Canal walk, reflections

By Anna Evans:

The canal is a great mirror. The stillness of the water reflecting the landscape, with barely a ripple or movement. The trees and the hills are echoed in the water. The clouds are a floating canopy, creating another dimension, a sense of the infinite, a continuous merging of land and sky. 

It is an idyllic day in early summer as we embark on a walk along the Huddersfield Narrow Canal. The sky is a carefree blue, the clouds dance through it. Along the towpath, dappled light and shade falling from the trees, stretching onwards and ahead in measured distances, marked for walking. Looking back towards Marsden village, to the backdrop of the moors, wanting to absorb, not to miss a single view. The houses and hillsides framed serenely, with wildflowers and thickets, patches of heather on the moors. The colour of the stone always feels like coming home. 

The telegraph wires suspended across the sky in lines. Ferns overhang the water, their elegant fronds distinctive, along with the branches, the dark shadows of trees. A tree spills its branches across the surface of the water, its reflection blurring impressionistically, ending there in the clarity of white clouds. The textures of the landscape layered in brushstrokes, like stepping through a painting. A picture framed in a pool of water below, dark hills above, a scattering of leaves and of light, propelled in a drift, into layers of colours. The pretty tree admires its image in the water.

A few narrowboats are moored, their coloured reflections surrounded by the trees; gypsy caravans on the water, landlocked but ready to move again. Here there are meadows and flowering trees, the scenic pause of a lock, painted black and white. A beautifully restored stone bridge, a cobbled lane leading away. I like these crossings, these intersections preserved in time. Each lock is numbered, and each bridge across. The sunken towpath passes underneath. It is damp under there and we bend our heads and lean towards the water.

The canal opens out wide, almost circular, before narrowing again into a lock entrance, towards which the water funnels. In this basin, the water reflects the clouds, the trees, the gates of the lock. The water level plunges so that it is like peering down into the depths of a dark well walled by stone. It is almost a surprise to see the water flowing, its force and light and movement. These locks of wood and iron turning cogs, using the measured weight of the water, to propel, to lift, to move. 

The path bends under trees, casting their shadows, leaning across and straying into the territory of the canal, as if swaying, bending, walking towards the water. The water has another quality to it, dark ripples shroud the reflections of the trees in mystery. They trail their leaves and branches through the mirror pool mingling with what is unsettled in the water, with a certain unexplained murkiness fragmented and immersed, stilled and agitated. 

Like much of the canal this stretch is wooded and the walls are mossy. A stream runs alongside. There are fallen leaves and hidden paths, the ground saturated by the recent rainfall. The trees bend gently obscuring the light and making it feel damper, the kind of mud that never dries out fully, dark with disintegrating leaves. Reeds and rushes grow thickly, and reflections of the trees make it almost impossible to see what’s below the surface. 

The water is densely covered to saturation with flying particles, seeds dispersed by the wind, blown across in sparkles of light and dark; a silver coated pathway travels onwards. A bright patch of light leading out into the dark canal, like a forest shaded in dark patterns of trees and light. The clouds darken again, shift their shapes in silhouetted, weighted light, outlined by the bright lines of sunlight emerging, changing the view. 

We emerge into the outskirts of Slaithwaite, a thriving Pennine village where people sit outside in cafés and bars near the waterside. The canal is a snapshot, like the cobbled streets and preserved architecture, a remnant of another time. Everywhere there are adaptations, an old mill building converted into modern apartments. Passing through the village, the towpath continues. The day has shifted and become more changeable as we cross into a part of the canal with a more industrial feel. The parts I remember most, that are indented on my memory. 

*

It is a walk I have been wanting to take for some time, to connect with my memories, with the impressions I carried with me. The canals were stilled space where once there was movement. A turbulent history mapped across the hillsides. A landscape reined in and tamed, saddened by overwork; lying forlorn and forgotten, waiting for a time when it might heal its scars. The spinning mills that were emptied and slowly given new life. Standing at the canal’s edge they overhang and overshadow; large windows in rows, reflecting the light.

