Gunn's modern pilgrimage

On Wednesday 11 March, during my Following the River mini-residency with Dunbeath Heritage Centre, I’ll be joining the Helmsdale-based arts organisation Timespan on a walk to the monastic site at Ballachly just west of Dunbeath. For Timespan this walk is part of their project 58° North -A Modern Pilgrimage Around the Globe, a journey to discover the creative communities which share with Helmsdale their latitude, coastal setting and population size. For me, this collaboration is an opportunity to explore the ideas in Neil Gunn’s Highland River from a slightly different angle.

Though few people use the term pilgrimage, a lot of Gunn’s critics allude to this idea when they discuss his novel Highland River. In my view, the journey of the adult Kenn is a pilgrimage as the main character senses an immense urge to find the source of the river - ‘the source of being, of all being’ as Dairmid Gunn writes in the introduction to the novel - and this journey is - what this author calls - positive and life-enhancing.

More then ten years ago, when I still lived in The Netherlands, I walked parts of the Way of St. James to Santiago de Compestela in the northeast of Spain. I carefully mapped my route from my hometown to the Spanish city, read many accounts of people who had done so before me and learned about the key cathedral towns en route. On my way, I delighted in visiting churches and monasteries, and encountering signs of the scallop shell that affirmed I was on the right way. And I was in good company. Above all, my memories of the pilgrimage are infused with the kindness of people who recognised me as a pilgrim and with the conversations with fellow pilgrims who shared my path for a few minutes, hours, sometimes even several days.

A few weeks ago I read an account by Celeste Ray about pilgrimages to Ireland’s holy wells in Landscapes Beyond Land, a book edited by the anthropologist Arnar Arnason and colleagues. She describes how Irish communities visit holy wells to venerate the saints associated with them. On the way to the wells these pilgrims visit stations to pray. At the actual well, pilgrims leave votives such as strips of cloth tied to nearby trees and bushes  as a plea to the saint for health and wellbeing for themselves or those close to them. Similar to pilgrims on the Way of St. James, pilgrims to these holy wells follow an established route along which they carry out specific  religious practices as have many people done before them.

It is not hard to see that Kenn’s journey to the source of the river is different from the above religious pilgrimages. I choose, however, to call Kenn’s walk a pilgrimage too. That said, for Kenn the pilgrimage is a personal and his destination is one of personal choice rather than one carrying religious significance. Whereas religious pilgrimage is undertaken for the fulfilment of some prayer, Kenn’s - and my own walk to the source of Gormack Burn - is a journey of discovery and reflection. I would even argue that the path of personal growth involved has become more important than actually reaching the destination. What’s more, the pilgrimage started long before Kenn embarked on the actual walk as it was the strength he derived from his childhood memories of the Highland river when he was in the trenches during the World War I, that ultimately urged him to embark on his walk to the source of the river. From my own pilgrimage along the Way of St. James I’ve learned that the discovery and reflection related to pilgrimage not only precedes and coincides with the physical journey, but also extends well beyond the arrival at one’s physical destination.   

I’m interested in learning more about Timespan’s understanding of pilgrimage in the context of their 58° North project. If you want to join us in our conversation on Wednesday 11 March, please email Jacquie Aitken at enquiries@timespan.org.uk.

Copyright text and image Petra Vergunst

Poem as document

The burn

with the trunk’s gurgling reflection

in the shallow water and the shadow play

of trees on the opposite bank –

a place perfect

for salmon to spawn

After weeks of ice and snow I finally managed to do my second and third walk along Gormack Burn earlier this week. North of Drum Estate the valley has opened up and given me a clear view of the foothills of Hill of Fare where the burn well up. Miles pass, and the view of the hill sharpens up. As I’m approaching the source, the burn has become shallower with the shadows of trees spanning its entire width. The stony riverbed is clear now. 

Documenting the walk through poetry has proven to lift out and intensify my experiences. After capturing initial impressions, I choose a prompt - drawn from my background study of, and my own reflections on Neil Gunn’s novel Highland River - randomly to focus my observations, direct me into the direction of new interpretations and deepen my thoughts. Sometimes ideas for lines or a particular voice or form emerge naturally, sometimes I have to wait until I’m behind my desk before I’m able to create a poem.

Linger, like a magpie in flight –

do not think you know its slight already

The walk influences the poems and the poems influence the walk. What I see, hear and smell serves as a background, metaphor or other vehicle of experiences and thoughts expressed in the poems. Vice versa, my intention to write poems, and the time spent to take notes and develop these into poems, intensifies these observations, experiences and related thoughts and the poems serve as a vehicle to remember these.

I see the poems resulting from my walk along Gormack Burn as working documents rather than finished products. Inherently, they are vehicles for capturing, intensifying and remembering observations, experiences, thoughts. For The Light of the North Festival in Dunbeath in November 2015 I’m creating a longer work of poetry and music. I have started to write the first part of the poem and have drawn on images, experiences and thoughts generated through the prompts and poems - sometimes an image, sometimes a line or two, at sometimes a full stanza.

From 5 to 7 March the Helmsdale-based arts organisation Timespan will host the True North Conference ‘Recording the Past, Present and Future’. As part of this conference I’ll give a short presentation on my walk along Gormack Burn and the way I’ve used poetry to document it. More information about the conference can be found at Timespan’s website.

Copyright text, poems and image Petra Vergunst