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This is walk no. 14 from ‘Walking Beyond Words’. Aya Hastwell who is facilitating the project with me has just returned to her family in Kazakhstan and chose this prompt because of her appreciation of the global connections created through people walking in different places. She invited us to send a photograph and a single word as a response to the Walk. She will collage them together.

I vowed to write for 10 minutes after each walk and to post regular blogs. There has been a long gap, an extended backstitch as I connect to the last post and link to the present again. A decision is made to take my 10 minute writing for today and place it into a public space. I will allow myself some leeway to amend what I have written and to let the ideas develop through the process of transferring from the hand-written to words on the screen. These are stitches into my memory of a recent walk, picking up threads of thought – a tacking of recollection onto the page (or screen).

 

A sewing pattern on the road near the school

A zig-zag

A straight stitch

Embroidered rectangles and stripes

It is a guide for when and where to tread

Tread of feet and tread of tyres

 

Feet push energy into the earth

Passing through tarmac paving

Downward and upwards forces

Repetitive stepping

Connecting here with there

 

Tree roots coming to the surface

and burying into the ground

Reaching out to each other

Binding the soil

 

Grass carpet

threads knotted

holding firm in the earth fabric

Reeds reach up

and out of the water

Lilly pads float on the surface,

anchored in the river bed

 

All types of stitching.

Barbed wire and grass weaving

French knots

Backstitching steps

forward and back

Cross-stitching car park

concrete grid with foliage

pushing up through the holes

 

Threads emerge from the earth material that nurtures the seed

Cotton thread originating in the ground

Willow puffs rolled between fingers

 

Steps in one place resonate with steps taken elsewhere

through the shared imagination

of a Walk that extends into the earth

and stitches us together

https://www.sallystenton.com/projects/walking-beyond-words/


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