I always wondered at the empty buildings left there, abandoned, derelict. The windows covered over, places of loss, places to avoid. I grew up around these buildings with their patched over windows and doorways. They followed me like shadows. Across these valleys they were everywhere. Desolate ruins blocking out the light and casting a reminder. When I close my eyes, what I picture are the shells of dark stone lying forlorn and forgotten, empty buildings and broken windows reflected in the dank still water. The shadow always remaining, the ghosts of what has gone before. 

The canal was always there in my memory. Sometimes a lonely desolate place, sometimes the sunny light feeling of walking along by the water. You could walk for miles of changing landscape, along its edges and lost waterways, crossing countryside and the hidden parts of the town. From the windows of a train travelling across the valley to Manchester. From the window of my school bus, as it wound its way through the outskirts of the town. Where the chimneys remain, when the clouds hang across the Colne Valley, the canal looks back at me.

*

The day has shifted, and the quietness is palpable. Each corner, each bend, each stretch of the canal seems to bring a new feeling, a difference to the walk. The canal becomes narrower here and the trees start to feel like they’re concealing something. There are high walls, moss-covered, ferns grow along the banks, and the trees bend closer over the water looking down on their reflections. I turn my camera towards the water and the sky lengthens out into a narrow passage of light, pulling towards the edges of the frame, a tunnel of soft, white light. 

The water feels closer, it is eerily quiet in some places. A sense of neglect, broken windows, barbed wire, and corrugated iron. The bank of clouds darker, overhanging. An abandoned building by the water’s edge, the dark symmetry of the windows reflected, slightly distorted by the water, deep and unbending, unmoving. The texture mimics a solidity the water cannot have, so that I start to wonder what it is about that part of the water that sets it apart?

The trees start to ascend the side of the building, its solid walls refuse to yield. Inside, its empty frame, the windows bricked over to conceal what lies discarded within. Through a web of tree branches, another empty structure, broken windows, semi-hidden. The trees beginning to cover the frame in shadow. Its empty soul lies reflected in the water. 

The canal feels like an intruder into the landscape, that many years later is starting to be claimed back. Over time to reflect and to blend with its surroundings, its edges to soften and become less clear cut, less distinct or separate. Blurring its lines, the hard edges cut from the land are overrun with ferns, with dandelions and grasses. Where the seeds, the falling leaves, and trailing branches corrupt the surface of the water.

Yet I think it always resisted, always retained its other quality. The one that is given away by that tendency of the water: to stand still, to resist the inevitable movement of wind and currents. There is something vacant and still, another quality to this water, as if it had a presence. In some places it looks like another surface, no longer water, lying still and undisturbed. 

We are approaching the outskirts of the town and the towpath seems endless. There is something concealed and desolate about these parts of the canal that intrigued me, that I remember. I am trying to work out where we are, where we will emerge when we leave the canal. The water churned and disconsolate from this angle. Empty buildings reflected in the water. Dark bridges and hidden pathways. In the windows, reflections of other ruins. 

***

Anna Evans is a writer from West Yorkshire, currently based in Cambridge. She writes about place and memory, travel and migration, and is working on a non-fiction project on the author Jean Rhys and the spaces in her fiction. You can follow her progress through her blogThe Street Walks In.

Epilogue

By Ian C Smith:

Walking in early light, wetlands a short drive from home, where, like the rest of the world, all is quietly closing due to this ravening plague, part of my way parallel to a usually busy highway. I think of another road, traffic-choked, in my distant past. Figuring the year I last drove it those miles ago, I reach back, meet my younger self who casts several glances at my now thin hair, assessing the ruin.

His surprise at where I live now sweetened knowing how long he shall last, he thinks the nearby gas fields recently discovered that he read about must be the reason: employment. All he has known so far is an expectation of work. I paraphrase how, why, I landed here, both linked to my late education, love, work, try to explain about these three life effects felt by most. Stunned, even excited, by where his life leads, he now wants to hear of my health, journey. Happiness.

