beneath the stream

Food can be about more than taste, it can be about the gathering and that when you ‘spend a lot of time in Nature you have another relationship with it’. In this episode we learn much, especially about the uses of Arctic plants, from a joyous conversation with Eva Gunnare, who has made her home in Jokkmokk, a place that is the heart of indigenous Sami culture in Sweden. 

Unlike may of us, the Sami have had a different connection to the land: they use it but do not own it and work together to make a living. Indigenous peoples can have deep-rooted traditions of using plants for medicine and food - a tradition where the difference between survival food and base food is knowledge, knowledge that can be lost but can also be kept alive.

Eva guides tours and gives ‘taste performances’ and you can find out more at her website. Eva's 'Rose' song: 

INTRODUCTORY MUSIC BY EVA GUNNARE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY KIND PERMISSION OF THE ARTIST

All other music by Colin Williams

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

Sámi 

“Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf”, Aldo Leopold.

However, it is as a non-human creature that can seem all too human in its habits, that we humans seem to struggle the most. In this podcast we ponder the history of our relationship with wolves, the detail of how they live and where, the motifs we have created and how they live alongside us, and increasingly so. What is our future alongside wolves? What is the wolf’s future alongside us?

MUSIC BY COLIN WILLIAMS

Yellowstone National Park

“Long ago when animals could speak …”. In this episode we explore the boundary lines between non-human species and ourselves, boundary lines that many indigenous peoples - and our ancestors - did not see, and the ability, or not for communication to pass across that boundary. Today, for western society, it is only in children’s novels that animals can speak and be heard.

So much is invested by animals in the biology of communication and we can teach creatures about human communication but is it inconceivable that they have an ability to speak to us in their form? In maintaining scientific distance do we only allowed artists and musicians to show us that other species have ‘language’ and we should not treat the non-human as less than ourselves?

THEME MUSIC BY DAVID ROTHENBERG. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY KIND PERMISSION OF THE ARTIST http://www.davidrothenberg.net 

TOGETHER WITH ADDITIONAL MUSIC IN THIS EPISODE BY DAVID ROTHENBERG

Sitting Bull https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitting_Bull 

The human and the non-human claim rivers as their own. By the banks of the River Kennet we conjour with our thoughts and experiences of rivers waters, along with those of a diverse cast of that includes: Roger Deakin, Bruce Springsteen, Norman Maclean, Masuru Emoto, Feargal Sharkey, Icy Sedgewick, Lewis Mumford, Michael Harner, Bedřich Smetana and Joseph Conrad.

We take in the travels, contours, myths, creatures, stories and spirits of rivers such as the: Awash, Tigris, Indus, Yellow, Nile, Danube, Amazon, Alde, Namada, Volga, Boyne, Crystal, Laxa, Congo, Moldau, Tana, and Everglades. We fight over them, deify them, we use them and misuse them, and yet what runs through them, because of us and despite us, is the the lifeblood of our world.

THEME MUSIC BY DAVID ROTHENBERG. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY KIND PERMISSION OF THE ARTIST http://www.davidrothenberg.net 

The River Kennet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Kennet 

How do we each respond to the environmental alarms that are being sounded by climate, nature, youth and the ocean? In this episode we feature interviews with Roger Hardy and Rhett Griffiths - wave-tossed thoughts from the tideline of the North Sea - plus a recording of Rhett’s epic poem ‘The Tipping Tide’.

Artists suggest different ways of seeing the world and, in response to these issues and as part of Siren Festival in 2019, artist and sculptor Roger Hardy created a powerful installation and multiple figurative sculptural piece on Aldeburgh beach entitled ‘Time and Tide’. He also created ‘Lookout’, a human figure gazing out at the sea from the South Beach Lookout. Here was also installed - in written form and in audio recoding - ‘The Tipping Tide’, a poem by Rhett Griffiths.

With extracts of Colin singing ‘Adieu Sweet Lovely Nancy’, we explore what the sea says to us.

