Moments in Landscape

Moment in Landscape no.1 I do not remember this photograph being taken, yet I am in it. Sitting in a chair strapped to my dad’s back I look just over a year old.

It must be the first photograph I have of myself in a place that is not my home. Well, home as in the house that I sleep in – maybe this is the first photograph of me in my home. In what I now call my true home – the rural landscape.

My dad stands in the middle wearing his Asics trainers, Always Asics, I’ve never known him wear anything else.

This pair is just one of the many that I’ve seen him wear since this photograph.

The track he, or should I say we, stand on is narrow, dusty and coloured like hay, but among the green verges, what stands out to me is the willow herb on the right side.

I believe this is the first day walk my parents took my sister and I on.

I look at it now, observing the landscape with the knowledge that I have since been taught.

I can’t help but question what the younger me with her confused face as she is strapped to her dad’s back and told by her mother to look at the camera thought.

How did I think of the landscape then?

How did this moment play a role in what I think about the landscape we are in now?

The willow herb and the bridge in the background tell me it is likely we were walking along a disused railway.

But did I know it then?

Did these elements of the landscape frame my interaction with that place

then as they do now?

For me, looking at this photograph is both odd and familiar, the track I assume is somewhere near Cambridge as we had recently moved there but it could in fact be anywhere.

I have since been to many places that look similar to this photograph’s setting, but I do not think any were this place.

I have so many questions, Ones that for now I do not seek to answer.

Instead, I treasure this moment and continue to look with wonder.

Moment in Landscape no.2 I am a photograph that if you hadn’t seen me yesterday you may not remember today that I exist. You would not remember me as an object, a trapping of time or a memory of your mother’s. If I had told you then I exist you would have also told me that certain parts of my story are wrong.

As you know your mother strongly believes that twins should never dress in matching clothes. I and you both know she despises it. Yet were you to look at me you would see you and your sister in matching hats and wellington boots, both the same colour – reproductions of the same object. And, your coats, now these are different colours, but they are also that same apart from that one detail.

On that day you somewhat matched. Not fully as she would never allow you both to fully match but on that day partly.

Revisiting Moment in Landscape 1 For this past week something about the first photograph has been troubling me.

In looking at it I’ve become attuned to it, In looking at it I’ve seen less of myself and more of my sister.

So I asked my mother, Revealing that in fact it was my sister who sat upon my dad’s back that day.

She wore a facial expression typical of me but as we look at it together her head shape seems more and more like her own, Revisiting the album once more.

We find the key clue, Another photograph of my sister in the same jumper.

Alongside it, a photograph of my mother and I from the same day. I am sat on her back just like my sister is sat on my dad’s.

We stand in front of a river, a place I instantly remember.

For even though I live so far from this place, I revisited in 2017.

Seeing this second photograph, the one of my mother and I, changes deeply how I see the image of my dad and sister.

Changes I cannot undo.

The mystery of the first image is now solved.

The knowledge of what happened that day has been restored.

There, clear and seemingly obvious.

Why didn’t I see it before?

My instincts told me, I had not visited this place a second time,

But now I know that to be false.

My relationship with this image, place and landscape has changed.

I have applied a structure, based on knowing.

I think back to the first position I took, I miss that place, That place of thought.

The mystery, the unknowing, the freedom and flow, I should have cherished them while they sat alongside the photograph in my hands.

Now they are all lost in the structure of knowing.

I am blocked by the knowledge I gained.

A task finished, A mystery solved.

I wish this were not so.

I wish I was lost in the mystery again.

An unknowing, which unearthed elements about my relationship to that place, has since gone, It vanished before my eyes.

I miss this unknowing; I know too much.

Frustrated, Lost, I do not know what to do next.

So back in the photograph album they both go.

On another day I’ll come back again, Revisit them.

Perhaps after some distance, Once again, I’ll be able to ask myself What I did not and do not know.

Moment in Landscape no.3 My feet tucked away from the water I sit, taking a moment to contemplate this place But I do not sit alone, I hold a photograph of the same stepping stone On which I now sit, from the 20th of April 2002.

With a firm and nervous grasp, I hold my mother’s hand.

She carries my brother on her back while her other hand delicately clasps around my sister’s.

While my sister guides my mother across from the stone I sit on to the next, I lean on them both Needing their support in this moment.

For I am unsure For I am nervous For I am far from shore.

The memories I attribute to this place are slippery like the water beneath my feet.

They move away from and around me, Making some parts certain and others far from it.

A memory drifts past me, I cannot place it.

All I know It sits somewhere between this photograph and now.

“Are we nearly there yet?”

“How long until the stepping stones?”

“Can I go across first?”

Then, I was sure I would enjoy the act of crossing, No thoughts of slipping or falling in, Knowing I had done it before so I could do it again.

But you see, today, I do not feel that same excitement and certainty.

Instead, I feel unsure.

Just like in the photograph.

The moss and lichen have reclaimed the stones, Creeping up from the sides, To reside on the top, Taking advantage of the recently reduced footfall, Laying claim to their home.

Just like the moss and lichen The unsureness has reclaimed me, Pushing away my previous certainty.

Vulnerable, I sit Smaller than the lichen and moss atop the stones, Which have become the details that hold me in place.

Opening up crevices, I could not crawl into before.

In this moment, Looking at the photograph, I am in the same position now as I was then.

I can begin to learn about this place once more.

Time for me to finish crossing, To move from this stone to the next.

But as I cross, I let the unsureness continue to grow, To morph.

Together the moss, lichen and unsureness hold me up, I rest in their arms, Making my way from one stone to the next.

They become my mother’s hand, But this time my unsureness remains A part I shall continue to grasp.