He knows about the Spanish ‘flu, read that, too, seems more fascinated than horror-stricken by brief news of today’s scourge, but he is young. His skin fascinates me. I tell him everybody would be relieved if this present canker’s naked statistics we absorb like poison, minus the personal misery, grief, and despair, doesn’t exceed that post-WW1 mortality rate. He mentions being concerned for nothing about the nukes, thinks self-isolation, overrun intensive-care facilities, the end of sport, non-electric entertainment, connection – this propels his interest into overdrive – sounds like a fantastic movie script. He loves dystopian themes. I tell him there are more coming. I know from inside knowledge he prefers damaging news told straight, yet want to protect him, protect hope, that lifeblood. Is he too young to be thinking of worldwide virulence?

I cross the highway listening for the odd vehicle, move deeper into the salutary peace of the natural world, but see few birds. Even they seem to have shut up shop, except for a lone pelican, its exquisite wake. Cheer up, my young companion urges, slowing for me, you did so much, although it sounds like you stuffed up a lot. Ah, the chirpy ignorance of youth. How should this end? Endings trouble me.

***

Ian C Smith’s work has been published in Antipodes, BBC Radio 4 Sounds, The Dalhousie Review, Griffith Review, San Pedro River Review, Southword, The Stony Thursday Book, & Two Thirds North. His seventh book is wonder sadness madness joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide). He writes in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, and on Flinders Island.

Capturing the forest – the photography of Eymelt Sehmer

By Paul Scraton:

It was a cold winter day when Eymelt invited us to her studio in Berlin-Weißensee. She had been looking for models, people she could photograph using a technique that dates back to the earliest days of photography. It would take a while, she said, to capture each image. We would – in this era of mobile phones and Instagram, when more photographs are taken in a single year than in the previous century – have to be patient.

The collodion wet plate process requires that a black tin plate be coated, sensitized, exposed and developed in the space of about fifteen minutes. We spent a few happy hours in her studio room, laughing and joking and mainly talking to Eymelt’s legs, because she was usually under a thick blanket of some short, either behind the camera or in her self-made dark room where she prepared the collodion emulsion, coating the plates and then developing them by hand.

‘Did you ever try this outside?’ someone asked, and in those six words, an idea was born.

In early 2017, Eymelt had made a short film based on my book Ghosts on Shore about the Baltic coast, and we had been keen to work together on a project again. The idea of finding a way to take the collodion wet plate technique out of the studio and into the landscape was the starting point for what would become our new book. 

In the Pines is a combination of words and images. It is my novella, a whole-life story told through fragments about a narrator’s relationship to the forest, sharing the pages with Eymelt’s photographs from between the trees. Some of the stories contained within the book gave Eymelt inspiration when she took her mobile darkroom into the forest. Some of the images she returned to inspired new stories in turn. Eymelt’s art both illustrates the text and inspires it, and I know I would have created something different, something lesser, without our collaboration.

To celebrate the launch of the book this autumn I wanted to celebrate Eymelt’s talent and her art. What follows is my short interview with Eymelt, about the photography in our book and what she’s planning next. 

What is it about this technique that is so appealing to you as a photographer?

First, I love analogue photography in general. And then, what I find most intriguing about the collodion wet plate process, are the imperfections of the images. The photos are blurred; the images look liquid, creating blind spots. These are voids to be filled by the viewer’s imagination. And each photograph is truly unique.

When you first showed me the technique in the studio, it seemed almost impossible you could take it outside. What specific challenges did you face when taking your camera out into the forest?

The most challenging thing involves the developing, in that I have to do it immediately. The coated photoplate needs to still be wet for the developing process, which means I have about ten to fifteen minutes from coating the plate until developing it. I have to therefore coat each plate by hand before each photograph. I cannot prepare a batch in advance.

Once the photograph is taken, the plates can only be handled in darkness. So I need a mobile darkroom, and I built one out of a former steamer trunk. Transporting this monster out into the woods, to basically build a lab out there among the trees, was quite a challenge and was time-consuming as well. 

Added to all this, and related to how much time everything takes, is that I am somewhat exposed. To the weather, and especially the temperature, which can have a major impact. During the winter, for example, the chemicals on the plates froze, creating some beautiful crystalline structures on the photographs. It was as if the environment had engrained itself on the image. But that is also what I love about the technique – you have to embrace the uncontrollable and see what happens.

In my introduction, I’ve written about how the photographs both related to the text and sometimes also inspired it. How was it for you, working on a collaborative project like this?

