Day 2: High above the village is a rusting metal cross. One hundred and thirty-eight steps lead up to it. Slanting steps, rain-washed steps, slippery with moss in places. Some are steep some are long and shallow. None of them feel certain underfoot after a wet night.
The steps wind up through trees and ferns, a world of secret greenery, overhanging. There is a wooden railing that feels more like a reminder that this is the downward edge and don’t lean that way, than it does like a handrail to be relied upon. This is not a path to be rushed up, or stomped up, it is one to be walked with the mindfulness of the pilgrimage and maybe that was the point.
When I reach the small plateau that holds the cross, and the bench that looks out over the river towards the sea, I miss the plaque that tells me why the cross is here. Meanwhile the weather changes minute to minute. Squalls run in and out again like wayward children.
I hadn’t selected this as a practice field, but I felt that maybe that would become a theme for the week, I would set out on my day, and practice wherever I felt called to do so. Trust the process
High above the river, with views to the sea and the islands beyond, on ground uneven and unstable…I began.
I got lost. I began again. And again went awry. And again…
Part of the challenge was being distracted by the beauty of the view, allowing the external to influence the internal. This is not tai chi.
Part of the challenge was the uncertainty of my footing: the ground was wet, slippery, trip-hazardly, sloping to sheer drops and rocking landings – allowing the external to influence the internal. This is still not tai chi.
I started repeatedly. Sometimes I forgot what came next, especially at the end of the first section. Sometimes I forgot where I was and repulsed more monkeys than were strictly required. I worked and reworked. Sometimes I did so with mindful concentration, but lost the plot. Sometimes I did so with speed to see if I could break my log jams by force. None of this is tai chi.
Then I stopped. And picked up my camera again…looked at the shifting light on the water and in the sky…connected with greys shifting into brilliant blues, opened my mind to the waters, breathed in the simply being-there-ness of my good fortune.
And then went again. It wasn’t perfect…there were stumbles and corrections…but this, I think, was tai chi, because this was connection to where I was right then, in all its shifting beauty and all my imperfection.
Day 3: There’s a way marked path to the beach. It doesn’t tell you that the beach might not be there. It doesn’t tell you that it is only a beach at low tide. Technically, then, not a beach at all. More akin to mud-flats, except that the riverbed is sandy. I walk down at low tide, and wander southwards, along the bed, away from the sea, towards the loch.
There are tiny inlets, mini-coves of fine white sand, that might be soft if it ever dries out. It is not dry today. Today it is raining, again.
I find a black altar, river shaped, wet-shining. This is today’s call to put down my pack. I balk at taking off my water-proof and settle for pushing back my hood and rolling up my sleeves. Today I have true north fixed.
As I settle, I watch the oyster-catchers silently going about their feeding. Somewhere over the river a curlew calls. I remember the heron I saw last night. I feel the rain in my hair and on my hands.
I begin.
I am more sure of my footing closer to the water, make fewer mistakes, but even so, I talk my way
through it, reminding myself of transition and stance.
Ward-off and strike and block and kick.
Open and close. Soften. Loosen. Yin…yang.
Sparrow. Wild-horses. Falling Leaves. White cranes. Tigers, Monkeys, Clouds.
Meanwhile the curlew calls across the water, and the lugworm calligraphy scraws its secrets in the sand.
