TRANSCRIPT: Notes From Dunfanaghy 19 – What The Land Wants
Hi, it’s Megan. This is today’s Notes from Dunfanaghy, which I almost forgot to record because I’ve been having such a nice time chilling and writing in Dunfanaghy.
Today, it’s difficult to kind of put what I’m thinking about in words. I’ve spent the day by myself in Dunfanaghy, intermittently walking on the beach, exploring around the rocks, trying to do a bit of writing, coming back to the house to do a bit of writing, trying to do some writing in the car whilst sitting up at the top of the cliff. So I’ve spent the day mostly in silence.
And now I’m going to try and articulate what I’ve been thinking about, which — I don’t quite have the language for it yet, but this is going to be one of those notes that really is a memo to myself. Let’s see if you get a little crumb out of it.
So what I’ve been thinking about is — the word cloud is intimacy, landscape, respect, mystery. Maybe there’s something about being in this landscape that is so magical to me and breathtaking to me, and also completely everyday. I’m so familiar with it.
And I take lots of photographs of the landscape when I’m here, I take the same photograph. I kind of feel like — actually, maybe this holds up across the board — I feel a little bit about the landscape the way that I do about my children, especially when my children were very young. Like, whenever my kids were babies, I took endless photographs of them all day long, and I felt like I could just stare at their face forever. That’s kind of how I feel about the landscape around Dunfanaghy. I could stare at these views forever, I could take photographs on a daily basis and never tire of more photographs. And also knowing that the photographs will never, ever be able to capture the place.
But there’s something, there is some quality about the landscape that means every time I take a photograph, it feels brand new, even though I took a photograph of exactly the same perspective, exactly the same cliff, exactly the same bit of sea yesterday. It feels brand new today, in the same way that, you know, a tiny baby feels brand new every day.
And so the thing that I’ve been thinking about, and it’s not a fully formed thought, is — or I’ve just noticed — so obviously I bring people here on retreat, I take them to places that are extremely important to me, that have great significance to me. And I take lots of photographs of those places, but there are some places in particular that I’m not sure I’ve ever publicly shared photographs of, and I’m feeling — is it a protectiveness, I don’t know what it is — but that instinct to not take those photographs and videos and share them, I’m feeling that more and more, and becoming more conscious of that.
And I feel a similar way about my kids. Obviously everyone has a different approach to whether they share pictures and videos of their kids online, and I have zero judgment, different things work for different people, different people feel differently about it. I personally don’t really share any pictures of my kids — occasional ones where maybe you can’t see their face, but as a general rule I try not to, because that’s what feels right for me. I think because I imagine, if I was them, that’s what I would want right now.
But I’m beginning to notice I feel the same kind of way about the landscape. Donegal is an amazing place, and the landscape is incredible, and there’s lots of stuff online, there are lots of people who share photos and videos of all of these amazing places. And I don’t know, recently I’ve just been thinking more and more that — and go with me on this — I’m not sure that that’s what the landscape wants.
What do I mean by that? I don’t really know what I mean by that, other than that is the sense that I get when I’m in these places. I guess it kind of goes back to maybe the very first note, where I talked about, like, the land speaks to us. It has things to share with us. It is able to communicate with us.
And there’s something about — I think we miss so much whenever we’re in that zone of, like, let me take a picture of this, let me take a video of this, let’s just see what does this place look like, what’s the best angle, and then we move on to the next place, and we’re just kind of collecting images and videos of the landscape.
What I’m interested in in the landscape, and why I love coming back to the same places again and again and again and going deeper and deeper and deeper, is you get to uncover all of these tiny little gems when you’re really present to the place, and you’re really paying attention to the place, exploring what is in front of you.
Like, for me, one of the things that I like about geology, and that I find helpful when thinking through a kind of geological lens, is everything is fractal, right? So if you’re mapping an area, and you want to understand what happened here, what forces was this place subject to, you can map it all out and see it on a scale of kilometers, tens, hundreds, thousands of kilometers, on a map. But equally, you can see the same patterns — you know, if the rock is folded, if it’s tilted in a particular orientation — you can see the same patterns, and essentially see the same story, in an outcrop of rock that’s a few meters wide, or in one little piece of rock that’s on a centimeter scale. Or equally, if you take a thin section of that rock and you look at it under a microscope, you will see the same patterns and orientations in the minerals under the microscope.
And so there’s something about getting to where you have enough intimacy with the landscape that you are able to see the patterns on all of these smaller scales, that the landscape, and what it has to reflect back to us about ourselves, really starts to sink in.
And so I don’t really know where I’m going with this, beyond — I’ve just had that sense of the photographing, and videos, and all of that — they’re fine to a point, but then they start to get in the way of intimacy with the landscape. Kind of, that’s true of any relationship, right, like how we move through the world — at some point you have to put the technology aside and sink into where you are.
And so some of the places that are most impactful to me, I have photographed, but I’ve never shared those images, and I’m not sure I will. And also some of the places that are most impactful to me, and that I have seen be very impactful on people at previous retreats, are not places that would photograph particularly well in that sense. Like, you wouldn’t get a stunning shot, but there are these little details in the landscape, there is something about the energy of the place that is magical.
So, yeah, and I’ve never really consciously had that thought before, about, like, what does the landscape want in this relationship, in this conversation.
So I’m going to leave it there today. We’re coming towards the end of these notes, there’s only a couple more to come. And I just wanted to say, I’ve had some really, really thoughtful, nice, kind emails, all of which I haven’t had a chance to respond to yet, but I will. So I just wanted to say thank you, and I’m glad that these ramblings offer something to you along the way.
I’ll see you tomorrow. Thanks.