In mid December I take the train north to spend a week at Inshriach Bothy, an off-grid art residency space in The Cairngorms. The conductor stamps my ticket with a hole punch shaped like a train and moves on to the next passenger before I can register my appreciation for this small act of joy.
I arrive at the bothy just after two o’clock and the light is already fading. I try and quickly orientate myself before it disappears. This will be a common theme for the week - a race against light - I surround myself with candles and lamps and am delighted when dense cloud peels back and reveals the light of the moon. I have come here to look back over my previous performances: Hooves, Bones, Graft and Celluloid. I’m looking for the threads that join them, finding common themes, searching for forgotten discoveries. I look at them as blocks of text, imagining them on the page rather than spoken out loud. I consider cartilage, internal structures, the density of materials. I think about bone china - an animal substance slip-cast into delicate, transparent cups, plates and bowls. I turn my attention to celluloid film - the images of people and places suspended in a luminous emulsion of gelatine and silver crystals. Animal, mineral and vegetable butt up against one another.
I also came here to walk and read and to be absorbed. Outside, I feel at ease. As I walk my thoughts tick over. Half formed ideas, forgotten plans, glimmers of inspiration. I hop between them playfully. I do not feel alone here. I feel utterly surrounded. One morning a small snow flurry arrives as dawn arrives. I set out to walk through the snow, up a narrow trail that leads to the road and beyond that, the forest and Loch an Eilein. I am following a trail of paw prints. I place my fingers next to them for scale and take a photograph. Later I find out that they belong to a mountain hare. In the forest I tune into the birdsong, not able to identify but recognising when something sounds unusual. I see a crested tit, laugh out loud in delight at its spectacular feathered crown.
Back in the bothy I boil the kettle endlessly, re-read Nan Shepherd’s Living Mountain (because how could I not?), paint swatches of colour on pieces of paper and cut them into ever smaller miniatures. I become restless, walk to the river Spey, watch it rise and fall, whipping branches and trunks downstream. I feel lucky, guilty, open the window and let the cool air soothe a migraine. I write, I draw, I consider the practicalities of menstruating and composting toilets. I enjoy the feeling of not being seen. I leave, somewhat reluctantly, and hope to hold onto my thoughts, sandwiched in notebooks and scraps of paper. On the train back I watch the landscape slip past, perfectly framed by the rounded corners of the window.
