Isère, France. April, 2021. Titelbild

Isère, France. April, 2021.

Isère, France. April, 2021.

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 (After you have read these introductory paragraphs once, you can skip to the new/old content below. If you are listening, then the time stamp is around the two minute 45 second mark.)IntroductionThe word settled, to me, carries connotations I am keen to avoid. I have never felt settled or, perhaps, I cannot recall a time I felt settled. I do not feel settled now, writing this, and I’ve lived in the same house for three and a half years. Without even discussing the obvious issues of colonisation, I just don’t feel like I could, or should, settle; better to keep my constituent parts shook up, agitated perhaps, rather than separating and stagnant.Instead, I feel as though I have been travelling for years, maybe because I have not lived in my ‘home’ nation of Scotland for eight and a half years, perhaps because I know I won’t stay here forever, or maybe because I carry that concept of home in a way which differs from many?More precisely, I still think of myself as a slow traveller, globally feral. Recently, I have been revisiting places through the photographs and words I recorded when my feet crossed their soil. This is a way of reminding myself of where I have been, not just in space and time, but in mind, too. It is a wonderful thing, to come out of a low and rediscover myself through words I crafted, through the lens of a camera, when memory has wandered in the fog for too long. Thank you, past me.When I first started sharing letters with the world in this fashion, six or more years ago, I usually began them with a vignette of where I was, a sort-of travel diary, mixed with nature observation, locking in the setting for the reader, before I spoke of other things—and, by so doing, ensuring that place fed into the whole. It was a useful device, for reader and myself both but, as these letters were sent to so few readers, and now languish archived behind a paywall, I thought it a shame not to share these snippets again.As such, I am going to share a short series of these sketches, accompanied by a photograph from that time, sent to you in date order.I shall include the above paragraphs in each of the letters in this series, but I shall also include a link at the very start, so you can skip ahead once you are familiar with the above words. If you are listening and similarly want to skip, then the timestamp you want to navigate to will be in the same place.Taken without these paragraphs, each is a short read, and I hope you enjoy them.Isère, France. April, 2021.As the sun warms, the water flows. Everywhere on the mountainside, the sound of running streams, whether tumbling and brim-full of snowmelt, or thin rivulets, snaking to join their companions. Rhythm, rhyme, melody and music. Other than this, the sounds are mostly birdsong, each feathered bundle welcoming the spring with frantic activity. Nests are being built, relationships founded or reinforced, food collected and rivals discouraged. Birds and the water, wind in the trees, creaking of branches and the humming of bees.Bright flashes of fungi litter the forest floor, the warming days and wet conditions welcoming weird and beautiful shapes and sizes. Many I do not yet know, others old friends. Tracks in the ground, traces of those who came before, dropped deposits handy markers for identification: ermine and weasel and mole. The ground has been turned over by the snouts of the wild boar, the sanglier, capable of lifting rocks weighing half their hefty bodyweight, or more. Their disturbance is excellent for the soil, aerating and dispersing, encouraging seeds to sprout. Natures’ heavyweight gardeners are often accompanied by the robin, who has now also transferred his attention to the allotments and gardens of mankind.These woodlands are worked, tall giants felled individually, rather than the vast denudation of the clear-cut system. Piles of logs slumber by the road and trails, gently drying and beginning to season, often covered in bright flashes of identifying numbers, or scrambles of children, playing.Much of this area has altered in the last few generations. As small scale sheep and cattle rearing became economically unviable, their pastures and slopes were left fallow and in moved the birch, followed by others: Norway maple, linden, beech, oak, chestnut, poplar, mountain ash, larch, Norway spruce, silver fir, and various pines. Today these woodlands look older than they are, perhaps because the land still retains a memory of their cover from long before, perhaps because it feels right.As the woods returned, so did the animals, the deer, the boar, even the wolves. Higher, the remaining flocks of sheep and goats are sometimes interspersed with dogs, bred to look like the sheep they guard, but sheep with big teeth, loud barks and snarls. There are shepherds here, moving the animals from slope to slope, above the forests, in the places where the snow sits deepest in winter, the hillside ringing with the stone-crack of the raven call, ...
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