Category: Land

I hear you! Listening to the world

I picked up a chest infection and cold in February that wiped me out. Thankfully, I’m getting back to myself this week and am back working and writing and walking.

One thing I have been catching up on are the transcripts of glorious interviews for my PhD. Each one is brilliant, for the people who participated and for the unexpected participants – the blackbird, the crow, the bees and wasps, the sheep, the lichen, the squirrels, the wind, the rain, the sun… There are so many voices in the recordings and in my field notes. It is a joy to hear them all, even if I don’t understand everything that is being communicated.

This attention, this active listening, has helped me to observe myself. I noticed when we were out walking at the weekend that I say “I hear you” to the wind, the rustle of leaves and tree branches, to the birds, to animals. It turns out that I do this a lot, but wasn’t aware of it. As I get older, I’m less fussed if people think I’m strange for chatting to something they haven’t noticed. They are probably so busy thinking about their own lives that they haven’t even noticed me, never mind that I’m engaging in conversation with a robin. If they do notice, it might bring a bit of joy to their day 🙂

This feeling of being “less fussed” links in with a great paper I read this week (thanks Beth!) by Robbie and Pauline (Nicol & Sangster, 2019). In it, one of the participants, Louise, is concerned she might be perceived as an “absolute weirdo” for sitting outside in a public place appearing to do nothing in particular. As someone who realised that she was laughing with joy at being caught up in the dance of a little wind dervish outside the full-length glass windows of the canteen at work in broad daylight, I believe I have worked past at least some of that concern myself, but it is understandable. I wonder if it is that concern about what human others might think that is the reason we don’t allow ourselves to connect as much as we could, to be aware of our surroundings, and listen to the many entities that share it.

In the theoretical background to the paper, Robbie and Pauline draw together research focused on the importance of paying attention to our place, of learning to listen, of coming to know the places we frequent. They ask, can we come to see the places we pass through daily in a different way, to actively engage with our places, and in so doing, to “find the unfamiliar within the familiar and the extraordinary within the ordinary” (Nicol & Sangster, 2019; p. 13). In being aware, in listening, and in acknowledging “I hear you”, I become more a part of the place where I am. Perhaps, by listening, I may someday come to understand.

Yet if we no longer call out to the moon slipping between the clouds, or whisper to the spider setting the silken struts of her web, well, then the numerous powers of this world will no longer address us – and if they still try, we will not likely hear them. (Abram, 2010; p.175)

References

Abram, D. (2010) Becoming animal: An earthly cosmology. Vintage. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/318/becoming-animal-by-david-abram/

Nicol, R., & Sangster, P. (2019). You are never alone: understanding the educational potential of an ‘urban solo’in promoting place-responsiveness. Environmental Education Research, 1-18.  https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2019.1576161 #paywall

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The Otters’ Children

Earlier this year, there was a call about a story competition. I needed a break, having been caught up in reading some pretty dry academic texts, and this sounded like fun. I was working on a story about a worm whisperer (no surprises there!) telling the tale of a woman who was able to communicate with worms and helped improve composting. My brain was in story mode and I was thoroughly enjoying myself.

Then I had two dreams, one night after the other. The first night, I dreamt of a small, squat tower in a green land and watched as red rivers bubbled up from the four corners of the tower. The second night, I dreamt of otter women going out into the land and communicating in their varied ways. Both dreams were vivid and stayed with me through the days that followed. I’m not sure what these dreams say about my state of mind!

I stopped writing the story about the worm whisperer, sat down and the following story came out of my fingers. I can’t explain it any other way than that it nagged me until I wrote it down. It came out pretty much as it is on the page below, but once written down, it nagged me again – it needed to be read out loud. Gavin agreed and he asked me to read it to him.

As I told the story, there were a couple of words that didn’t quite sit right, like bumps in a smooth road. Hearing it out loud, I knew that the written words had got in the way when I typed it up at first, that I had put in too many words in one place and the wrong word in another. With minor changes, the story became as it now is.

I submitted it for the competition, but I knew already that the competition team were looking for something more like the worm whisperer story. Then I thought it would work well as a children’s book, so I looked up publishers. Like the difference between reading on the screen and reading out loud, none of the options felt right.

