Konsk: The Great Takeover of the Place
5. Lesson on the Run
The neck of her tunic was round and high, the sleeves narrow on her upper arms without being tight and then, like the leggings below the knee, billowing loosely to wrist and ankle. Her cap, like a soft bag hanging on her back, matched the green of her leggings and was broadly peaked with a loose, mottled veil.
Beyond Angharad's shoulder, Rhia could see a cluster of children and adults, eyes shining. She had made her farewell's. The time to depart had arisen.
"Good luck be with you," Rhia called, to them all.
"And with you. Go with care."
"I will."
She waved one last time to the assembly, vaguely aware that the core team was incomplete but unable to see who was missing. Then she turned her back upon them and set her feet straight and solid upon the track. Settling the sheep's wool shoulder strap of her bag, she drew a deep breath, let it out with thanks, strode out upon the level way and did not look back.
Now the work was done and the moment had so radically changed; she felt suddenly free, an open future before her!
The path was wide enough for two or a small hand cart, almost level, the ripple of the watering ditch, full from the night's downpour yet still only slow running, in her direction, a tribute to the slightest of ascents. Lined with fast growing willows the way was already shaded. Beyond, a larger landscape, distant horizons, dust shrouded, several smoke plumes, other tasks.
When she had warmed up, she stopped where the ditch filled into a small pool, sat on a boulder softened with moss, rolled up her sleeves to the elbows, leggings to the knees; took a small jar from her bag and applied a salve to the exposed skin. She patted the boulder, as if thanking it for providing her temporary seat.
With the Stay On Course cantref, yes, in a way she had pushed a boulder up to a shelf on a steep slope, as she had pushed boulders before, in cantrefi over the years, first as an apprentice and more recently as an acknowledged mistress of Support and Mediation. And there the boulder might stay, for an hour, a day, a year, who knew? Waiting for others to push it higher, perhaps, or to topple, slowly then bouncing increasingly faster towards the valley floor.
She laughed at this, at the fact that she could not know how things would turn out, in the end, not that there was an end. She cried a little at that. So, yes, she moved on towards an as yet unknown destination, flooded with a sense of freedom but knowing that somewhere ahead on a valley floor, another boulder awaited her.
Now she felt lighter, ready, or even readier for the new moment. She stood up, replaced the salve in her bag, slid it around to the small of her back where it anchored itself securely and adjusted her tunic. She set her cap firmly on her head, folding the peak to shade her eyes.
When she had done she was grinning and beginning to sway her hips. Singing her arms, back and forth then across her body. She shuffled her feet to a slow rhythm and then stepped out in to a lazy walk.
"Bit loud," she said, then, "OK."
The lazy walk got faster, became a lope and then she ran. Her soft shoes seemed to just pat the path, almost noiseless. Skirt of tunic and veil of cap fluttered in her wake, the shades of green, pale of flesh, fluid, powerful surge of muscle. She ran for a long, long moment.
The path hugged the landscape with precision, delineating a sinuous meander of curves that dipped in and out of the valley sides,. A good way to walk, or run, close to but not quite on the contour, just the slightest climb, perhaps one in five hundred, she thought, or even less, rising so slowly as she went on. Enough to trap run off from above and send it, slowly, back towards storage at Stay On Course Cantref.
She did not know this particular route, having arrived at the cantref by other means. As she moved further from those lands and people, she gained occasional glimpses of the broader landscape through gaps in the trees, or where the path curved back into the valley side over a steeper drop. It was reminiscent of the old country, a similar complexity of form, layers of hills receding all around but the tree cover was more broken and there were large areas of fresh soil marking recent landslips, still running with rain water.
She caught occasional glimpses of other close-to-contour access routes running below her, particularly the wider ones, designed for vehicles but again for intercepting the downward flow of water, the edges planted up with trees and shrubs.