Generally, the inspiration for my works comes from fairy tales and myths, so the starting point is almost always a story. In the Pines was my first ever collaboration of words and photography, and as your language is very evocative, I could picture some of the images in my head right away. What also helped were the walks and talks we had, especially through the landscape. It helped me get a feeling for it.

Text is interesting because it can go into detail, and you take the reader with you. With an image it is slightly different. I am choosing the frame of course, the perspective and the light situation. But there is more there for the viewer to decide for themselves. Not least when it comes to how close or carefully they decide to look.

My favourite aspect of the collaboration was that it basically forced me to take the technique outside and into the woods. Without this project, I’m not sure I would have given it a try. And spending all that time out there with my camera and my mobile darkroom meant I had lots of beautiful encounters with mushroom foragers, kindergarten kids, horses and hikers.

So will you be taking more landscape or outside photographs using this technique in the future?

I’m certainly going to take some more. I would also like to experiment more, try some things with filters etc. 

In the Pines is all about the narrator’s lifelong connection to the forest. What does the forest mean to you?
For me the forest has always been, since early childhood, a kind of retreat – a place of sanctuary. I could lose myself in fairy tales, and in difficult emotional times it was a place where I took refuge. To this day, the forest is still a place of solace for me.

It was also an adventurous playground for myself and my brothers. A place where you could pick berries and hunt mushrooms, where you could climb trees and build secret hiding places far from the parents’ eyes. It was our own microcosmic realm and it captivated our imagination.

Finally, what’s next for Eymelt Sehmer? You have a gallery in Berlin – are there any projects or news from the gallery you’d like to share with us?

Oh, I have lots of ideas! In early 2020 I took the Trans-Siberian Express through Russia to Mongolia where, thanks to the pandemic, I got stuck. Initially I’d intended travelling there to take photographs of the Dukha people, a nomadic reindeer tribe, and then, having got stuck in Ulaanbaatar with my guide and his family, I met his wife Mugi’s motorcycle club – the first and only female motorcycle club in the country: the Mongolian Lady Riders. Modern nomads.

I made a short film about the motorcyclists and have photographs from the entire trip, but it takes thought and care as to how they might be used. My experience with the Dukha, for example. It was a nice experience, but parts still felt awkward, and we as artists or tourists always need to be careful as to how we present, and indeed to an extent, ‘exploit’ such encounters and topics for our own artistic ends. 

I’m also working on a portfolio of analogue photographs of female characters in mythology, and in the gallery we are slowly getting back to exhibitions, readings and film screenings. Thanks to the pandemic, and the ever-changing situation, it is hard to plan things in advance. But in 2022 we hope to host some photography workshops and collaborations with different people from our neighbourhood in Berlin.

Galerie Arnarson & Sehmer, Berlin
In the Pines by Paul Scraton and Eymelt Sehmer, published by Influx Press

Five Questions for… Igor Tereshkov

From the series Berlin - Bydgoszcz Soup

By Sara Bellini 

Igor Tereshkov refers to one of his works as “a visual anthropological exploration”, and no label would fit more suitably. Non-places, surveillance, post-soviet urbanism, the interrelation of natural and built environment are among the themes he delves into in a variety of medium spanning from documentary photography to visual art to performance.. 

His latest project consists of extra large cyanotypes examining our relationship with nature and waste. The idea came to him a few years ago when he was collecting plastic litter near water zones with Greenpeace. “It’s in some way a homage to Anna Atkins’s work about diversity of algae and in another way a documentation and didactic enumeration cataloguing the types and ways of using plastic in our everyday life.” 

The next step in the process consists in exposing the images of the discarded plastic on the leaves from the very bushes and trees where he had found them. “All this in order to convey an idea that plastic is made, not grown [...] This is kind of a remake to the slogan of the famous ketchup, which claims that it is grown, not made, which can’t be said about the plastic bottle in which it’s often packed - as well as many other products”. 

From the series Berlin - Bydgoszcz Soup

Experimental photographic techniques and the anthropocene are recurring elements in Igor’s creative practice. In 2018/2019 he went to Western Siberia to document the environmental destruction caused by petrol extraction from oil companies in the region inhabited by the Kanthy people. 

