We were delighted to receive some photos through from Creative Cullompton, taken of Stacey working on the mosaic with visitors. Thank you to Kathy Coley Photography for allowing us to use these great pictures!
Our June Earthworks session included carving tent pegs, clearing brambles to to fit a new slackline and some adventurous den-building with Tim.
Today was our spring gathering – the team dodged showers to clear some areas of Travellers Joy from the wood and enjoyed a story from Kev around the fire.
With guests Vik and Hannah of Creative Cullompton. In the podcast we talk about the amazing Golgotha at St Andrews Church, enthuse about the sheer volume of the local schoolchildren, discuss Creative Cullompton’s next projects and hint darkly at the time Kev nearly got off the train in the wrong county.
Our role in this project has been to deliver educational sessions to the two primary schools in Cullompton. Here we talk about the structure of the sessions and inspiration behind the educational content we delivered.
On the High Street project we have featured a heavily-edited version of the story of Tom Austin, a local highwayman, and Kev has been absolutely desperate to tell the whole tale in a less sanitised format. Here it is. It’s pretty gruesome.
Our Chelston Heritage Evenings are back! Come and find out more about the heritage of Chelston at the Chelston Manor on Tuesday 8th November, it would be great to see you.
Lonely keeper of the gold
In the tumbled cleave.
A bird out of Merlin’s ear.
from ‘Wren’, by Ted Hughes
One of the things I love about Taleblazers is that I get to spend most of my working week outdoors, exploring the coast and moors with our young people. Together we go to a whole variety of places, moorland, beach and woodland, and one of our students’ favourite places is Stover. It’s not the wildest of places but there’s always something to see: tufted ducks diving, dragonflies buzzing over the marsh, finches squabbling at the bird feeder. We always love to spend a few hours there.
Dotted around the park, and linked together by a trail that weaves around the woods, are some of Ted Hughes poems. They are printed on shiny plaques attached to big wooden posts, and are usually sited in an appropriate environment reflecting the poem. You can sit by the water and reflect on To Paint A Water Lily, or read Roe-Deer deep in the woods. Hughes was born in Yorkshire but is closely associated with Devon, and his poems are perfect for this setting. It can feel very calming to sit by one of his poems and unpick the words and phrases, immersing yourself in each line. His work often needs a little unpicking, but Hughes will repay an investment of time many times over.
My favourite work of Hughes’s is A Cormorant, and on the trail the poem is sited at a spot where you can often look across the lake and see one drying its wings high up in a tree (for all their otherwise perfect adaptation, cormorants do not have waterproof wings and need to dry them off after diving). A Cormorant is a masterpiece, contrasting Hughes as an ‘optimistic, awkward, infatuated’ fisherman with a cormorant ‘dissolving fish naturally’. Hughes is cumbersome, overloaded with gear, entirely unsuited to the task of catching fish, while the cormorant is a sleek marvel, perfect for the task. I love the way Hughes even uses clunky language and lumpy phrases to describe himself, while when describing the words spill out in a wonderful flow. I thoroughly recommend you go and find the poem by the lake and take some time to digest it, and if you are incredibly lucky you may even find you have a cormorant for company.
I hope you enjoy it half as much as I do.
Here before me, snake-head.
My waders weigh seven pounds.My Barbour jacket, mainly necessary
For its pockets, is proofAgainst the sky at my back. My bag
Sags with lures and hunter’s medicine enoughFor a year in the Pleistocene.
My hat, of use onlyIf this May relapses into March,
Embarrasses me, and my net, long as myself,Optimistic, awkward, infatuated
With every twig-snag and fence-barbWill slowly ruin the day. I paddle
Precariously on slimed shale,And infiltrate twenty yards
Of gluey and magnetized spider-gleamInto the elbowing dense jostle-traffic
Of the river’s tunnel, and prayWith futuristic, archaic under-breath
So that some fish, telepathically overpowered,Will attach its incomprehension
To the bauble I offer to space in general.The cormorant eyes me, beak uptilted,
Body-snake low — sea-serpentish.He’s thinking: “Will that stump
Stay a stump just while I dive?” He dives.He sheds everything from his tail end
Except fish-action, becomes fish,Disappears from bird,
Dissolving himselfInto fish, so dissolving fish naturally
Into himself. Re-emerges, gorged,Himself as he was, and escapes me.