This story is not mine to own or sell, so I’m offering this under a Creative Commons licence so that other people can tell it. I have probably picked up these story ideas over my lifetime, so I’m sure someone will recognise them from somewhere and tell me where they come from. I have a plan to record an audio version with photos from my local area as a backdrop, but I know that will take me time to do.

In the meantime, I’m sharing this with you. I look forward to hearing where the otters journey to and who they meet along the way.

The Otters’ Children

Once upon a long ago, a tower stood at the heart of a green, green island. The tower was small, square and squat, made of large blocks of stone that were a dark, dark grey. The tower was old and had been there longer than memory.

One day the same as any other, as the sun rose, light glimmered on the earth around the tower. From each side of the small, square, squat tower, a thin trickle of water ran and seeped into the earth. The trickle became a steady flow, the water finding a path through the earth until four streams chuckled from the tower and travelled into the land. More water, and the streams became rivers, reaching from the tower to the sea. As the rivers touched the sea, the land sighed and the rivers from the island’s heart flowed red as blood.

All was quiet except for the sound of water gurgling and murmuring. Then a flash and a splash and a ripple in each river as something moved in the depths. Four she otters lifted their heads, one in each red river rising from the small, square, squat tower at the heart of the island. They scented the sky, looked to the land, and turned their noses to the sea. They dived and swam and played along their rivers until they reached the sea. They dived and swam and played in the sea until they reached land again, one to the east, one to the south, one to the west and one to the north.

Reaching new shores, they stepped out of the water. Gone was the silk fur, the claws and tails. Four women walked on the land, leaving otter prints in the sand and silt. The otter woman in the north spoke to the many creatures of the land, water and sky. The otter woman in the west spoke to the many faces of the land, water and sky. The otter woman in the south spoke to the many plants of earth and water. The otter woman in the east took clay from the river and a twig from the earth and started to draw on the walls of caves. She spoke through her drawings with the voices of the many creatures, the many plants and the many faces of land, water and sky.

The earth was filled with the sounds of many voices. Time passed, as it does, and other creatures walked upon the earth. The otter women laughed and loved and lived in harmony with all their companions. Their children were many and each child carried the gifts of the otter women into an uncertain future.

Like four red rivers, the children of the otter women travelled out into the lands. With time comes forgetting and some forgot that they could talk to the creatures, to the plants, to the land, water and sky. And yet, the children of the east continued to talk through pictures, some pictures became words, and the words spoke in many voices. Words and pictures spread across the earth and in the mesh of communication, a truth became clear. Some of the voices were falling silent, voices of the creatures, the plants, the earth, the water, voices of the descendants of the otter women and their kin. The waters ran red once more and the heart of the world wept for loss.

And then the children of the otter remembered. They remembered that they could speak to the creatures of the land, water and sky. They remembered that they could speak to the faces of the land, water and sky. They remembered they could speak to the plants of earth and water. They remembered that they could speak to each other with different words, words of hope and growth and change and future. Together, they worked to save the voices that were falling silent, the long work of restoring lands, waters, airs and kin across the earth. Together, they worked to find the way to live lightly and in harmony with all their companions.

One day, not so very long ago, a small group of the otters’ children had an idea. They could tell a different story, call out to the otters’ children across the earth and remind them of what could be achieved together. Tell a story, they called, tell a story of our future, a story of hope and growth and change. The stories spoke in many voices and each was a flash and a splash and a flicker of something deeper. A deep change was coming from the heart of the earth and the hearts of all the otters’ children.

A tower stands at the heart of a green, green island. The tower is small, square and squat, made of large blocks of stone that are a dark, dark grey. The tower is old and had been there longer than memory. From the four sides of the tower flow four red rivers. They flow from the tower to the sea and from the sea to the future. And the future is good because we remembered.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Image is: Fischotter, Lutra lutra by Bernard Landgraf {GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)} from Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fischotter,_Lutra_Lutra.JPG

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Riches of pepper

I’m in the depths of transcribing at the moment, which I’m really enjoying, but it doesn’t leave much time for reading. So this week, I’m heading off on a tangent.

I have a ritual when it comes to opening a new packet of black peppercorns.

I slowly snip open the packet while holding it close to my nose. I breathe the dark peppery smell deep into my lungs. And I always feel incredibly rich and privileged to have a packet of black peppercorns to enjoy. I have felt this way for as long as I can remember.

