Episode 35 - Restore and re-story

Once, everywhere, the land was storied.

Here is where uncle Joe met your auntie, this is where we rest the sheep during the droving, here is where we found the best cherries, on that hill is where our ancestors made a vow… My late nan told me about Bealach na Ba, the Pass of the Cattle, high above Applecross in the west of the Scottish Highlands, how she had seen other farmers drive a herd down from the heights to the village below, followed by one of the first motorcars to make it over the pass. ¹

We know the story of how the link between land and humans was broken, in many places and in many times, right up to the present moment. We may know all about the history of extraction of both the goodness and the people from the land. But I have a strong feeling that one of the ways we can give back to land is to hear the stories it tells us, to keep them, share them, and tell them in the places they are from, whether exact locations, accurate to the puddle, or more generally, in the county or country. Sometimes to tell them widely, to share the goodness stored in them. Of course we can research place, and dig deep into the record, tell ‘real’ stories. But we can also feel for the poetic truth of land and make prose, poems, or dramaturgical work that speaks not only to and of human people, but the non human people, too.