The result is a collection of beautiful yet eerie black and white shots covered in dark stains, obtained by developing the film in water containing traces of oil he had previously bottled on the spot. The oil randomly corrodes the film gelatin, in the same way it damages the land, endangering the Indigenous People that had been living there for centuries. By mixing water with oil in the development stage, Igor literally allows the subject to become part of the creative process.

To accompany this interview, Elsewhere is publishing previously unseen pictures Igor took on a trip from Poland to Germany two years ago. “I had two rolls of film and a bottle of wine, later I soaked the exposed film in leftovers of wine and called this series Berlin - Bydgoszcz Soup... Later I lost the film in the lab and all I have is just these forgotten scans.”

From the series Berlin - Bydgoszcz Soup

What does home mean to you?

Home for me is usually a place to regenerate and to find balance so, more often than not, for me it’s more likely not a place but a process. And of course, speaking of home, I always want to mean safety, clarity and love. I have a firm feeling that I haven’t found yet my home at 100%,  rather a place for a respite.

Which place do you have a special connection to?

I think it’s Ai-Petri, the peak of Mount St. Peter in Crimea. It’s not so big or world famous but I’ve spent many summers there during my childhood. With the whole family we would ride on a car across the peninsula and the Ai-Petri was always a special place. Every time I watch an old VHS family record it always makes me feel a special connection to that place and my childhood.

What is beyond your front door?

Four stair steps and a blue spruce, after ten footsteps there is a hammock and after twenty more footsteps a large and old spruce that would take three or four people to embrace completely. For the past three years I’ve been living in the Moscow exurb in my old family dacha.

What place would you most like to visit?

I hope one day I’ll have an opportunity to visit California.

What are you reading / watching / listening to right now?

Right now I’m reading Internal Colonization: Russia's Imperial Experience by Alexander Etkind , watching the new season of The Walking Dead and listening mostly to Tycho while running.

From the series Berlin - Bydgoszcz Soup

Igor Tereshkov's Website
Igor Tereshkov on Instagram

Photo Essay: Notes from the Mediterranean, by Rafael Quesada

By Rafael Quesada:

In the south of Spain overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, a small village by the name of Aguadulce is where I grew up. Much like the neighbouring villages along the coastline it was filled with river beds as dry as the desert, structures long abandoned, exotic palm trees, slow sunsets and late summers of emptiness.

It was 11 years ago when I left home to explore the world. I return yearly to visit my loved ones and I spend my time exploring the neighbouring places of the Mediterranean. Discovering them is hauntingly familiar to me as I feel the time go by, and yet see the places around me staying eerily the same.

Notes from the Mediterranean is a personal exploration of a place that used to be my only home. A return to fond memories and a creation of new ones.

Rafael Quesada is a Spanish self-taught photographer and professional designer currently living and working in The Netherlands. Moved by the urban environments and forms of landscapes, his photography is mainly focus on personal topics and explorations of the relationship with his surroundings.

Book Extract: Twisted Mountains by Tim Woods

We are extremely proud to present this extract from the story ‘Offcomers’ from the new collection Twisted Mountains by our very own Tim Woods. Twisted Mountains is a collection of short stories set among the hills of Scotland, England and Wales, with each story telling the tale of someone who has their own reason for being in the mountains, from a vengeful student to a wannabe biker and Wainwright expert with a secret. ‘Offcomers’ concerns an obsessive hotel owner, what money can buy and who owns the views of high places…

It is the most striking view in the country, of that there is no question. Today, exactly one year on from our grand reopening, it is at its most remarkable – a mountain alive with autumn colour. Its flanks are cloaked with russet bracken, which stops sharply at the dark band of woodland. Beyond, the tetrahedral fells melt into one another, each a little hazier than its predecessor. The lake that separates the mountain from me reflects all of this, doubling the splendour.

The first time I saw it, in February two years ago, I knew I had to have it. Although on that day, I would have happily taken any view on offer – anything to distract me from the interminable board meeting in which I was trapped.