I was opening a packet of pepper earlier this week and I thought, hmmn, I wonder where that comes from, that association of wealth with pepper. I was thinking perhaps Tudor times. I was curious, so I did a quick search to find out more.

Sarah Philpott’s (2013) post on salt and pepper gives a good overview of the history. From that, I found that pepper, my “black gold”, has been shipped from India for the last 4000 years or thereabouts. I praised the wisdom of Alaric the Visigoth and Attila the Hun in demanding a pepper ransom from the Romans, and taking peppercorns to the Egyptian afterlife sounds like a very wise idea. It makes me think of Death’s comments on the lack of mustard in the afterlife, though if curry can make it, maybe there is hope for pepper.

Whether you love pepper, as I do, or see pepper as a commonplace addition to your food, it is important to be aware of the impact of purchasing cheap pepper. Johannisson & Bengsten’s (2011) news item for the Ecologist shows the hidden costs tallied in the lives of pepper farmers and their families in India and Indonesia.

Sarah Philpott talks about the scandal in Victorian times when ground pepper was found to have been mixed with other additives. Now, while the ingredients might state that the packet contains nothing but black peppercorns, the reality is that it may carry a far greater price. Opening my packet of pepper takes on a deeper meaning.

I now know that my pepper comes through the Fair Trade Alliance Kerala, where farmers are working to support each other and with other fair trade groups across the globe. The Fairtrade Premium is reinvested to help farmers switch to organic farming, protecting the farmers, their families and the land from the impact of pesticides and fertilizers. A disaster management fund is in place to support farmers in times of crisis. Small-scale farmers are no longer isolated.

Where possible, we purchase organic, fairtrade products because similar issues are commonplace for the majority of the products we purchase, with poor payment impacting all farmers locally and globally. We need to start paying the true price for our goods and services.

It’s a simple choice to make, if you can. See Katy O’Brien’s link below for information on fairtrade herb and spice options.

References

Johannisson, F. & Bengtsen, P. (2011). Pepper: how our favourite spice is tainted by a deadly legacy. The Ecologist news article, 25 January 2011. Available at: https://theecologist.org/2011/jan/25/pepper-how-our-favourite-spice-tainted-deadly-legacy

O’Brien, K. (2018). Did you know you can buy Fairtrade herbs and spices in the UK? Blogpost for The Fairtrade Foundation, 3 August 2018. Available at: https://www.fairtrade.org.uk/Media-Centre/Blog/2018/August/Did-you-know-you-can-buy-Fairtrade-herbs-and-spices-in-the-UK

Philpott, S. (2013). Salt & pepper. The History Vault Features, Issue 1. Available at: https://www.thehistoryvault.co.uk/salt-pepper/

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Land tweeting

I’ve been time-travelling back to my undergrad years and re-reading Basso’s (1996) Wisdom Sits in Places. In his reflection on the Apache view of the landscape, he states that it is seen as:

a repository of distilled wisdom, a stern but benevolent keeper of tradition, an ever-vigilant ally… features of the landscape have become symbols of and for this way of living, the symbols of a culture and the enduring moral character of its people. (Basso, 1996; p.63)

Basso proceeds to discuss how the role of landscape in shaping social activity, and the way in which the Apache “constitute their surroundings and invest them with value and significance” (p.66). He proposes that this “moral relationship”, the cultural ecology, is often ignored in research.

Reading this brought to mind The Irish Border (@BorderIrish) Twitter account. With the current unease and uncertainty about the Brexit outcome, someone has set up an account to give the Border a voice in the negotiations.

In its own way, this account provides a symbolic, cultural representation of the land. It is a way of acknowledging the myriad difficulties woven into the negotiations. The person who set up the account tweeted recently that they sometimes think they are the Border. It is done so well that others who follows the account may also get a stronger sense of the impact of the negotiations through the voice of the border. I’m sure @BorderIrish would be quite happy to be viewed as an ever-vigilant keeper of wisdom!

This caused me to wonder if there were similar Twitter accounts, other ways in which Landscape or Place was being voiced, albeit by a human (as far as I know!). I could see @BorderIrish has a friend in @Malin_Head. This brought a smile to my face. Notwithstanding that it may be the same author masterminding the two accounts, having two Irish Places building an online relationship is really a very Irish thing to do. Which I believe I can safely say as an Irish person myself 🙂

I searched for other examples; all of the national parks that I came across in the US and UK had the same event-style timeline. Come to this event on this date, here’s a photo of a view, what temperature is it today, don’t forget to take your litter home. No sense of the places themselves communicating except perhaps through the captured image or video. The moderators of these accounts have taken the view, and rightly so, that people should visit the locations to develop their personal relationships with those places. All good. Still, it feels impersonal, hollow and a bit absent. Maybe it’s just me.

