The Land of the Long Table
The Land of the Long Table
New England Travelogue Pt 2
I have been spending time with dear ones when not sharing movement and ochres with others so this travelogue has been, unavoidably, greatly postponed. It’s a bright breezy day in Vermont and we just made cornbread to a delicious recipe from
, though with duck fat rather than lamb fat, as that is what’s to hand…
Reflecting on what I might share today, I feel a profound but hard to describe change in myself, as stark as the turning of the season, which has been the frame to all our days here since we landed in Albany, NY, USA.
This trip, my first ever with a partner to see friends in a foreign country, has been a revelation. I would say I know the States pretty well for a Brit; I’ve visited 36 states since 1996 and spent a considerable amount of time in New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, West Virginia, Wyoming, Massachusetts and Vermont states, travelled widely in Northern California, the Rockies, Utah and Yellowstone Park, (in every season but autumn) and feel I can place most North American accents, given a moment or two. Yet it is something else entirely to be met and greeted by friends and to eat every main meal with my partner and often between one and ten others, rather than to be tourists staying in hotels and eating in diners and restaurants. We have sat at many long tables, and a couple of small ones, with equal pleasure. Spending almost three weeks sleeping in cosy structures which are not houses - a wooden cabin and then a woodland yurt, has accustomed us to the new sounds of huffing cows, northlands birdsong, turkeys, night-time coyote parties on the hill across the valley and the piercing calls of raptors through the canvas and felt of the walls.
Yesterday began with a morning spent catching up with my friend, the wonderful Rachel Fritz Schaal and assisting by pouring raw milk curds into moulds at Parish Hill Creamery. With a packet of ‘Jack’s Blue’ safely stashed in my coat pocket, the day continued with a wine tasting of exceptional biodynamic wines at La Garagista’s pop up, (which is becoming a full time shop) in Chester, VT. I do not drink a great deal of alcohol so when I do have a tipple I like it to be full of flavour and worth the cost that alcohol will charge me in headaches or lack of clarity the next day. Yet today, after drinking at least a couple of glasses of their natural wines, I feel no ill effects. So praise and blessings equally on the ingenious hybrid vines, lower alcohol levels due to cooler climate, and winemaking skills of Deirdre Heekin. I will visit the vineyards next year if my planned trip takes place, as she told me of five vastly different coloured clays in the Champlain Valley, and the terra cotta amphoras in which she ages the wine. Now I must see these earthen things and perhaps make some paints there too, including some of the wild flowers that intermingle with the vines. Terroir is as important to the natural materials artist as the winemaker, so there is much to discuss and discover.
The evening was spent with our hosts, dear Candace and Owen of In Situ Polyculture at the home of Peter Dixon and Rachel Fritz Schaal for the greatest fondue of all time, I swear, featuring three of their cheeses and half a bottle of wine, plus apples, broccoli, cauliflower and good bread to dip in it. In Britain, fondue seems like something only heard of in the 1970s. After the unctuous delight of dousing tasty things in a copper pot full of molten gold, I have been converted. I won’t wait 40 years for the next one.
It has also been a pleasure to meet parents of two of my hosts, Adam and Owen, so see the resemblances and differences, and to be at tables in new milieus, featuring Wisconsin accents and talk of church, ceramics, art or family. A joy, and such generosity.
Perhaps for you, hosting and guesting are a regular part of life and you get to share meals with loved ones, visitors and welcome strangers daily. I enjoyed something like that in the early 2000s but since the lockdowns, evictions and estrangements of 2020-2022, it has very much not been so for me. I completely understand why Anna Björkman and
convened and named The Long Table in their A School Called Home. The longing for the long table in me is also profound, whether that’s a physical table, a picnic blanket on the ground, or some small place to be able to host again. So I am recounting these beautiful instances of guesting as a balm for myself and any of you whose bones also ache for the embrace of its sibling, hosting.
The change I feel in my heart isn’t an ‘about-face’. It’s a ripening, I think. I have had no phone signal for three weeks, and wifi only when needed over the last 10 days. After 450 days non-stop, I stopped doing my Italian lessons on Duolingo, as I realised the benefits of this way of acquiring that beautiful language were outweighed by the need to service an infernal device twice a day. I will seek a different way forward with my studies. My current use of this platform feels about right, here while I am away, and I will keep it like this: sparse, meaningful, measured. My Instagram is how many thousands of people find out about my art teaching work, which is one of my main livelihoods, so I may not just leave it. But while here, I have found a way to deal with it sanely and infrequently, while wholeheartedly replying to those who ask about the classes or my work, and directing them to my other newsletter here on Substack.
When I next write to you, I will be somewhere above the Atlantic, flying home to damp Blighty, from bone-dry stick-season Vermont. My heart will be sad but my skin will be happier. Sadly, it didn’t work out to be here in time to meet up with Dougald on his tour nor to catch up with
on his, this week, even though he’s only one state away. It’s such a big place, after all… So trips to Sweden and Ireland are now on the cards for us.Why I am writing simply this week of friendship, meals, tables and food is because in these precious things, as in hand craft, as I have previously argued, the vestiges of what is good and true in many of our bloated, listing, western cultures still inheres.1 A few weeks ago I asked ‘when is the right time to draw people together?’. It is abundantly clear to me from the examples of my friends and from the song in my heart that the answer is ‘now’. It may take me a month or so to let things percolate until I can articulate the gleanings from this season of incredible bounty2 so until next week I will leave you to enjoy images from the last two weeks, plus extend you an invitation.
This morning the wind whipped up and whisked away the last leaves from the trees in this valley apart from a bright red oak to my right, (which you can admire in the main photo of this post.) As I type this it is quaking in the breeze, like the scarlet-clad love child of a Canadian sugar maple and a never-still aspen. I love its spirit. A beacon on the hillside, how fine it must look from the other side of the valley.
This week’s good thing: My friend the writer Em Strang is now writing here on Substack, I am happy to say. I wrote about her startling and excellent novel Quinn a few months ago, and I urge you to read it. If you are interested in writing, forgiveness, God, violence, peace, wrestling with huge questions, then subscribe to her Substack. Em never wastes words and her preference is for hermithood. So, I welcome her clear voice here as an antidote to the occasional shouting.
Below this line is the invitation for paid subscribers to the next Heartwork Movement class to be held on Saturday 30th November 2024 on Zoom. We’ll be looking at the Front and Back Heart Salutations and revising both, deepening them until we have the movements imbued with some life and energy. All are welcome! If you’d like to join us, just pay for a month’s (or a year’s) subscription, and come along. All you need to do is watch the last two recordings first.
You are very welcome to attend the class with anyone else who is at home with you on the day. However, please do not share the link online or by email elsewhere, thankyou.
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