slightly floppy ones that mark you out as among the more discerning tourists in Scotland.
The inclusion of the hat is the good news…. The less good is that I’ve left both my waterproof coats (one short, the other long) at home…hanging in the wardrobe where I’d stashed them after the final packing was done…. The following morning, I had only to grab them and drape them over the cases in the car boot… Hmmm.
I’m not confessing… Bernie will only want to put me in a home.
I have one; well two, secret weapons in this obfuscation. The first is my one available outer garment – the one I travelled up in. It’s a top of the range, twenty-year old ‘wind-stopper’, made by Berghaus, and for reasons too complex for this blog, I’ve worn it only twice. I grabbed it from the back of the wardrobe as I ran out of the house – minus coats, of course – and have been wearing it ever since. It’s surprisingly effective for such a thin garment.
Reason 2 is Wim Hof, that monumental Dutch figure of cold weather frolics currently on TV. During the week, while I’m pretending not to shiver on our Poolewe-based outings, I will be professing loyalty to his fortitude and proclaiming myself an acolyte.
That will get me through the next few days – at which point it’s my birthday. This cunning plan sees me receiving a rather tasty outdoor walking jacket that Bernie has already bought me for the occasion.
I will, at that point, be warm again… and not in a home. Cunning, eh? Roll on Lewis and Harris!
All for now… More to follow as we explore.
©Stephen Tanham 2022
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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When the sky grows
by Steve Tanham
There is a wildness to these last days of May; an energy long pent-up that rushes from the thrusting ground to meet the brightness of the glowing clouds…
The whole locked in some exotic equilibrium, one pushing, the other pulling, until, racing past the middle of June, they sight the shimmering solstice.
©Stephen Tanham 2022
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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Those familiar with the attempt to hold any kind of drama in the open air will know the difficulties to be faced…
The vagaries of the British climate are well documented but the severity of the rain as we travelled through the blinding spray along the last few miles of the A66 towards the Castlerigg Stone Circle was a thing to be seen.
We had a brief respite, ahead, however. Although hoping to do a run-through in the stones before the arrival of the full complement of participants, we had offered a lift to an old friend who had travelled by train from the south of England, arranging to collect her from the local mainline station at Oxenholme, near Kendal. She asked us if we had time for her to check into the guest house in the centre of Keswick.
We were pleased at the potential this offered for a ‘pit stop’ with refreshments in the town centre. There is nothingof this nature at Castlerigg and a break would be welcome before the workshop was due to start at 2:30 in the afternoon. After a struggle with the satnav, which for some unfathomable reason thought we were in Turkey, we located her lodgings and were able to park outside on the road. Leaving our companion to check in, Stuart and I walked into the heart of the town and located a pub, there to shelter and await her return; at which point we planned to have a snack before returning to the stones to begin our afternoon’s work.
What we hadn’t allowed for was the poor and varying quality of phone signal in Keswick centre. We waited and waited, eventually deciding that something unforeseen had happened and we should try to contact her. Only then did we discover that for both of us, there was no signal at all…
We paid our snack bill and ventured out into the rain. In our final dry moments, we had run through a set of scenarios: she had arrived to find her room unready, but been asked to wait for a short while… which had turned into nearly an hour; she had been fed by a kindly landlady and unsuccessfully tried to contact us, being met by the same technical problem… or she had given up on the signal and was, at this moment walking the streets of Keswick centre, in the rain, in the hope that she might bump into her hosts. She needed our car to get to the stone circle. On foot it would be at least an hour’s walk from the centre of town.
Feeling guilty that our companion might have eaten nothing, we went into a neighbouring baker’s shop and acquired a Cornish pasty, asking for it to be double wrapped against the downpour. As we emerged from the shop, our gleeful missing companion was to be seen walking down the street towards us – also clutching a Cornish pasty – this one half eaten. She was happy to take the second pasty and explained it was her first meal of the day since setting out from Hertfordshire in the early morning.
I remember musing to myself that these are the real things that disrupt or enable a workshop!
It was one of those moments that carry a mixed message: she had found us; therefore ‘something’ was looking after us, but it was also a pointer to the nature of challenges ahead. We could not assume that translating a formula that had begun life in cosy village hall to a rugged hillside would be an easy transition.
We located the car in the middle of a maze of Keswick’s oldest streets, and headed for Castlerigg. Any rehearsal time had vaporised. We were going to have to roll straight into the first drama on arrival – deluge or not.
We parked the car on the small lane alongside stone circle. We had invited the companions to enjoy the famous stones in front of us before gathering together and could see a few of them scattered across the dark landscape ahead.
I had taken the precaution of uploading our script – created by Stuart – onto my phone. I knew that once we started, every second would count, and I couldn’t imagine trying to read from a paper copy in that force of rain. In my experience, the modern phone is the safest and most waterproof place to store such vital information.
We gathered the group of hardy but undeterred companions together, welcoming them and explaining the use of the small rectangle of inner stones called ‘The Cove’. This would be the main site of the day’s drama, with each participant receiving a combination of instructions to allow them to understand the Tarot cards used for this part of the weekend. The Cove was to be the stage for the first three parts of the Monomyth, as described in last week’s post, and summarised below:
1. The hero’s adventure begins in the ordinary world.
2. He/she must leave the ordinary world when they receive a call to adventure. This is sometimes refused – initially.
3. With the help of a mentor, the hero will cross a guarded threshold, leading them to a supernatural world, where familiar laws and order do not apply.
The rain intensified…
I took my phone out of its waterproof pocket and flicked it on, ready to begin speaking my changing role of ‘Fool’ to ‘Magician’. The phone jammed in the opening screen as the waves of water cascaded onto it, and no amount of frantic finger movement or tissue drying would return it to operational normality.
