Breaking New Ground

Reconnecting People with The Brecks

September

Cycles – endings and beginnings

September already and people are looking forward – a new school year, a new farming cycle. Wildlife is returning to the Brecks. The birds have finished skulking in hedgerows where they’ve been moulting. Breeding seasons are  over and now it is time to prepare for winter. As seasons end so too does Sandlines. It is a year since we proposed a writing project to explore the inspirations of this landscape. Over spring and summer we held four workshops at key Breckland locations – Santon Downham, site of the great sand blow and office of the Forestry Commission; the Nunnery at Thetford, headquarters of the British Trust for Ornithology and near two important Brecks rivers; West Stow Anglo Saxon village with its reminders of how Breckland people lived many centuries ago; and Brandon Country park, celebrating landscapes fashioned for pleasure. This is our last blog from the Brecks, but the series of six will remain here to return to for information and writing exercises.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Capturing Voices

Writing is a personal expression of thoughts and ideas and while a workshop can offer inspiration and support, it can never be certain of an outcome. We have been impressed and delighted by the writing produced on our workshops. Whether beginner or experienced, local or travelling from outside the area, our writers have captured some of the Breckland landscape and, more importantly, reflected the impact of that landscape on themselves. To celebrate their work, Sandlines will publish Voices from the Brecks, a pamphlet of poems from workshop participants; they can all be proud of their achievements. For anyone who wants to write, seeing your work in print is a great confidence booster. The pamphlet will be launched later this month.

 

Some ideas for freewriting  

Beginnings and endings make good subjects for writing. Many exercises start with a first line and invite you to follow where that thought takes you. You could choose a first line at random from a book or magazine, or create one from a snippet of conversation. Here are some first lines to prompt your Breckland writing:

“The Brecks that day gave me an inkling of what it meant to wander forty years in the desert”.

“A couple of old ladies were out walking and they found a deer…”

“Thetford Forest is a landscape of contradictions”.

“When I followed the Little Ouse upstream…”  

 

Field Notes

In September the air smells of earth. After a warm, damp night, my early morning walks discover fungi that have pushed through leaf litter, botanical moles, surfacing into daylight, sometimes in rings which grow ever outward, sometimes fine specimens of horse mushrooms or puffballs – reminders that while the season is gently winding down it is still very productive. At this time of year there’s change in the air, and if you close your eyes and listen you can hear it: a slight muffledness of sounds from the misty woods, the birds singing less frantically than in Spring but no less joyfully. There is much to explore in the landscape, not just its nature and beauty but our cultural associations with it. I ponder this as I walk through the pine woods of the Brecks. I will come back. Sandlines may have finished its run of workshops but Breckland is a place that draws you in, imprinting its beauty and mystery on the imagination.

 

Writing Exercise

Find a vantage point where you can see close-up detail and longer landscape views. Think about the ending of the season. What evidence is there that cycles are turning – leaf colour, fruit and nuts in the hedgerows, mist in the mornings, secret soft birdsong as young robins try out their repertoire, deer rutting, squirrels busy collecting hazelnuts, jays collecting acorns. List the evidence you find in your own location and shape it into a poem observing the changing season. What do you feel about this time of year? Sometimes we tend to think of autumn in melancholic terms, since it marks the passing of things into winter. For a different perspective, checkout the rich detail and affection for the season in John Keats’s poem “Ode to Autumn”, written in September 1819. Here’s a link: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/autumn

 

On Location

No workshop to report on this month. Twenty people have attended one or more workshops, some from within the Brecks and some from further afield. In terms of total participation, Sandlines delivered 35 writing days across its series! Only one person has attended all four workshops and we thought we’d end our writing blogs by asking Ali about her experience – why she came on a workshop, what she learnt and what the Brecks mean to her. Here is Ali’s viewpoint:

MA & LW: You are very keen on nature and became our ace nature finder on the workshops. Can you describe the importance to you of nature in the Brecks?

Ali: Nature has always been part of my life. My earliest memories are of camping in the great outdoors and collecting dead bumblebees in matchboxes! What inspires me about nature is how it exists in harmony. Living off the land without destroying it. I am privileged to spend my life here, in the magic of the Brecks. We are surrounded by many rare and important species, which can be found nowhere else in the UK. Species threatened with extinction because of us. This makes me immeasurably sad. I firmly believe that we, as a species, should pay more attention to nature.


MA & LW: You have a great sense of detail, noticing all sorts of things that translate into an understanding of what is there. Please tell us how you developed your skills as a naturalist. How do you know what to look for and listen out for when you're walking outside in a rural area?

Ali: I notice things in nature because it’s what I'm interested in and what I've always been interested in! I chose a path in life that would put me in close contact with nature, from my job as a countryside ranger, to the people I socialised with (nature geeks!), to how I spend my spare time (being a nature geek and driving all round the country in search of the more elusive creatures). The attention to the detail is what I find fascinating. Not just to see a 'bug' but to see it up close and to identify it. It's not enough for me to just 'see' something; I want to know what it is and how it works! Open your eyes. Open your ears. Look under the leaf or up at the sky, stand still and listen. Then nature will be found.

MA & LW: How about writing? What sort of writing have you been doing?

Ali: I have been so inspired by these nature writing courses that I have been writing poem after poem! Some of them are just a single line, an observation or a feeling but some are more in depth. For me it is a way to immortalise a thought, like a photograph immortalises a portrait.

MA & LW: Tell us about the way the workshops have assisted and supported your writing.

Ali: Up until I enrolled on these fabulous courses, I wrote sporadically and with little thought to 'meaning'. It sounds daft, but the courses have channelled my energy and given me focus. I didn't really THINK about what I was writing before. It wasn't about nature, more about emotion that lacked direction. Now, with encouragement from the courses and Melinda and Lois, I have been writing about my passion for nature and the Brecks. And all I can do is sit and ponder the question: Why did I not do this before?!

MA & LW: Describe some of the joyous moments from the workshops? Any favourites?

Ali: Hand on heart, every one of these workshops has been inspiring and I've always ended each day feeling quite sad that it's over! We weathered the rain on nearly every occasion but it could not dampen our spirits or our creativity! My favourite memory was on the first course at Santon Downham. We walked to the little church on the green and under a tall Pine tree lay some feathers and pellets, which belonged to a Barn owl. Melinda and I were so excited by this! My love of nature always shines through and this is my favourite moment from the Sandlines workshops.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MA and LW for Sandlines