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The below is written in response to Jay providing an update on our Wayfinding Books, four years after we ran our successful Kickstarter Campaign.
Hi Dear Travellers, Home-bods
A bob of painted ducks take to the gelatinous water flowing over cobbled boulders out to sea.
I launch myself among them, through the golden waves smushing the shore and beyond.
A darling fox has succumbed on the rockline, her matted fur burst with exhaustion, a grizzled stare.
I fin through the depths to an offshore boulder that sucks the swell and lifts and folds Alaria esculenta.
Skalavik. Bolungarvik. Ingjaldssandur. Raudissandur. Talknafjordur. Sudureyri. Sudavik. Flateyri. Home again, for now at least.
I arrived in May, the grass still brown, the wind still blowing with Northern ice. To lift and stack stone.
First with Unnsteinn, a lynchpin in our efforts throughout our Wayfinding project and now a good friend.
And together we then joined a Dan Snow workshop—an American stone-artist visiting Hafnir in the South.
We co-create two stone triangular sculptures, an inverse of each other, while learning how he works.
“I believe the sight of a new drystone construction on the land is a sign of a healthy community. When loose stone is collected and arranged, conversations take place. Intercouse is initiated among people about their place on earth”—Dan Snow
Body recovering up in the North-West, I use my hands differently. Turn them pink while stripping rhubarb of its fibres. Pair with skeletal remains of Angelica stems turned whale-white by the change of seasons; there’s a different kind of art in me these days. More finesse and embodied, less mountain-top walking—did we really guide groups across this formidable landscape? Yes, and what a fabulous collection of images and stories we lived together; I love fingering the pages we bound as a community—they’re popular in an ever-green way here in the Westfjords.
There’s quietness here, in community. The light follows unfamiliar patterns, creates continuity of time. The feel of earth healthy on scale. A counter-point, supportive shape to play against the ever-present complexities. I feel cod-kin here, dig the dark soil for roots smelling of rose and am reminded the earth’s wildness supports our own. And that’s a most precious thing.
