Remembering Inverianvie

Sometimes the walks we remember are failures according to the standard measurement of reaching a destination. 

This map and text record an episode in the road north when we attempted to reach  Loch a' Mhadaidh Mor, the bigger wolf loch, following the Inverianvie River.  It was not a sensible walk for someone with M.E., but it was the walk the poet wanted to attempt. 

The drawings were first exhibited in Day of Access (Travelling Gallery, 2019).

Inverianvie                 

pulling my legs

along with my eyes

drawing a straight line

in-between grey-

clitched boulders

and tarry puddles

walk on, walk on

when your boots

get bent           

walk on, walk on         

to the white noise

of the waterfall

walk on, walk on

with a dream

of the lochan

walk on, walk on

as far as the name-

lost glen

walk on, walk on

kist beneath Carn

an Lochain Dubh

walk on, walk on

sensing skyline

after skyline

walk on, walk on

part way up Inverianvie

or part-way down

walk on, walk on

wherever we are now

I can go no further

letting go the loch

I pour the tea

thinking of Tom

still giving illumination

as language flickered

and dimmed

Extract from a long poem reflecting on the road north, a year-long journey through Scotland, guided by Matsuo Basho’s Oku-no-hosomichi. The journey was a collaboration with Ken Cockburn.

The poem includes a lyric from Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee’s Walk On, and phrases from the late Tom Lubbock’s memoir of living with a brain tumour. Lubbock’s loss of language paralleled my exhaustion in a glen bereft of names. Failing to reach the loch, I was reminded that Basho records similar failures, and sometimes embroiders descriptions of places he never reached. the road north sought an equilibrium between (very) short walks and nominated viewpoints, informed by our experience of Neolithic dùns, follies and contemporary huts or ‘temples’.

These posts are published as part of a year-long artist in residence, funded by Paths for All.