Feral

 


I spent the weekend going Feral. It was a yoga weekend with a load of people from Hebden Bridge and Todmorden. They go wild swimming and walking and wild swimming.

I quite like wild swimming, but this time, with some of the Wild Swimming gang from Todmorden, I swam for longer and felt more interested in the feeling of being in the landscape, rather than just the excitement of cold water. I swam for longer and felt more immersed.

We went walking with a ranger who taught us to listen and watch the landscape and be in it in a different way. I was with some really interesting people, who do art and tree stuff and they helped me think a bit more about the concept of belonging in Treescapes. I think we assume that belonging is about land ownership, and that is why I am so glad Colin from Aberdeen is in the project, because he is passionate about the idea of common land. 

I realised, in the Lake District, that belonging is about sensing and being, and inhabiting a space as a kind of practice, which is hard to do if you are a bit creaky in your bones. I watch children running across a park or climbing a tree, and think that is belonging. We need to think about how we belong and the practice architecture of belonging. 


I really liked this tree but tried to get the car out of it, but then it struck me that the car was embedded in the architecture of belonging. People's houses are often their ways of belonging, but they don't necessarily need to be in a house to belong. I have been reading Robert Macfarlane The Wild Places in which he camps on a frozen tarn in the Lake District - I don't think I could do that. 

It was fun though, and people were really interested in the Trees project - I have got the Todmorden Tree project involved I hope. 

Comments

  1. spodsheffNovember 2, 2021 at 4:03 AM

    I like wild swimming - One year I swam in the pacific in Victoria in Canada, the Med, the North sea ( which is the atlantic) and the Bosphorus and probably a few lakes and rivers. This year I swam in Agdon reservoir , and Morcombe bay I didn't swim in Dorset as I had cut my finger. I swim as it connects my body to the world and I think this is why its become so popular during lock down. Our bodies feel removed from the world. Belonging is an interesting concept - it has a potential to other - like the idea of indigenous species. The people and the things that belong and the people and the things that do not belong. I liked this quote from Michel De Certeau " We are all foreigners on the inside - there is no outside. " I read it once but have never been able to find it since so maybe I dreamed it or made it up. It makes no sense - none of us belong on the inside - there is no outside.

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