A Walking the Land first Friday walk 1-1-21

Prompt: Thomas A Clark – In Praise of Walking

I drew the path I took and it looks like a necklace on the page, one which has got all twisted up and would take ages to untangle. I see a shoe-string of dalliance, a convoluted route, which, were it a water course, would have tributaries and ox-bow pools.

I am setting forth with my pockets empty and no-one’s needs but mine. I have to focus entirely on keeping upright, my boots slipping on the tarmac speckled with white frost. There is ice lying like shards of broken glass at the junction, threatening. I let it turn me out of my way, Clark’s words echoing in my head.

Trickling down the View, crossing from right to left and back again to give others space, (after all, “one side of the road is as good as another”), I meet a corner stone. Ornamental and erect, it gestures up and off at an obtuse angle and I resist for a second, then relent. Eight steps later and I am attracted by a side stream and hesitate. Even though a metal railing divides the flight in two - up-goers on one side and down-comers on the other - still there is an awkward moment as my stopping interrupts the couple behind. She stands back, but the air jostles with awareness of inadequate Covid-room.

I exhale. This dog-leg takes me onto a desire path where small, spherical fruit remained orange on bare twigs. I know if I squash one that the seeds will be hard and dark inside. I don’t. They are probably poisonous, better for the birds. Thorns catch me in two places and hold me back. I have to grope behind blindly to unhook myself hearing the tiny tears as I strain, the scrape when I think I am free but I’m not. I find myself beside a fence under which naughty people and foxes have crawled enough times for the earth to be worn down in a dip. That’s how you get in there! Is that a grave stone through the posts? No, it is what looks like the rounder end of an ironing board sticking from the ground, but it might be something else.

I wonder, how do I choose, what to keep or discard so it all flows? how do I know? I was thinking about the book I‘m writing. At the entrance, there is a stone gas meter marker which looks like a small-animal memorial, you know, how children have smaller headstones? (I spend a lot of time in cemeteries, which might explain why I see it this way.) Someone has thrown black liquid at the base of it and the pattern puts me in mind of Bourgeouis’ huge Maman with its spider-like legs. There is a splatt of bird turd on the dark grey pavement next to it, the shape of the coronavirus. Turning into a street which opens delta-wide, it is an apparent dead-end, but, oh! on examination, there’s a way through.

I pass a short, square boy with his unbuttoned coat falling off one shoulder. He chirrups ‘happy new year!’ and wanders off, past a snow Madonna and Child nestling close in the strip of grass as the cars rush past. There’s a clothes line with red peg-berries dangling from it in the breeze. I stop, again, this time to photograph an alabaster Grecian head in a window -woman with ponytail - and a crow surprises me flying past at eye level. In a sea-blue sky, a gull sails with sunlight at its wing tips. I follow his trail and see that Midas has been at work on the high rises across the bay. It’s 1.30 in the afternoon but only 10 days after the shortest one of the year. See how they are gilded by the low-lying sun!

At the end of the lane, there’s a winged, white-plaster Sphinx looking intently at a gate which is usually shut. She sits atop a 12-spoked wheel which, when I look carefully, has a chain around an inner cog. I understand her gaze as a hint and go somewhere I have never been before: a vast expanse of cracked paving with old buddleia insinuating between it. In the mornings I write and rewrite, sort through words for a semblance of a sense, a theme.

Ah, this must be the site of the Madelvic Motor Carriage Company which made the first electric cars - I’d read about that! Now it is United Wire who are neglecting it. The traffic calming arm is up and I pass under, the degraded carrier bag flutters in branches, ghost fingers spooking me in the dusk. I spy a Marilyn Munroe-fungi through a diamond hole in the fence, its skirt flung upwards revealing soft, beige gills.

Random pools are frozen over, man-made reeds of rusted spikes. Tangles of metal cables cleave frigid rocks. Without direction, it’s a riddle. I search for the answer, for order out of the jumble of thoughts so people will understand what I’ve written. Under the shiny surface, perfect florettes of leaves are suspended. Bramble tendrils snake and metal refuse spirals make scallops over the tarmac. I skate without warning, teeter.

Someone has bothered to rearrange tyres, chosen to lay them in an oblong, lifted or rolled 109 of them so I can deer-step from rubber ring to rubber ring all the way round the outside of this urban fairy circle. I invoke my own magic or am conjured within the rim, where all becomes clear.

I know it is darkling, that I should retreat to busier streets for my own safety, but I don’t. Instead, I keep going deeper, stopping, stooping out of curiosity. When I hear a sound , I straighten up, I see that I am not alone – a pair of urchins are playing here too, the wild sifting through the wild. They hoot.

A solitary boot lies on its side, abandoned, half a tan-leather story with a black, elasticated seam. Rolls of barbed wire loop on the railings at the perimeter, once effective. Night finally drops, navy blue, and last-minute dog walkers seem to appear out of thin air. There’s a smell now, my nose wrinkling at the pollution from the dump over there - the wind must have come round.

I walk parallel to the kids who forage on, showing no sign that I'm heading now for the exit. With a rush, a magpie and its long tail-spike passes. A rustle, and there’s a wren at ground level under the light - it flies through the gap. I pause by the lone tree (though it says No Parking) and I am drawn to the folds in the bark where an owl should be ooo-ing. A fox sees me before I spot ,her. She stands still, watches, gauging. Head down, she turns and leaves without a sound. I get the feeling I was interrupting her regular route.

Uphill. I am returning to myself. I pocket my phone and open the gate. My pendant swings against the metal, and the cat looks up from her licking at my approach.

The quote is taken from the text prompt by Thomas A Clark which can be seen at the link at the top of the page - Walking the Land.

A Walking the Land first Friday walk 1-1-21

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