May - August 2024: Solo wild camping and walking in and around Aberdeen, Scotland
The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
‘Mend my life!’
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognised as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Mary Oliver
“My life is in transition right now, your [camping] videos are inspiring me to follow my dreams… not there yet, but starting to get more courage - thank you!” - a subscriber to my YouTube channel. She continued, “… I always appreciate your open and honest conversations so much more than the fake faces others can put on. I think your videos show the healing power of nature and that no matter what you’re going through, you can still find joy out there - but it’s up to you to make it happen. I thank you for sharing your journey.” I spoke too about my complex post-traumatic stress disorder in relation to having been violated as a child and how it affects my goals: another subscriber resonated with what I said and thanked me.
Alongside making videos I’ve been brimming with anger and have wanted to hide away in the shadows, but I finally took the massive step of joining the online American spiritual self-help program, Survivors of Incest Anonymous. It’s uncanny how myself and other survivors share almost identical experiences. Lots of them are poets and musicians and instantly I felt less misunderstood and more supported.
I also emailed the Samaritans and found the act of writing became a confidential container for my terror, conflicting emotions, concerns, problems and life story: I could put the simultaneous utter powerlessness and the incredible strength I feel into words. I have no idea how I’m going to handle Jan’s dementia, but I figure that she has a human condition and I have bags of humanity. Gardening is helping me to philosophically face up to this, too.
“You have been so strong in wanting to build a life for yourself and you have not lost your passion for music and art. It shows what great resilience you have Gemma and that despite all life has thrown at you, you’re still brave and courageous.” - Samaritan
These words encouraged me to once again exit the open door with Mr Happy tethered to my trusty Vango backpack and I made it to Aberdeen! Here’s a video of my adventure: Solo Wild Camping & Walking Along & Around the Deeside Way, Aberdeenshire, Scotland .
Having accomplished such a challenging feat, I have a new-found self-respect and affection for myself which is fueling my immense determination to put a better future in place for myself and my family in Aberdeen…
‘A Work Of Art - Rediscovering A Way Of Working For Beauty’ by Kiko Denzer is validating, comforting, uplifting and reconsolidated my ‘why’ as an artist. Here are my favourite quotes from this book that’s available from Kiko’s website, Handprint Press:
“… pictures of home: not houses, but real places made by hand among family and neighbors, that we use up, and have to re-make according to the limits and demands of weather, materials, and the vicissitudes of life. They result in beauty and love, as we learn to make them, year after year, generation after generation. To me, stories like that provide the only definition of an art that works for all of us, rich or poor, native or immigrant, literate or not.” - Kiko Denzer
“The most important lesson about living in a garden… is that we are all food, if not for each other, then for the worms that make the soil fertile. Humility, of course, shares a common root with “humus” and “human”. That is easy enough to understand in the mind, but it’s another thing altogether when your mind grows real feet and hands - and the ground grows tongue and teeth, and sings a siren song of beauty, and makes being eaten into a fate worth working for.” - Kiko Denzer
“The stories we shared and listened to - like the stories told at AA meetings and, I imagine, like the first tellings of both Bible stories and scientific discoveries - carried the immediate weight and illuminating light of real, direct experience. Such medicine goes into our ears the way heat enters our bodies. Sweat comes out instantly, but stories, songs, and prayers work slowly, like heat and water on stone.” - Kiko Denzer
“By making an annual rite of removing and re-making a [mud] mural, schools could substantially enrich their local culture. The entire school could be involved in refining, re-defining, or re-envisioning a theme… Students would become teachers, and all would share in developing a local tradition based on real skills and knowledge… every year would provide a new group the opportunity to tell the same story in their own way… the matter and spirit of the earth itself would take its rightful place as both source and symbol of eternal renewal. Old mud can be made new simply with the addition of water. Or it can be returned, usefully and joyfully, to the earth from which it comes.” - Kiko Denzer
“… art is the last refuge of the autonomous individual. Art is where it is possible to be authentic, honest, courageous, independent, visionary, prophetic, profound and wise.” - Kiko Denzer
“Technology and wealth “free” us from traditional labors, but replace wisdom with gratification, art with ego, and beauty with pathology.” - Kiko Denzer
“Visual arts, writing, music, dance, and all the crafts - all represent different facets of one human language, all share in the common and innate gifts of humanity. Art fits us together, it joins our fingers and toes to our hearts and minds, and it joins each individual to the whole community. I won’t argue that art doesn’t save lives, but without art - of all kinds - all life simply withers, and goes “back to the dust”. That means we can’t BUY art, or TEACH art, we can only CULTIVATE art, like a seed, which must have sun, soil, and water - or die.” - Kiko Denzer
“… wealth is not ours to keep, but to plant, turn over, share." - Kiko Denzer
Working for beauty = working for goodness; what I was doing when I was selling organic food and drink made with produce I’d grown.
I feel better equipped to join the Permies Bootcamp at Wheaton Labs in Missoula, USA, which is what sparked my interest in solo camping. I also finished Alex Summerall’s online course, ‘This Cob House’ and through it acquired plans for a tiny earthen building and a more realistic idea of what building my own cob home will involve (I’ll need lots of help)!
Lastly I asked (presumably) deceased David C. Kirk which books he wanted me to save after I returned to the recycling bins where somebody had heartlessly dumped his entire life, and was greeted by two books full of stunning angels that I swear weren’t there when I’d searched the bin before. Maybe this had been David’s way of thanking me for rescuing as many of his precious largely antique Charles Dickens, poetry, art, trees and travel books and possessions as I could. I love and am very grateful for all of them. I believe that we would have got on really well and it’s nice to have a photograph of him and to feel his presence around me.
“An artist is not a special kind of person; every person is a special kind of artist.”