Two weeks ago I spent three days at Ty Newydd Writers Centre on a course about three of my favourite topics - Landscape, Memoir and Travel. I had such an enjoyable and profitable time there with twelve other writers and two inspiring and encouraging tutors. I was also lucky enough to meet Jay Griffiths for the first time and to hear her read from her book "Wild". She wrote, "for what is savage is in the deepest sense gentle and what is wild is kind". I realised that for the first time I was hearing someone describe what it means to be wild in a way I connected with.
Every morning I got up early to run down to the estuary and along the coast path to Criccieth and back. Each time I saw this pair of swans feeding together.
Later I wrote: Up with a rising sun and into the brightening day. Running down lanes of slurried mud and moulding blackberries. Out onto the loose banks of the estuary - and there, two swans holding their own against a current intent on taking them out to sea. Bent necks, one movement, breaking through silver and gold. In this I saw the tender synchronicity of our own life together - the strength and vulnerabilityof being one part of two.
Hello Gill I read Wild last weekend in a remote mountain bothy in the Cambrian Mountains.
ReplyDeleteI used to watch the swans on the Usk when I lived there and when Jane was pregnant. They were a symbol of goodness.