Widening my search to a broader sense of location, I realised that the libraries are particularly good at this. Granted, libraries are all marvelous at everything they do, but they have really captured the spirit of this approach. I’ve embedded a couple of classics from @ShetlandLibrary and @natlibscot below as examples. Scottish examples, so maybe this is a Celtic thing, to acknowledge that there is no reason why Places can’t have and be friends. I love the ongoing banter between @ShetlandLibrary and @OrkneyLibrary. Again, there is something more meaningful for me in having a sense of the libraries talking to each other, developing their friendship in an online space. And yes, I have read their tweets; I know that, deep down, they really love each other 🙂

The significance and presence of landscape that Basso (1996) outlines is the personhood of places which is finally being legally recognised, as for the Whanganui River. I am not suggesting Twitter accounts carry the same value. They are not Places speaking, but people speaking for Places. Maybe more Places need us to speak for them or reflect on what they might say if we could hear them. Either way, I am curious if these types of accounts are an indication that this is something we are reaching out for, a need that has been denied for too long in my culture, and that we are seeking a way to articulate.

If you know of any other accounts, let me know!

Reference

Basso, K. H. (1996). Wisdom sits in places: Landscape and language among the Western Apache. University of New Mexico Press. https://unmpress.com/books/wisdom-sits-places/9780826317247

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Coming home

I’ve been quiet on the blog over the summer. I had the best of intentions, but it was too hot and too sunny. My brain decided that writing and thinking were really too much to ask. Now the weather is cooling and the nights are getting darker again, I’m feeling a lot more cheerful. Time to roll up my sleeves and get back to writing.

I’ve rolled up my sleeves for another reason; my mum is moving back to Ireland, after a stay in Scotland of 18 years, so there are plenty of tasks to tackle. We moved here when my dad was offered a job; his dad was born in Scotland and his paternal grandmothers were Scottish women as far back as we can trace. He was excited at the thought of living near the place his father was born.

I hadn’t expected the impact that move would have on me. My first sight of Scotland was out a plane window as we circled Edinburgh airport. When the announcement came that we were coming in to land, I felt something I only knew from book and movie descriptions – a sense of coming home. My heart was full of joy and something like a sense of puzzled absence, as if I couldn’t understand why I had been away so long. This was the place I was meant to be – this land was my home. I hadn’t even stepped off the plane.

I get the same feeling when I see Traprain Law, the featured image for this blog, heave into view. As she rises, or in good Celtic tradition, as the road rises to meet her, I smile and send a greeting. My heart is full, I breathe deep, and I am home.

This feeling of being in the right place has come to the forefront once more now that my mum is moving back to Ireland. Her choice is right for her, as it is for me to stay here, and as it was for Sharon Blackie. In her book, If Women Rose Rooted, she talks about moving to Ireland and her words resonate.

Why is it that some of us come to so deeply identify with one place and not with another? I have no easy answers, only the knowledge that for all my wanderings and switherings, this the place I have always wanted to run back to when things grew difficult, the only place which makes me feel healthy and whole and full of joyful heart. (Blackie, 2016; p.329)

This question, this wonder about our identification with places, is woven into my PhD research. I have no easy answers either, about my place or those of the participants in my study. One thing that is certain for me is that I can do what I do because I am here. This echoes David Abram (2017) when he talks about “recalibrating” by walking, seeing, scenting and sensing the land that has chosen us. He emphasises the importance of a particular place in helping us know and connect with others, in a different take on Margaret Somerville’s research on connections to place-at-distance which I mentioned in a previous post.

Only by being deeply here, in and of this place, am I palpably connected to every other place. (Abram, 2017; p.284)

I like the idea that my place in East Lothian is an anchor point helping me to connect with others. Commuting home a few weeks ago, a song came on the radio. I had initially thought it a standard pop love song, until the lyrics caught my attention.

