A whole journey
I am caught between thinking of journey as a tired metaphor and the conviction that it is a much needed one. It holds together the whole of life, from childhood through to old age, and offers a metaphor of layered meaning for the passage of faith.
Our day out in August at the Ben Lawers Nature Reserve outside Killin reflected some of this chronological reach with young children to 50 year old olds walking, talking and eating together—a merry troupe of 23 in all. The theme was developed materially for us as we listened to Tom Ingrey-Counter describing the new installation that replaced the much derided Visitor Centre.
Tom Ingrey Counter
Discreet and sunk into the landscape at the base of our walk up to the Tarmachan ridge there is a new shieling. This shell of a dwelling is made of turf, stone, thatch and mattress. Within its walls, open to rain and wind and sun, stand a variety of chunky stonelike pieces of art. Text is chiselled into their surfaces reflecting on the rich heritage of journey that is mapped through people’s movements and in the seasonal variations in the landscape of peat and bog, lochan and rare plants. They, plus the flowing floor-stones, bear the messages of journey: ‘Shelter’ and ‘nourishment', the ‘extreme highs’ offered by the terrain and ‘adaptation’ and 'pioneer’ required of its travellers. Its thresholds encourage us to pause and reflect. They welcome and wave off walkers with their final words ‘look well to each step’.
Tom Ingrey-Counter
The Bible is etched with journeys, at once both physical and mythical – Abraham’s, Moses’s, the Exile and Paul’s, of leaving and arrival, of endings and beginnings. All or many are about transition. These are reflected upon by scripture itself (as well as by saints down the ages) and regarded as archetypal. They depict spiritual movement as longings of the soul and embed them in the trials and joys of life. Longings leap out of our skin impelling us towards, towards what? The trout yearns to climb, the geese to convoy – our souls too migrate. Journey stubbornly offers the notion that there is somewhere to go, that there is home, yet also that we are destined to roam and wander, as the pilgrims would say, for the love of God. My muddy boot had come down upon the word ’adaptation’, and a mark was left upon me. Do any of the highlighted words above bear a message for you about the journey that awaits you?
Andrew Hook