The purpose was to agree exactly how many redundancies the company would need to make that year, and our declining prospects were evident in the choice of venue: a run-down hotel set two hundred metres back from the lake. The kind of place that tries to add a touch of glamour by providing cheap sparkling wine with lunch, no doubt trusting its regular clientele won’t realise it is nowhere even close to champagne. The whole charade was utterly tiresome and I resented being part of it, especially as I had already informed my fellow executives of my decision to retire. None of the redundancies would be my responsibility, so there was no need for me to be involved. Yet there I was, trapped in an increasingly aggravated discussion about unions, corporate responsibility and two-yearly forecasts. 

***

I passed the time staring out of the window and across the water. The small thicket of trees on the near shoreline prevented a clear view, yet I was still able to observe how the mood of the mountain opposite changed with each passing hour. Its still-snowy summit accentuated the cold grey-green of its flanks, while the strip of white cloud ravelling down its face accentuated its nuance and depth. Birds glided effortlessly on the hyaline water between us, leaving dissipating arrowheads behind them. As argument and counterargument raged around me, I knew that I had to have this view. To own it. To decide who got to share it and who didn’t. I blocked out all else and began to formulate my retirement plan.

At sunrise next morning, I walked down to the lake. I needed to see it again, at its earliest hour, just to be certain. Passing flower beds showing the first shoots of daffodils – such an uninspiring choice – I headed for the bench a little further up the shore. Unobscured by the trees in front of the hotel, the view from here was even finer and the mountain somehow even more spectacular. The sun crept up behind me, illuminating the eastern face inch by inch and painting it with a fresh palette, one of brown and purple and orange, scorched through with thick black shadows cast by its ridges and folds, a shifting show of shadow puppets. The singularity of this view was confirmed by the photographers jockeying for position on the grass around me, some even waiting in line for their turn in the prime spot. Even the joggers paused to take their own mental snapshots.

It is possible to have everything in life and still want more. Once back in London, I could not stop obsessing about the view imprinted so vividly on my mind. During those long final weeks before retirement, I set out the details of my new project: a fully refurbished hotel, five stars and fine dining in place of the shabby old relic where I’d been forced to stay. Something exceptional for those who not only deserve it, but can also afford it. It was just what the region needed: a taste of the top-end, an overdue injection of style and refinement. An alternative to the washed-out places that still, even now, proliferate around here, somehow surviving on two-for-one weekend deals and ten-pound lunches. By contrast, my hotel would be perfect. And the perfect hotel demands the perfect view.

***

Too many people dismiss us wealthy as being materialistic. It is a lazy insult, painting us as fools who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. It is also incorrect: we can appreciate the beauty of the natural world as readily as anyone else. The lower classes have long thought they had an exclusive moral right to enjoy the countryside, ever since they set off on their trespass over Kinder Scout. Yet the key word there is trespass: they were not supposed to be there. Would we have defended it so fiercely if we had not also valued it? No, the wealthy have the right to enjoy England’s beauty too. Anyone with money has worked to earn it, or toiled still harder to keep it. We deserve the chance to enjoy what it can buy, and exclusivity is part of enjoyment.

***

The complaints began even before our first month was through. The dining hall had no privacy, said the guests, as the huge windows meant that people passing by could watch them eat. Others said it was too cold in there. Which was nonsense, of course, and I even installed an antique thermometer to assuage their doubts. But a landscape of frost-capped fells can, it seems, make people feel cold, even in the confines of a fully insulated and expensively heated building. And people are so very eager to share imagined discomforts in lieu of any actual ones. Even those who didn’t complain failed to appreciate what they were experiencing, with eyes more commonly fixed on their phones, their food, or occasionally their companions. Anywhere other than my mountain. 

They also failed to appreciate the master suite. Complaints ranged from the noise of the diners below to the smells from the kitchen, and again the imagined cold. Yet as autumn changed to winter, by far the commonest cause for complaint on those insufferable online review websites was the dining hall windows, my Italian-made, nine-foot-high windows. There’s too much sunlight; the rain is too loud; why are there no blinds to stop people looking in… The unique opportunity to admire the finest view in the land was never remarked upon. Not once.

