
dear sojourners,
summer solstice is a wink away. the Strawberry Full Moon skimmed over Tree tops last week. sweet Strawberries at the farmers’ market are overflowing from vendor stalls. where i live in the pacific nw we have the sweetest Strawberries (you may argue with me, but your argument will go unheeded. there will be no convincing me otherwise). their aroma wafts from the stalls as i walk by. the sweetness is that enticing. folks leave with flats of red-gold filling carts and baskets. jam, shortcake, sliced with cream, or simply popping them in one’s mouth…tasting extravagances in their future. Strawberries are meant to be shared.

i have been home for over a month from my sojourn. a month home and the memories feel both distant yet echo in my thoughts. i continue to stitch together a mental quilt of my time away. my last post, stitching together a sojourn, focused on my walk along St. Cuthbert’s Way. my injured knee. my decision to come home early. (for the curious: the knee is back to its aging normalness after resting. ongoing physical therapy is focused on strengthening exercises to reduce future mishaps.)
i continue to ponder what i have returned with. what i carry. the time after the walk, due to being restricted in movement, led me to museums, a battlefield memorial, exhibits, cairns, and visitor centers i may have overlooked had i followed my original plans, offering “lemonade” from my lemony knee.
one day i took an excursion via Rabbies Tours that included a stop at Culloden. the brochure says, “On 16 April 1746, the final Jacobite Rising came to a brutal head in one of the most harrowing battles in British history.” the visitor center promoted an even-handed account (well, as much as can be offered with available documents and stories) of the scottish and the british sides leading up to the events to what was a massacre of the scottish clansmen. the background prior to that day is complicated. politics. religion. power grabs. nothing is simple, is it? i wish i had taken a photo of one plaque that had some wording along the lines that “not soon after the loses of the day and the end of the uprising, the story told in scotland would be of a righteous revolt…” basically a shaping of the narrative to tell the story in a way that weighted the uprising with one side shining and one side in shadow and leaving out a more nuanced telling of what transpired. not to take sides here, for i am not directly quoting the plaque, i was just noting “how” the story is told is influential moving forward.
i thought of my own country’s history and how shaping the narrative influences generations forward (and yes, i’m considering our own (un)civil war and the more recent attempt to reshape Jan 6). even as i walked along The Borders region of St Cuthbert’s Way, there was a marked distinction between the scottish side and the english side for the human denizens. Hills, Streams, Skylarks, Sheep, Gorse…they know no difference. it is humans that choose and fight for firm borders.
as i left the exhibit with the images of a graphic short reenactment video in my head and limped around the battlefield, i noticed how glorious the Birdsong was that morning. lilting notes blanketed the Wildflowers and grassy Moor. folks wandered on mowed paths to find markers that honored different clans of members who died during the violent and bloody battle. of the 1,600 slain that day, 1,500 were jacobites. so much blood poured out on the soil. do you every wonder how Land absorbs all that blood? how Shrub and Tree roots take it in? does the Mycelia network take the O-type in and transform it into nutrients for next season’s crops for people working Land? do the Wildflowers bloom a deeper stained shade for years to come? and how do we decided which fields are designated as sacred? to never be tilled again?


remembering is valuable. and yet, as the Bird song filled the air that morning, i wanted to stop everyone from talking and say listen. listen. Birds have something to tell us.
and Land too has its deeper wisdom. there other ways to honor the past besides monuments and markers and reenactments and books and gift shops, and, and, and. and yes, this is “my” history (on the english side…ugh, we have done some messed up shit over the centuries). but what if the Birds were singing to bring Soil back to a place of fruitfulness? what if that Land no longer wanted to hold the ghosts of the dead? how long do we make the Land hold onto our human violence?
so yes, remembering is valuable. i found the wall moving. but who does the remembering and who shapes it? who tells the story (now i have the Hamilton soundtrack in my head.)?
so Culloden lingers even weeks later…not simply as one battlefield, but for how humans control the Land as acts of remembrance after we engage in war or conquest. or what we choose to not remember.
