HALLO DAVID

RACHEL HUNT: Self-Directed Residency, 2016

Using Sweeney’s as a place to explore the ‘out-dwelling’ skillscape. My trip to Sweeney’s was well timed, unintentionally so. It came in the midst of my write up, during a particularly fraught couple of months, when a years worth of empirics was being turned into just five chapters of a thesis. I am studying huts and bothies in rural Scotland and have found that, as Nan Shepherd wrote, ‘The thing to be known grows with the knowing’. Even in a thesis there is never enough room. I was stressed and frazzled and it was a wet, wet winter. Sweeney’s offered welcome escape.

Hunt_Meagaidh
Hunt_Meagaidh

The bothy was warm, well built, and opened onto a fantastic view. It was a place for writing, a space for thinking and strangely liberating outdoor showers. I woke every morning to light the stove, make bread and soup, walk the dog (Lucy had kindly allowed me to bring) and then settle down to write.

Hunt_Dwelling
Hunt_Dwelling

It was there, in the bothy, that I wrote chapter 7. Emboldened by the words within the bothy library, and Nan Shepherd in particular, it began to take shape. It is in this chapter that I look to the ideals and idylls of hut and bothy life, address the issues of journey, health, gender, nature, biophelia and lastly attending to skill. It is for this last section to which I am most indebted to my time at Sweeney’s. My introduction to this chapter states the following:

…this chapter will turn to the ideal of skill. It does so to advance a series of observations: 1, that there is the potential for a innate skill to ‘get it’, a knowledge rather than an act; 2, there is the claim that simplicity in itself is skilful – the ability to make something look simple, is in fact, where the true skill lies in this case, embedded in an impressive relationship between ‘out-dweller’, thought, practice, and environment; and 3, that while living simply is often typecast with the trope of ‘return’ or ‘escape’ to a ‘simpler’ existence, to be successful in that endeavor can require a complex ‘skilling up’ – a process of learning, adaptation, creativity and flexibility which is, arguably, ‘akin’ to what is routinely expected in the modern world.

Living in a hut, albeit a particularly luxurious one, allowed for an ascetic aesthetic which acts upon the self, focusing the mind on the physical tasks to be done and, in my case, the mental task of what was to be written. Mind and body worked together over that week to the tune of 10,000 words, and a calmer mind. For me at least, these are not normal work outcomes. Not together and not in the same week. Heidegger once write of Building Dwelling Thinking, without commas, to emphasise the harmonious linking of the three ideas and so I would argue that Sweeney’s, and buildings like it, offer a space for Hut Thought Word. I would thus like to thank Sweeney’s bothy, and the Bothy Project, for allowing me to explore the notion of a hut as a space to think, to write, and to be. Buildings have the capacity to act upon their users, impacting upon the work they produce in that space and I learnt a great deal about this process during my week here. I am thankful for every moment of this opportunity.

I have, in other spaces, written of the words people leave in the bothy, particularly in the bothy book and so I am also grateful for those who left their words, images, and as a first for me, their sculptures, for me to find.

Hunt_TopTips
Hunt_TopTips
Hunt_Popup
Hunt_Popup
Hunt_Maps
Hunt_Maps

While visitors books can be seen as inconsequential lists of names, dates, times I would rather see them as treasured individual literary gems, works which, in their handwritten state, become a modern day manuscript reflective of the initial days of the revolutionary move from orality to literacy (Finkelstein and McCleery 2002). They take us back to a time when there was only one book, one ‘object’, in one place. The makers thus mimic the monks of days gone by, creating books to be valued and protected. These ‘gems’ above, may well make it into my thesis, and they certainly demonstrate the need for greater attention to the guest book and the treasure they hold.

JENNY & IAN HUMBERSTONE: Self-Directed Residency, 2015

Crisp frost adorns the crunching heather./ Moonlight brightens, illuminating every patch of frozen ground, every bare branch./ The night sky, above this small shelter, this haven of home, sheltering us from the brisk cold and wailing winds./ A crackling hearth, the warmth of a wood/ fuelled fire, simple comfort and protection from natural elements we are rarely so exposed to./ The River Spey lies beneath us, its roaring crescendo-ing cacophony of continuous water./ Winding its way down from the hills above through this striking and interwoven patchwork landscape/ of tree roots, thawing cold soil, grass and gravel and heather and rock.

 

Humberstone_FurnaceSnow

In early January we journeyed up to Inshriach Bothy near Aviemore, full of anticipation, excitement and having gingerly readied ourselves for what promised to be a unique experience enveloped by the landscape in a simple shelter in the Highlands. A week removed from the everyday hustle and bustle, the bright lights and city noise. A time to reflect, to be inspired and restored, to regain focus and perspective and dedicate a rarely found straight week to the creative pursuits we both treasure.

Ian + Jenny Humberstone at Bothy

Ian is a researcher, artist and musician. I am a landscape architect, photographer and film-maker. Together we have interests in both the auditory and visual senses that combine with other experiential qualities to help define a sense of place.

During our days at Inshriach Bothy we explored this beautiful landscape whilst the weak winter daylight lasted, and found visual senses dominated – views of far flung snow-topped mountains against the horizon, the almost hypnotising circling swirling of the river, frozen rippled puddles along the path and bare branches swaying in the wind. As dusk turned to pitch black inky night, auditory clues took over to translate the world around us – owls hooting from up above our heads, the crunch of footsteps along winding frosty paths, winds wailing, trees creaking, and that occasional unexpected crunch nearby that jolts you alert, filled with dread of what might be out there in the dark – heard but not seen.

You feel vulnerable, blind without a primary visual sense to guide you, auditory cues magnify in intensity, and instead you retreat to the warmth inside the bothy, lighting lanterns and a fire to give warmth. ‘Outside’ transcends from a serene beautiful landscape and becomes a darkened wilderness of unexpected noises that prey on your overly zealous imagination. Until morning. When you re-awake to views of a peaceful serene landscape once more.

Humberstone_IanWoodsHumberstone_Mountain 02Humberstone_RainbowRedTreesJenny Humberstone photographyHumberstone_LandscapeHumberstone_LochAnEileennight sky bothy

Together we made a film exploring this transition in the way we interpret the world around us, the way our experience of place changes as different senses dominate – day to night, visual to auditory, from an instantly visual and explained world in plain sight, to a primal fear induced by auditory cues we either hear or imagine but cannot see or anticipate.

The audio for this film primarily comprises original field recordings taken by Ian at the Inshriach Bothy site and locale (including piano at the Old Bridge Inn) in addition to original compositions responding to the night scenes and outro. Film and photography was recorded entirely on-site by Jenny. The film represents the collaboration of the senses which combine to create the ‘genius loci’ of this unique landscape as this changes from day to night and back to day again.

Humberstone_LightToNight

Whilst at the bothy I became interested in the notion of layering sensory information, which in combination forms a unique perspective in creating a sense of place. This sense of place is always fluid and personal – a landscape and its experiential qualities change not only with time of day, season, meterological conditions, but also with the specific places someone explores and subjective experiences personal to them within that landscape. In the following series of photographic works, I looked specifically at layering different visual information from varying scales in the landscape around Inshriach Bothy – by combining landscape-wide views and detailed abstractions at the closest scales of leaves, textures and macro elements to combine and create a series of snapshots which together help form a visual sense of this beautiful place and landscape.

Humberstone_WaterFireHumberstone_Mountain 04Humberstone_MountainWater