Stuart looked at me, mute. His device was working fine…
I looked up at the heavens…. The rain was winning.
To be continued in Part Three.
Other parts in this series:
Part One,
©Stephen Tanham 2022
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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Photographs are meant to be taken from above, except….
Except when they’re not, and there’s some compelling reason to take them from beneath.
Often, I walk the collie in the early evenings. It’s impossible in the winter, except with a flashlight; and then you get strange looks. But in spring and summer, you can still find strong evening sunlight – full of golds – emerging from hedges and shrubs in patterns that often resemble diamonds.
My favourite; easier than finding the fragmenting light, is to simply insert myself beneath several layers of the leafy canopy and point the camera upwards… as in the image above.
Sometimes it’s not what’s there, but rather the ‘ghost’ of what is there within the suppressed rays of light – its shadow… If you’re lucky, you might get the moon, too.
©Stephen Tanham 2022
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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This little soul is a relative…
He’s the son of my son and his wife. He’s my grandson. His name is Orson and as you can see, I’m rather distracted with affection for him; as is Bernie.
I can only pray that I live long enough to be a part of his life into adulthood. I intend to do everything to make that possible.
We have two other beautiful granddaughters who live far away in Australia; which means we don’t get to see them that often, but it’s wonderful when we do.
Young Orson lives in Yorkshire, therefore not only will he be able to play cricket for that fine county, but I’ll hopefully be an active part of his childhood.
Did I mention how happy I am? You can probably tell…
©Stephen Tanham 2022
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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It’s a method for uniting a group of people to a common purpose. It’s a technique for ‘washing’ the immediate environment and dedicating your effort to the highest motive and energies. It’s a wonderful way to align yourself to your immediate surrounding, teasing out that sense of really ‘knowing’ what’s around you – especially in a landscape as beautiful and powerful as the English Lake District…in spring.
We can call it ceremony. Modern psychology, recognising its value, named it psychotherapy and psycho-emotional journeying. For thousands of years it has been known simply as ritual and, once you remove the populist rubbish from around its edges, there lies revealed a beautiful and empowering use of the human mind and emotions.
The best example of ritual I know is the simple hug. It has rules: the touching of bodies is proscribed in a certain non-sexual way. The hands grasp the other in a gentle embrace, and the heads align so they don’t clash. The duration of the hug and, indeed, the distance of the other person, can be adjusted according to the level of personal trust involved. A hug carried out with loving respect is a powerful and uplifting thing… It’s a wonderful ritual.
Like many ‘mystery schools’, we use ritual. But only when appropriate. The greater part of our ‘communion’ with the landscape on the Journey of the Hero weekend was simply walking and taking in the fresh green delight of spring in northern Cumbria. When we did use ritual, it was powerful…and in some cases, created there and then to adapt to the specifics of the landscape of beauty around us.
The idea for the ‘Journey of the Hero’ workshop began shortly after Sue Vincent’s death, a year ago. Keen to signal that the Silent Eye would be continuing its work, despite her sad loss, we came up with the idea of adapting the core of Joseph Campbell’s book; ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’ into a three-day event that would reflect the Lakeland spring’s splendour, using the hills, lakes and even rivers of the region to provide a series of delightful challenges for our group of ‘happy adventurers’ – as Stuart named them.
A happy and wonderful bunch they turned out to be… But the weekend was to challenge us all in ways not always foreseen. The idea that the organisers were actually in charge of events in the underlying hyper-myth: life itself, was to prove deeply amusing…
Campbell proposed that all the world’s myths and fairy stories followed a common theme; a kind of ‘meta-structure’ whose building blocks were the skeleton on which each detailed journey was mapped. We wanted to use this structure to find synergy in the landscape, rather than an actual story. In this way, we would be more focussed and more in-tune with the beautiful places in which we wandered. He proposed the name ‘Monomyth’ for the underlying meta story.
The Monomyth contains the following stages;
1. The hero’s adventure begins in the ordinary world.
2. He/she must leave the ordinary world when they receive a call to adventure. This is sometimes refused – initially.
3. With the help of a mentor, the hero will cross a guarded threshold, leading them to a supernatural world, where familiar laws and order do not apply.
4. There, the hero will embark on a road of trials.
5. Allies sometimes assist.
6. As the hero faces the ordeal, they encounter the greatest challenge of the journey.
7. Upon rising to this challenge, the hero receives a reward or boon.
8. They return to the ordinary world, empowered to act in a higher way. The world gains much from their renewed presence.
While I concentrated on the locations and the vital timings, Stuart was busy crafting a method whereby the above stages of the Monomyth could be emotionally linked to their sequence. He proposed the use of the Tarot cards – that ancient method of both ‘divination’ and, more importantly, perhaps, the use of ‘active imagination’ to take us into a series of meditative states that reflected the Hero’s journey.
We were to begin, on the Friday afternoon, with the famous stone circle of Castlerigg, a ring of large stones at least five thousand years old, set on a natural plateau surrounded by some of Lakeland’s tallest mountains. Simply standing on that plateau is an act of magic, as nature quietly invites you to contemplate and share the reasons for the existence of this remarkable edifice.
As we approached on the busy and fast A66 road, the skies began to darken. By the time we arrived at Castlerigg, we were in the middle of a full-blown Lakeland downpour… showing no signs of stopping.
It began to look like the ‘ordeal’ stage of our Monomyth was going to be thrust upon us ahead of schedule…
To be continued in Part Two.
©Stephen Tanham 2022
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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