Leaves me high and dry in my space-armour,A deep-sea diver in two inches of water.
‘A Cormorant’, by Ted Hughes
See also: the Ted Hughes Poetry Trail on the Devon County Council website (external link).
Visiting the Walronds we found these interesting circular carvings on the fireplaces and doorways. This is the fascinating story of the witches’ marks, also known as apotropaic marks, scratched into surfaces to stop evil spirits from gaining access to the room.
I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.
John Muir
Today is John Muir Day, marking Muir’s 184th birthday and commemorating his life and the Trust and Award set up in his name. Muir is known as the ‘father of national parks’ and is famous for his explorations of the American wilderness, having moved to America with his family at the age of 11 and spent most of the rest of his life exploring and writing about it. The story of Muir’s life is inspirational and his writings still carry a freshness about them, vivid descriptions that still have the power to pull you into the landscape. There is a lot of excellent writing about Muir’s life, not least in the hundreds or articles and books he produced in his life, so in this post I will talk about the John Muir Award and how Taleblazers are involved.
The John Muir Award is an open award that anyone can take part in, centred around discovering, protecting and celebrating wild places. It has three levels – Discovery, Explorer and Conserver – each of which requires a greater depth of commitment and immersion in the natural environment. To achieve the award, you have to work towards four challenges: Discover, Explore, Conserve and Share. The award is quite open and can be adapted easily to fit individual needs, so it fits our 1-1 programmes really well. It gives a reason to be out and about in wild places and provides a context for the activities we do.
Kev and I ran our first John Muir Award many years ago, working with Bovey Tracey Guides at Broadhempston to complete the Discovery Award. We had a lot of fun running it and when we started Taleblazers one of the first things we did was to put together a John Muir programme to offer to individuals and schools. It suits our blend of environmental education and storytelling incredibly well, and as adaptable leaders we have a lot of fun delivering it.
I love the John Muir Award so much that I decided to work towards the Conserver level myself. There are a lot of places I love, but I decided to focus my award at Hembury Woods just outside Buckfast. The area has a fascinating history, with a Norman castle sitting on top of the earthworks of a hillfort, and a silver mine in the valley below. But it’s the natural beauty of the woods, sitting on the western wide of a twist of the river Dart, that I get most excited about. The wood is managed so there are areas of new growth and there is often some thinning taking place, but down by the river the woods are wonderful. Old oak and beech trees sit side by side on the river bank, watching the water tumble over short rapids and fan into quiet swimming spots. Birdsong is everywhere, wood ants busy themselves as only ant colonies can, and underfoot there are bluebells and bilberries.
I realised early on that there is so much I don’t know, so as part of my award I’ve been working on my wood lore. With the help of Steve from Basic Bushcraft I’ve been working on my tree identification, and although I’m no expert yet I can at least spot hazel, alder, larch, western hemlock and others. On each visit I spot a new mushroom or flower that I rush home to identify. It’s a fascinating and immersive process, knowledge gained by exploration and experience gradually getting to know every part of the wood. Every day brings new questions, and excitement in the search for answers.
However, my journey hasn’t just been one of learning. Influenced by the young people I have been working with as well as the environment, I have discovered an enjoyment of more creative activities: photography, sketching, writing, painting. I have sat quietly by the river with my students or by myself and just allowed time to pass. The benefits to my own mental health have been profound. Doing the John Muir Award has reminded me to take time out in nature myself, to open up to creativity and sometimes to just let the world go by.
I still have more to do before I finish. I haven’t visited the wood at dusk or dawn yet, looked for bats and kingfishers. I’d like to set up some NPMS squares to find out what plants live in different areas of the site and to track their abundance over the coming months and years. And I feel ready to start the Share phase of my award in greater earnest. This blog has been part of that process but, as a reward for getting to the end of it, I’d like to invite you to share it with me. On Saturday 30th April I will be leading an early morning walk at Hembury Woods. I’d like to show you around the woods and tell you the story of the hillfort and mine, introduce you to the river and some of the species that live on its banks. There is no charge, but I would appreciate donations to the John Muir Trust if you feel able to do so.
If you would like to come, booking is essential – please check the Eventbrite page for ticket availability.