The final straw came during that first winter. Bookings were below half-occupancy and I had already been forced to lower prices after less than four months of operating. As I passed through the reception on my way to meet, and possibly sack, my manager, I heard someone complaining at reception. He was rich, arrogant and trying to impress a woman who was clearly only with him for weekends away in expensive country hotels. But the nature of his grievance hit me like a fist: he didn’t like the view. For three hundred and fifty pounds, he expected more than just a lake and a mountain. The girl on reception tried to placate him, but I cut her off before she had even completed her sentence. Give them a full refund as long as they leave immediately. I won’t let anyone talk about my mountain like that, especially not in my own hotel. 

It was clear to me by then that somehow, somewhere along the way, I had got it wrong. My vision was wasted on other people, whether rich or poor. I summoned my team of architects once more and explained what needed to be done.

***

The trees I felled and promised to replace have finally taken root, although rather than doing so in a nearby field, they now form a neat row between the old hotel buildings and the sparkling new construction near the water. The latter is now my residence, and quite possibly the most expensive private home in the country. The master suite is my bedroom, and the dining hall – my brilliant, beautiful dining hall – is the office from which I now manage the hotel myself, ensuring it matches the tastes of the lower classes. Once grown, those trees will become a barrier, affording me a little privacy from the riff-raff who now comprise my clientele. More importantly, they will block off all views across the water for anyone except me. Never again will my guests be confronted by a mountain too grand for them to behold, or be disturbed by a majesty they cannot appreciate. That burden is now mine, and one I bear alone. 

***

You can order your copy of Twisted Mountains via Little Peak Press. 

Searching for home beneath the horse chestnut

By Jennifer Carter:

I smelt my success before I saw it. It was the smell of the demise of fresh green leaves into brittle, curled objects that just about resembled their original shape. They were scattered across the ground. Some were almost completely rotted, whilst others lay proudly, showing off the intricate veins where their rich colours seep into one another. A paint palette of mahogany, rust, and amber.

It was the smell of Autumn.

One of my big ambitions whilst away, inland, was to collect conkers for my four-year-old daughter. I was elated to find them within only a few hours of arriving. Scrabbling around the damp, leaf littered ground, I tried to find the biggest, smallest, and smoothest. My hands were numb with cold as I unzipped the bag to place them all safely inside.

I heard a familiar thud. A conker, still in its shell, fell from the branches which leaned over me and hit the ground. That blunt, seemingly insignificant sound threw me straight into a vivid memory.

The memory of traipsing around the dell, at least that’s what we called it: a small valley in an area of parkland behind my childhood home in the Midlands. There was a mysterious old brick building there, surrounding a deep hole shut off by a metal grate, and one of the biggest horse chestnut trees I have ever seen. My mother, father, brother and I would go there every autumn, looking for conkers. I remember fondly the moments of finding a whole one, still in its shell. I would proudly squash it between my shoe and a bit of hard ground, cracking it so I could reveal the rich, dark brown fruit, fresh enough to still glow where the golden pattern adorned it.

Every year in Falmouth I look for conkers, but the sea air prevents them from developing. I moved there from the midlands 10 or so years ago, and at the time I couldn’t resist the sandy beaches, warm microclimate and laid back inhabitants of the transitional student and holiday town. But the place I had started to call home didn’t excite me anymore. The coastal environments which are so sought after, so popular for holidays, praised so highly every time mentioned, I found dull and expired.

Standing in a field surrounded by towering trees, it made sense why. I was exhilarated by being in a place where the seasons were true to how I remembered experiencing them as a child. A place where I could hear birdsong which wasn’t drowned out by the harsh calls of Herring Gulls. A place where the air wasn’t so thick with salt that chestnut trees couldn’t bear fruit.

Suddenly I noticed the distinct call of a nuthatch. I found it straight away, making its way up one of the vast trunks behind me, flying into a neighbouring tree, and continuing its journey upwards. I cherished the still, cold air, the silence, and the time to reflect on where I belonged.

***
Jennifer is a writer and photographer based in Falmouth, Cornwall. Combining a love of wildlife with her passion for life writing, Jennifer’s work often reflects on how our environment can impact the way we think and feel. She is currently studying towards an MA in Travel & Nature Writing. You can find more of her work on her website.