Softness is the dream in every ache to be a better soul.
I write this with aching hands, biceps and triceps, but with a glad heart. My aching body may actually be the cause of my open heart.
I am away tanning reindeer skins in Devon and assisting my friend tan about 30 other hides which had accumulated in her deep freezer. It is a great privilege to do crafts that I love with a friend and to work my body intensely for 6 or 7 hours a day so that another waste-stream material can become something beautiful and useful. In this case, these reindeer skins will become buckskin to make clothing when they have been softened and smoked next visit. Some roe deer skins will become full-grain leather on which I will test the many ways I paint and draw on leather, in readiness for a class I’ll teach online this summer. It is all part of my cunning plan to make adornment, decoration and material beauty a living tradition again amongst everyday people who have lost the confidence to make beauty as they see fit, rather than how they are told. To make beauty freely, rather than allowing the dictates of coolness, influencers or mass-production set a standardised, un-convivial visual tone for our homes and belongings. One more day to go, and then I’ll go home to prepare to shoot the how-to sections of my new drawing materials book. So, I sit upon my friend’s bed and steal a few moments to write to you, on Sunday evening.
This week is a between essays week. I’ll be back with something longer next week.
The desert and Wessex in a Devon garden
It has been a week of alternating sun and rain, sometimes every few minutes or so. In waterproofs or a tee-shirt I have scraped away the grain layer of skins, acutely aware of the physicality of both the now dead animal and the currently still living creature that is me. Next to me today, Theresa has been scraping the hide of a deer she shot in Bulgaria with a bow and arrow she had made, all of which was shown on the television program ‘Surviving the Stone Age’. She grew up in Wyoming, and has been hunting for food since she was 8 years old. Her dad was deputy head of fish and game in the state, so she became a keen naturalist in the process.
We could not have had more different backgrounds, with me, a town girl, then city musician and artist, and yet now we are firm friends and regular colleagues. We met at a bushcraft course where she was teaching buckskin making during a week of torrential rain in Wiltshire and we bonded over our resistance to the moping attitude of some of the students. We did all we could to raise spirits, including a 20 mile round trip run to Tisbury for chocolate cake. We still laugh at bad weather, and crack on. But the Devon rain grates on my desert friend. She will not miss the dampness when she finally leaves. And so we empty her freezer of hides and turn them into ancestral fabrics, so that one day when she packs, it will be much more easy. In the meantime we can make ourselves clothes and shoes, bags and blankets. And I become a better tanner, slowly, hide by hide, occasionally spotting issues before they arise, remembering the methods she taught me, adjusting the angle of the blade here, or the strength of the tannins there. Sometimes the knowledge is in my hands after all, and my mind can stay open, peaceful and attentive, and for once, not in the way of anything.
For the Roses
When I work hides my mind goes extremely quiet. Much more so than if I ‘sit Zen’. I can only assume it’s the concentration needed not to tear the hide nor to leave it inadequately worked, added to the physical effort which means there is no time to dwell on self at all. So far it’s been four and half days of work; the same amount of time since I found out that my dear friend and Dark Mountain colleague Mark Watson had suddenly and unexpectedly died. We had only spoken last week, and were due to teach together this week. It is a huge shock. All of the ‘Dark Mountain diaspora’ are terribly sad at this loss, and our hearts go out to his partner Charlotte.
If you have bought a copy of one of the books or emailed about your subscription during the last 6 years, then it is likely Mark you will have been dealing with. He knew almost every subscriber by name (and sometimes address!) He proof read the books and wrote beautifully about plants and food. But the Mark I knew would break into song, in either Spanish or English, at a moment’s notice, would sing Joni Mitchell songs in her original key, with all the ornamentation, even after a gin and tonic. He and Charlotte and I danced our arses off last year at midsummer in the little park outside my flat to some banging 90s dance music and 70s disco, with a combined age of 178 between us, under the giant spreading mariposa pines. That was the most fun I had dancing in a decade. How I will miss his wonderful company, infectious laugh and delicious spicy fritters. We will all gather for his return to Earth later this month. Until then, I am staying somewhat secluded with work, but in regular contact with dear ones. I am very glad of the internet for email. Yes, I know the horrors the online world brings, but plain old email, a vestige of simpler times, is keeping me in touch with people who need each other right now.
Friendship is, apart from family, the most important thing in my life. I can take care of study, or research, health or self-expression, and still remain self-contained. But it is in the conviviality I was blessed to come into, when meeting a crew pretty late in life, that I found my heart’s vocation in the in-betweenness-of-relationships. Mark was for me a central part of that. He was so well-loved, is so well-loved. I hope he knew it. I think he did. In these coming weeks I shall sing it to him, and listen to Joni when I get home.
Let us tell those we love how we feel. Love is not just for spouse and kin, it is big enough for friends, for Earth, for creatures, for life, for the Great Mystery.
A tribute fund has been set up for Mark Watson’s funeral and to pass on his teachings about plants and their wisdom. If you would like to contribute, click here.
This week’s good thing: There is no way to choose a song from the scores of greats in honour of Mark, but here’s one we all sang at the beach huts one day, 6 or 7 years ago. This is a wonderful live rendition by Joni Mitchell of ‘A Case Of You’.
If you cannot afford a paid subscription but would like to be able to comment, just reply to this email or contact me at carolineross@substack.com and I will comp you a year for free.
The first line from ‘Softness’ written by my late Grandmaster John Kells.
I met Mark (and you, Charlotte and Nick) at Dartington last year, at the Labyrinth & Dancing Floor gathering. He struck me then as a person with a particular kind of irrepressible twinkle that gave a little tickle to the moment and made me smile. I'm so sorry to hear that he has gone from this world. We have just planted 2400 tiny trees which will be blessed at the spring equinox: I will be reading out the names of those who have gone, because the trees are a kind of memorial; if I may, I will add Mark's name. "From stardust we came; to soil we go / to join the web / that makes life grow."
I’m so sorry and shocked to hear of Mark’s passing. I loved his input at Schumacher last June. Condolences especially to Charlotte and also to you and Nick and others.