i also visited Kilmartin Museum (close to where my cousin lives on the west coast of scotland—grateful they took me!) which takes one on a journey back to Neolithic times, 12,000 years ago. this i found fascinating. the museum starts in the present day and walks back though time. we visit the power brokers, the struggles from pandemics and plagues, the religious upheavals (saw the jacobites again and read more of their story). we see when the romans and vikings invaded the isles. try to get an idea of who the picts were. back through the iron age, the bronze age to, finally, the neolithic. conjecture as to the purpose of cairns (ritual and burial sites) with their complex stone arrangements that marked winter solstices with mathematical precision. as someone whose passion is in the world of grief, death and dying, i found the discoveries of human skeletal remains buried with a “beaker” (containing objects assumed to be of importance) tender. tending to our dead and having rituals of grief is, it appears, at least as old as homo sapiens.
it is the neolithic period that tugs at me, for that seems to be a time humans from my ancestry were clearly connected with the Land and the rhythm of the Earth (including Moon, Sun, and Stars). listened to the Land. it took generations of watching the Sun and Moon cycles to build these complex cairns, stone circles, henges, and other ancient structures. when we of european ancestry were indigenous. somehow, somewhere over time we lost that. lost our indigenous roots. that is what i crave…connection to that ancient Land wisdom.
i recently attended a few sessions of The Eternal Song gathering (link is to the movie trailer) offered through SAND (Science and Nonduality) where i believe you can view the full movie. i highly recommend. it is difficult to describe except to say there seems to be a movement to make space for the indigenous wisdom of the world’s cultures to speak. for those who still deeply listen to Land & Water. for the Elders voices to be lifted up. a connection to be made with Deep Time. to listen to Creator, as that is honored in many traditions. for language to shift from that of extraction and exploitation to relationship and reciprocity. and even those words need to be held loosely. for what i am learning, and i am a lover of words and writing, is that written language can be a prison if it binds us and becomes stale. written words can border us when we need to be expanding. and oh how i love to read and explore! and yet, to listen to Land, Ocean, Birds, Trees, Stones i have to let go of words and listen cellularly.
i am trying to unlearn. perhaps that is why this post is so messy. why it takes so long to write a post. some days language fails to “capture” what i am experiencing. or i reflect on my beliefs and realize how deeply saturated they are in western culture. it is exhausting. i have the privilege of being exhausted in my comfortable abode.
as i consider how to close this post that certainly has no solutions in this time of uncertainty, a brevity of words by Báyò Akómoláfé offered during one of The Eternal Song sessions are what linger with me in my own yearning to hear deeply The Eternal Songs shared by the wise council present during the gathering:
The world is not still…it is constantly dancing.
Understanding is overestimated.
Poetry is the refusal of anything to be still.
Poetry is where language comes from.
Meaning is not everything. There is resonance. (he attributed this last quote to someone else, but could not remember who.)
these five brief statements i jotted down…feel like permission to dance with my own unsettledness. to not “wrap anything up,” even a post (though, i’ll close like i always do-ha.) and there is more i’m pondering about my sojourn. more threads to weave. so until i surface again…
for your reflection:
what do you notice when you visit museums, memorials, and other historical markers? (i’m one of those people who reads almost every sign!) do you wonder what stories are missing? why the ones that are included are there? what stirs your curiosity? if you could create a marker of some sorts, what would you honor?
since my last post, i asked how do you engage with the Land and Beings where you live? what have you noticed?
in this world that is constantly changing, how are you being kind to yourself and others?
i spend my days reading other folks words, writing in my journal, pondering future posts, and watching the Birds stop by. they sip, spin and splash in the birdbath. it delights me…and though i don’t know their inner thoughts, it looks like they are enjoying themselves. i’ve even had Crow stop by a few times for a sip. Crow is about 10x the size of the Sparrows, Dark-Eyed Juncos, House Finches and Goldfinches. i feel very honored.
please take tender care of your hearts and the Beings (human and other) you meet going about your day.
in gratitude,
anne
ps: speaking of narratives and who gets to tell the story, one of my favorite Substackers, Katy Wheatley, posted this: AIDS Quilt UK, that i believe is worthy of you reading time.
Such a beautiful post. And the images are stunning. It makes me wistful for the time I lived in Scotland. I will be heading out to England tomorrow to the Lake District for a week of walking and noticing (and maybe some writing) - and your post is great inspiration to draw from as I make my journey there.
Amazing piece! I thoroughly enjoyed it! I’m heading back to Scotland for the Great Glen Way in a few weeks and am going to try to get to the West Coast for a few days.. this was perfect timing.