Maybe what I miss most
It wasn’t made of steel and stone
And maybe what I miss most
It wasn’t born of skin and bone (Scott, 2018)

I realised this was a love song to a place, the place the musician, Calum Scott, called home. He sang about his sense of his place from a distance, the realisation that it was something he couldn’t define – “maybe you’ll never know” – that he was missing. And yet, however far he travelled, part of him was “under three crowns” in Hull. I also like his jealousy of the black bird flying free outside the window, but that is food for a different post! You can listen to the song here.

Me, I’m off out into the garden 🙂

References

Abram, D. (2017). The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-than-human world, Twentieth Anniversary Edition. Vintage. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/319/the-spell-of-the-sensuous-by-david-abram/

Blackie, S. (2016). If women rose rooted: The journey to authenticity and belonging. September Publishing. http://sharonblackie.net/purchase-if-women-rose-rooted/

Scott, S, (2018). What I Miss Most lyrics: https://genius.com/Calum-scott-what-i-miss-most-lyrics

Traprain Law image by james denham, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13498271

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Where do we go…?

In my post last week, I was thinking about how the digital could function as a “thin place”, creating that magical sense of almost there, a step apart from someone and somewhere on the planet. This week, Ruth Stalker-Firth kept my mind whirring on that thought. I love that sense of synchronicity when ideas seem to draw in others, though my supervisors tell me that happens when you are early in your PhD and everything seems connected to your research 🙂

Ruth asks “Where do we go when we go online?” and talks in her post about attending a live webinar with Eckhart Tolle. His talk focuses on living in the now,  discussing how we can live fully in the present, while considering how our online practices can serve to distract, pull us into the “collective unconscious” as Ruth terms it. We go online and lose awareness of time and place.

I began to wonder about presence, our physical presence like mine in the garden, and our virtual presence when we are connecting to the Internet… I was off wondering: Where do we go in the space? (Stalker-Firth, 2018)

I smiled as I read this – as Ruth was distracted from Eckhart’s talk as she wondered about our virtual presence, I was equally distracted from her discussion of the research, caught in her “peripheral” report of her surroundings. I was sitting in her garden listening to the birds tweet and the traffic go by, echoed in the sounds of tweet and traffic in my own garden. I was feeling my breath and thinking about my presence. I had stepped out of time, and through her description, my virtual self had traveled to sit with her. Her brief description of her garden was not enough for me to visualise my/her surroundings, but there I was, sitting beside her, eyes closed, breathing deep and listening to the birds.

This medium – the Internet – expands us and influences how the message is perceived and so, creates a symbiotic relationship. (Stalker-Firth, 2018)

By now, you will have realised I’m a sucker for symbiotic relationships. Ruth’s comment above weaves into my previous thoughts on this, on the digital, on the physical and the lack of boundaries between what is “me” and “everything else.

I believe it is our desire to connect and experience and be experienced which really drives our minds, not the technology. It is our willingness to want to reach out for are hardwired for connection and shared experiences are a quick way to connect. (Stalker-Firth, 2018)

My drive is to connect beyond the human to the more-than-humans that share the place where the networked human is located. I wonder if it is possible to reach out and connect with the meshwork of relations that are local to someone else. I’m aware that my experience of Ruth’s garden is tied to my current experience of birdsong and traffic in my local area, not hers. Margaret Somerville warned me already that this might be the case, that meaning-at-distance may come only through reference to my local place-based connections.

If we, as Tolle recommends, learn to cultivate a stillness inside us against which everything happens then it is will be easier to retain a sense of self online, a sense of presence, and our virtual and physical will be aligned. (Stalker-Firth, 2018)

Ruth asks “where do we go when we go online”; I add to that my own question “what do we bring with us”. If there is truly no division between “me” and “everything else”, perhaps cultivating that sense of stillness allows us to be more aware, to integrate and celebrate the all that is now and the all that surrounds and permeates us. We can acknowledge it and bring it with us, share it out into the network and allow other voices to be heard. We can welcome the presence of all our relations; I just need to fine-tune a few methods of doing that!

For now, there is more in Ruth’s post that I need to dig into, when I can stop myself getting distracted by the spring chorus. It may have only been based on my local place-connections, but it was nice to sit with Ruth in the garden, even if only for a virtual digital moment.