Now she ran below a larger planting of Scots pines, the trees just old enough to begin breaking out of their rigid geometry, crowns taking on twisting forms as they pushed upward into the faster air stream. It was a familiar association, of pine, moss and fern, she observed, capable of accumulating considerable quantities of litter each year and loosing much more if it was clear-felled, as had occurred so often in the past. The air that rolled down the slope between the trunks was moist, cool.
Rhia felt a tingling in her right ear. Raising her hand she gave her earring a rub and a familiar voice began to speak in her head.
"Well done, darling!"
"Thank you, Grandma!"
She heard a low chuckling and allowed a sense of pride to fill her as she slowed her pace.
"Now, I want to hear all about your good work, Ri, in time. But for now, tell me what was unusual?"
As often before, Rhia was surprised by her adopted grandma's acuity. Even given the very limited feedback the old woman would have received by now, just the barest outlines, she had recognised an anomaly that had distorted the familiar patterns of cantrefi intervention. She had told Rhia before that sometimes the accumulation of data serves only to confuse underlying patterns, that stripping it away can reveal a much more obvious perspective.
Not that the patterns of the cantrefi support were fixed; arising from the application of principles, they were flexible enough to achieve best fit with any individual, community and environment.
Reminded of this early lesson now, Rhia also remembered the vague sense of disquiet that had come to her, very occasionally, during the residence, a disquiet whose correspondence she had been unable to identify. Yes, it had been a good piece of work and she had not felt unduly pressured at any point, save for this, a mild disquiet beginning one evening when, after completing a brilliantly challenging session, Rhia had relaxed and listened while Angharad had chatted with other members of the cantref about the wider locality.
"You got there, yet, Ri?" Her grandmother asked, with another chuckle.
"I'm remembering it now. I'm laughing too but its not really funny. It was just.. just now and then, I kept feeling a bit odd, a bit...almost confused. And now that makes me think something was being kept from me."
"Good. So...?"
"Well..." Rhia was suddenly aware of a shift in her attitude to the woman who spoke; she'd gone from being her adopted grandma to being an elder. Rhia realised she had an opportunity to learn. She stopped and relaxed her stance, looked up towards the sky, a slight haze from the east, most likely from a fire. Her forehead wrinkled, then her nose, a slight smell of burning.
“I'm thinking now, that if that occasional... disquiet I felt had been anything to do with something really bad or had posed a danger, it would have been more obvious somehow, more easily visible in someone's face, or tone of voice, or the relationship between two people, say. I would have got it, not let it pass. But there was nothing like that, though, nothing that strong, so it can't have been that important, can it?"
So why was her grandma, an elder Crone, questioning her about it now? Obviously, because it was important.
"Unless..." She went on, "Unless they, themselves, they didn't realise that what they were keeping from me was important."
"Good! Something else?"
"Yes, I'm remembering now that I was dreaming last night and woke up during the storm. It was early, just after four. I thought I'd felt something in the earth, like a tremor, that's what woke me. I'd been dreaming about my grandpa."
There was a long pause before the elder finally commented.
"That's an interesting correspondence."
Rhia wondered if her grandma had been checking something in the interval. She waited patiently for her to continue.
"We thought at first there'd been some sort of accident, at least, that was the information coming out at first. An explosion at a bio-diesel plant, not far from where you were.”
"Meaning, you think it wasn't an accident?"
A grunt of acknowledgement then another pause.
“There's been reports that exclusivist incursions in the middle lands have been increasing over the last month,” the Crone said. “Tell me, Ri, who was prominent, when you left, by not being there?”
The prompt was enough; the recollection arose.
“Security,” Rhia said, exasperated. “Why didn't I notice? She must have gone to check out the event.”
“Don't beat yourself up about it, young lady. You'd just finished some good work, some really good work. This wasn't in your field of view. It had been kept from you”
That explained the feelings of confusion.
"You take good care, Ri, and I'll see you soon."
"Bye Grandma! And thanks."
