here and there and everywhere

it's funny how the zeitgeist thing goes.

scanning the interpixies to see "who is doing what" these days reveals that 

P L A C E

is the current favourite workshop flavour.

+

i think it's always been mine.

i have fond memories of my wonderful class teacher at Shelford Girls School in grade 5, who sent us outside to randomly choose a foot square patch of ground and then

after we had made our choice

explained that we were to study it closely

map it

draw it

write about it

count the insects walking across it

imagine ourselves to be their size

see the grass as a forest

make rubbings of it with pencil and paper

i'm pretty sure that Mrs Pownall has long gone to the dogs above

but i don't think i will ever forget her

the classroom was always filled with flowers and seeds 

and bones and other assorted found things

a couple of years later my love of language was nurtured by the redoubtable Mrs Williams, a flame-haired and passionate Scot who read us poetry and made history come alive.

my father instilled in me a love of maps and wandering

while my mother had me drawing plants almost from when i could hold a pencil

 i have been trying to remember the first time i offered a class that brought all these things together and i think it must have been 'mapping country' at the Kapiti Summer School of 2009

which evolved in various ways, stepping sideways into fieldwork

and eventually blossoming as being (t)here or being t(here)

it works either way.

 similar workshop titles are sprouting around the whirled

"where is here" and "you are here" are two that i found this morning

both with subtitles about mapping place

for me it's less about mapping, these days

and more the practice of

paying attention to where we are

finding beauty in sometimes surprising places

considering the poetics of place, even in the parking lot

and each time i offer this class

whether it's in the heart of a city

or deep in a wilderness

or somew(here) in between

i find my life wonderfully enriched by the people who join me.

T H A N K    Y O U

all of you who have been on the journey with me.

i'm so grateful that you give me work.

work that i love.