References

Somerville, M. (2007). Becoming-frog: a primary school place pedagogy. Australian Association for Research in Education Conference, Freemantle, 26-29 November. https://www.aare.edu.au/publications-database.php/5511/becoming-frog

Stalker-Firth, R. (2018). Virtual presence: where do we go when we go online? https://www.ruthstalkerfirth.com/virtual-presence-where-do-we-go-when-we-go-online

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Standing in a thin place

I have grown up with a fondness for “thin” places; places that have given me a sense that there is a “somewhere else” just a breath away. From a Celtic spirituality perspective, these places are described as sacred, close to the Otherworld, locations for pilgrimage and reflection (BĂ©res, 2012). My thin places have rarely been those selected by tour companies; they are often liminal zones, edges of rivers, lakes, paths or woodlands, with a kind of somewhere-in-between-ness that makes me feel as if I have stepped out of the flow of time.

Close up of primrosesOne of my clearest memories as a child of such a place was a family holiday to a cottage my uncle had recently purchased. The cottage stood in the middle of a ploughed and mucky field (yeay, muck!) and at the edge of the field there was a small stream running in a deep mossy ditch under trees. Though the ditch was deep, the stream was not. I liked to wade in to the middle in my wellies and stand in the quiet cavern under the green tree canopy. The sound of chuckling water and birdlife and my breath. The scent of water and moss and green and primroses. I remember the primroses most of all, as the banks were covered in them and the scent wrapped all around me. It was a magical spot; if I stood long enough and still enough, I thought, I will see fairies. To this day, the scent and sight of primroses makes me smile.

I’m thinking about these thin places as I am exploring connections to place, reading about Indigenous research methods, and thinking about my own cultural heritage. As BĂ©res (2012) states, there is a valid concern about appropriation of the ways of other cultures. I want to draw on my own cultural heritage and wonder what exactly that is. I wish to encompass BĂ©res’ approach as outlined below.

I am able to honour, respect and learn from North American and Australian Aboriginal ways of being with the non-human world and also from Celtic spirituality (European ways of being in pre-Christian and early Christian times) regarding the sacredness of the non-human world. (Béres, 2012; p.183)

I talked about Newgrange last week; another location that was special for me. Again, that same sense of somewhere-in-between-ness. Unsurprisingly, things have changed in the 20-odd years since I was last there! In an excellent article by Stephen Brown (2006), it seems that heritage-park marketing has run a little wild. If I return, it won’t be to the Newgrange of my memory, though it sounds like they may still be using the same light bulb to replicate the solstice. Brown’s article considers the various contested interpretations of what it means to be “Celtic” as an introduction a special issue exploring “Celtic marketing”. There are three elements to Celtic marketing, Brown suggests: practice, paradigm and philosophy. Practice is the marketing of Celtic “goods and services”, from events to merchandise and everything in between.  Paradigm “celebrates intuition, idiosyncrasy, iconoclasm and irreverence” at the heart of the Celtic ethos, which sounds like fun. Philosophy, it seems, marketers share with the Celts, who Brown describes as “proto-entrepreneurs”. As with the Celts, Brown says, Celtic marketers are “simultaneously abhorred and admired, we attract and repel, we intrigue and infuriate”. What ties the practice, paradigm and philosophy together is storytelling; the Celts are renowned “yarn-spinners”. I inherited that tale-telling gene and wonder what the Celtic researcher practice, paradigm and philosophy is.

The articles may seem like strange bedfellows, loosely connected by Celtic association. However, both articles emphasise how places are not static, even those containing structures that have stood for thousands of years. My stream and the primroses are locked in a memory, as I do not know how to return to that location and the quiet cavern may be long gone. To know a place, and for a place to know us, is simply for the moment. My sense of thin places being those briefly outside the flow of time may be linked simply to my focus on being in that place at that time. Thinking about my research and connecting with other places at distance, the thin place may prove to be the shared online space with my participant, when they hold open the door for me to be with them in their place as I stand on a digital threshold. We will both be “somewhere else” and perhaps our shared places can allow us to feel as if we are just a breath away.

References

BĂ©res, L. (2012) Celtic spirituality and postmodern geography. Journal for
the Study of Spirituality, 2:2, 170-185. https://doi.org/10.1179/jss.2.2.h84032u7246xg776 #paywall

Brown, S. (2006) Tiocfaidh år lå: introduction to the special issue. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 14:1, 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1080/09652540500511206 #paywall

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