Rhia set off again, walking, thoughtful of her grandma's words and the way they had focused her own memories. So some of the members of the Stay On Course Cantref had been hiding something from her. They wouldn't have seen any great significance in an apparent accident, hence they would not have wanted to trouble her with it, preferring she concentrated on what they would see as her real work.
Understandable. Unlike her grandma, who didn't let anything go without a thorough shaking. She shivered, despite the warm air. It implied that rather than random acts, someone was responsible and whoever it was, they were operating to a clearly defined plan, or strategy. Not good.
Still, there was nothing she could do right now other than continue her journey. And this in itself, was enough, more than enough- it was wonderful! She let the thoughts go as she started to run.
She delighted in the free movement of her body, breathing only slightly deeper than normal to increase the oxygen flow to well toned muscles. It was not difficult for her to run, given this almost level way, the cool, moist air by the water side and her physical and mental training. Her mind was very still, any thoughts that happened to arise were observed then allowed to fade away, leaving only the single experience of herself, running, embodied in her current environment.
At some point she noticed she was running slightly downhill and had passed into an environment in a different stage of regeneration, the trees were much younger. Large, empty tracts began to appear, rent by erosion scars from the alternations of flash flooding and drought. The sun beat down and baked any exposed earth, cracking and crumbling it to wind blown powder. There was still so much to do.
After some time, she became aware, gradually, of a perturbation in her awareness, a bubble of feeling that, rather than fading out, became persistent, nagging for attention. Once she focused her attention on it she recognised the feeling immediately; someone was watching her.
She continued to run without changing her pace or breathing, keeping her mind empty, her gaze forward and level, soft eyed but noting her peripheral vision. After a dozen more strides, the slightest of movements alerted her to the location of the observer, some 50 metres above and in front of her, on her left, in the scrub woodland, then a second, so two.
They were moving slower than her, going cross country through the low thorn and jumbled boulders. Her path swung out and then back in to the left to round a bulging outcrop in the hillside. She calculated that they would cross this as she went round, perhaps meeting her on the other side.
Her ear tingled and she rubbed the earring.
"Hey, Rhia," another familiar voice sounded in her head.
"Hey, Ceri! What's up?"
"You got company. Two above on the hillside and four round the bend, waiting on either side."
"Any clues?"
"Probably from the border towns, local militia. This incursion has stirred them up, understandably. We've picked up several small groups fanning out over a wide area, most likely looking for a culprit. Don't think its you though. You okay with this? Dumb question, sorry. Course you are."
"Thanks Ceri. Keep your eye on me, will you?"
Rhia, practising a relaxed awareness, slowed her pace to a brisk walk and chose not to speculate as to what lay in wait for her around the bend.
Many thanks for reading. Some of you may have noticed an unforced arror on my part in that this chapter should really come earlier. Duh! Ah well, time sometimes does seem to loop back on itself…Next, the tale takes a few more twists (and at least one offshoot at right angles!) before we can at last get that scientist bloke out of the damn tree!
Also The Real Coed Y Brenin will reveal something of its past wetlands.
Comments always gratefully received- positive, negative, ideally creative! Many thanks and hwyl! Chris.
I took this picture of the statue at Coed Hills Community Arts Space in the Vale of Glamorgan when I attended the permaculture convergence there in 2012. Amazing place. I particularly like their great conversion of a standard steel framed and roofed agricultural building into a brilliant community space with mezzanine floor.
An extract from my design for close-to-contour paths with associated Ffos Dyfri or Watering Ditch and plants. At some point I’ll put the whole thing up on my web site. Honest…
Level path over fascine causeway here at home. The full design is here. Level or close-to-contour paths are great for ease of access and movement of materials. They’re ideally suited to barrows and hand carts as well as providing opportunities for water management when on slopes through slowing down and infiltrating run-off into soils, intercepting and pooling streams and issues or redirecting flows to more permanent storage like ponds and bogs. And, of course, if the surface is a bit smoother than this one and it goes somewhere, running!