The Inadequacy of Words

After the last Airstream Gathering we moved on to a small site on a farm just outside Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, where we stayed for two weeks. We have started to notice a pattern now that we have held three of these gatherings, and it is that we experience a sort of post-rally slump, a deep feeling of 'what now?' And that wasn't helped much for those few days when we couldn't connect to the internet. We felt a bit cut off.

There are times when not being connected is appropriate, and even positively therapeutic. For example, last summer which we spent in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and the Hebrides. We rarely had a phone or internet signal. But being out of touch and unreachable went hand in hand with the feeling of remoteness and wildness of some of the places we found ourselves in. In a way, not being able to tell what it was like, as we were experiencing it, added to the sense of a special and personal journey. We were cut off for much of the time and we had no choice but to be where we were one hundred percent, without diluting the uniqueness of our experiences. Words couldn't have expressed how I felt at the time, and I was happy not to have to confine the spaciousness of where we were and what we felt with words.



One year on it seems a shame not to have shared. We have posted about the Outer Hebrides and received some appreciative comments, so we're going to at least post some photos from last summer, from time to time.


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