This week sees the return again to Cley for another season of Creative Writing Outside. Creative writing. Writing outside.
Outside of what? I wonder. Perhaps we are not outside, but coming from the outside and trying to write our way back in. Writing our way into the outer world, as a way of finding the inner, a way of finding ourselves. In our responses to the natural world we are speaking from a place deeper than the well of the mind.
To go outdoors to look and learn, to pause and look again, to capture a slither of time, is an intentional thing, but are we ever really sure why we're doing it? Do we know what call it is that we are answering?
Currently it seems that the official call is to notice the connection and the disconnection. We are seeking something lost, our words are a lament for something fragile and its passing even as we continue to trample over it – a bearing witness to the absurdity of humanity. And so we (or is it just I?) become so earnest in our appreciation, overshadowing the love, downplaying the joy.
It has become a tradition of the course that we are not told in advance where we might be led, what habitat we will wander, or what prompts there might be for those of us, like me, who need a starting point. This is an invitation to write it raw. Without prefix. Prefixing is a limiting idea. To write without intention sounds like a contradiction, but what emerges is arguably a more pure, more direct response to the encounter.
We're assured that there is no expectation that we will read, except of course there is that gentle pressure, that wanting to be part of the sharing, the human desire to want to contribute to the communal harvest. Of course we will want to read, and because we will want to read, we are pushed to write. That gentle pressure propels the pen across the page even when the mind is cloudier than the sky and the words shyer than the moorhen hiding in the reeds.
We write to read. We draw words around the world to see the shape of it, casting shadows of sea and air in squiggles of ink, like worm-casts on the beach, that somehow take on meaning.
To write without intention, to simply see the world and respond to it, is not to write outside at all, but to step inside, to enter into existence, to become "part" of the moment rather than simply trying to be "in" it.
In looking at things closely we are entering their world, wondering how it is to be a pebble or a teazel. In looking at things repeatedly, on different days, at different times, in different moods,under different skies, we see them in their changing colours of youth and age and decay and rebirth. We don't regret the passing of the flower, but celebrate the architectural beauty of the seed head, structure and form and purpose, perfected.
As we walk out from the 'visitor centre' which is really at the edge, there's a sign that suggests we Caution Cars. I would, but I doubt they'd listen. Then as we reach the road, another red warning Caution. Please cross carefully. And that's what we do. We cross with care, and we care for the crossing, because this isn't about safely reaching the other side of the road.
A crossing is an opening. To cross carefully is to leave behind whatever you brought with you, and to step through the veil in which we shroud ourselves whenever we forget that we are not at all disconnected from the 'so-called' natural world. We are part of it. To cross is to step back into that knowledge. Careful now to see it as it is, rather than as we are. Careful to be witness to what we find. Careful to be humble, but also to know that all of the good and the bad and the indifferentaround us has been influenced by our kind, but also by other parts of this system that we are an integral part of, but also only a part of.
I would that we recognise that we are part of the planet and that we too are wild. To cross is to step into the wild that is within us, as well as what now passes for 'wild' in our half-tamed, almost-managed world.
We create reserves – reservations – to try to hold the moment. We are fearful of losing the beauty that we have, but how much of it would be here now if the dinosaurs had not passed away, and who knows what awesome creatures will take our place one day?
I feel that there is both penitence and pretence in our attempts to hold back tides and times. Yes, there is urgent work to be done, to stem the flood of retribution heading our way for the way we have mis-treated our homeland, but the system, the "natural world", the planet, universe, every-thing-that-is will not succumb to stasis. We too shall pass, and never know what is to come after.
We need to remember that if we were not here doing whatever damage we're doing, doing whatever good we're doing, destroying, saving, rebuilding, polluting…the world would still be changing, there would still be floods and fires, the mountains would rise and the glaciers melt, species would arise and become extinct. These things happened before we came and they will happen after we are gone. I strongly wish that we treated our world more kindly. I equally strongly feel that there is an arrogance in our belief that we get to choose what stays and what goes. I would that we would allow the planet more say in that… No!... I would that we simply recognise that the planet will have the final say in that. And the louder we press our own cause the more likely we are to be on the "what goes" side of the equation.
I am looking forward to returning to Cley for the Autumn season, with the nervousness born of wondering if I will have anything new to say, or new ways to say old things. I am looking forward to seeing again how the place shifts with the light and the weather and the seasons and the uniqueness of the people I get to share it with.
And a question I often ask myself is: why am I here?
And the answer, most often, is: I have absolutely no idea – but it seems to be where I need to be.
I wonder what I bring to the table, for I have no expertise to match those around it. Birds and words, flowers and landscape, the sea and the sky, history and geology and meteorology – all areas covered by the more knowledgeable, more practiced, more skilled than I. I am not even adept at expressing my ignorance and curiosity. I sometimes feel like the child sitting under the table at a gathering, listening to the adults talking and trying to make sense of it all.
But another part of me feels that there is another important lesson, beyond the facts and figures and species and records and trends and fears. I believe we can touch a place and it can touch us at a level beyond our conscious understanding. Brought up in a simple, modern, secular, NewTown, working class, comprehensive education, nothing special (and yet maybe everything special) environment, I was gifted with parents who knew to take the kids to the beach, to the hills, to the forest, to the waterfall, to let them play in the rain, in the snow, build grass camps, climb trees, come home bruised and bitten. We learned a few things. No doubt forgot many more that we had been taught. But mostly I remember we were encouraged to just 'be' in these places. They weren't educational trips…they were treats. We were allowed to find our own way into them.
Perhaps what I bring to this table, as I do to others, is my instinct, my "not-knowing", and often my "not needing to know" so much as "just wanting to feel".
It is a different world view. Even as I look forward to going back to the Cley reserve, I think: we visit this reserve of nature…but nature refuses to be reserved, and so should we. If we want to re-wild the world, we have to start within, rewilding ourselves. Crossing carefully, so that we are not mown down by the machinery of the world that we choose to live within, knowing that we can cross back and forth, but maybe wanting to linger longer each time on the other side of the road, wanting to sneak parts of the wild out of the reserve, set it free. And sneak parts of ourselves in or out or both, to set us free.