Rhett Griffiths

poem - The Tipping Tide

Roger Hardy 

An archetype, a creature that we impose human ideas, ideals, values and characteristics upon. An unknowable, untouchable creature of the dark, whose call provokes fear and awe. A silent, surreptitious, living breathing feathered predator, whose beyond-human abilities allow it to master the night and span almost every habitat on Earth. Which of these is Owl for you?

As a family of birds, owls are all of these and more, and we explore their role in human culture from 30,000 years ago to the present day, as well as sharing tales of owl encounters around the globe. Evil messenger and harbinger of Death? Wise councillor and friend from childhood literature? Owl can be what each of us bring to it but is also master of its world.

THEME MUSIC BY DAVID ROTHENBERG. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY KIND PERMISSION OF THE ARTIST http://www.davidrothenberg.net 

Forest Eagle Owl 

“What avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?”, said writer Aldo Leopold, and in this episode we revisit what the human concept of wilderness means and where we might find it. Unmodified, unspoiled, on the edge? When in our history was the point when humans changed their view of wilderness?

With incidental music from Colin, we consider how wilderness means many differing things to different people - it is ‘home’ for some and hostile for others - and discuss what our view of it says about us. Is our definition derived from an International Union for the Conservation of Nature edict, or is it reflect - or even imposed - by the human approach to the way we make art? Ultimately, is wilderness still a valid notion or is it beyond our reach, beyond our gift to bestow, at a time when perhaps we need it more than ever?

THEME MUSIC BY DAVID ROTHENBERG. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY KIND PERMISSION OF THE ARTIST http://www.davidrothenberg.net 

Jane Smith 

The Sea ~ a prelude 

Summoning the spirit of a forthcoming full podcast on The Sea, we tease with Rhett Griffiths reading an extract from his poem ‘The Tipping Tide’ (more of the poem and an interview to come), Colin singing ‘Adieu Sweet Lovely Nancy’, plus wave-tossed thoughts recorded by the sea-washed shingle on the tideline of a grey North Sea.

All in rather lively STEREO by way of a change. Enjoy.

The way that people respond to wild places lights them up; so proposes writer Dan Richards, who’s latest acclaimed book, ‘Outpost: A Journey to the Wild Ends of the Earth’, explores what wilderness means to us. In this podcast he discusses whether our response to wilderness is bearing witness to the traces of humans who have been affected by places that, in our imagination, are meant to be savage and untameable.

Does wilderness comprise the places where a writer can touch ‘other’? Be lonely? Feel alive? Escape human connection? Or see what the world would be like without us? These places change us, and with music by Dan himself and prompting from Colin - solo in this episode - together they ponder ultimately whether humans are entitled to go to these places that might themselves be irrevocably changed by our visits? 

THEME MUSIC BY DAVID ROTHENBERG. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY KIND PERMISSION OF THE ARTIST http://www.davidrothenberg.net 

Outpost: A Journey to the Wild Ends of the Earth 

Wealden Literary Festival 

Dan Richards 

Svalbard 

Ny Ålesund 

Polar Bear 

Climate change 

Desolation Peak 

Jack Kerouac 

On the Road 

Thoreau 

Walden 

Roald Dahl 

Francis Bacon 

Edward Abbey 

Gary Snyder  

Cairngorm Mountains 

Bothy 

Iceland sæluhús 

Mars Desert Research Station 

Cordouan Lighthouse 

Ray Bradbury 

The Foghorn 

The Signalman, Charles Dickens 

Roger Deakin 

Nicky Wire, Manic Street Preachers 

Oscar II Land 

From the North-west passage to Niels Bohr via Bruce Chatwin, Bardsey Island, Joan Baez and Blue Whales, our journey on this podcast explores the physicality, spirituality and ‘otherness’ of pilgrimage. Recorded on location on the Camino de Santiago in Asturias, northern Spain we ponder the meaning of this human act of endurance, faith and meditation.

What do we learn when we feel the earth on our skin and feel, and touch or reconnect to, something more: to meet the crossing points to our ancestors, or the migratory routes of birds, or profound non-human experiences. Accompany us and discover if we are in fact ‘nobody to the hills; just a body, feeling’.

With music by Colin Williams.

THEME MUSIC BY DAVID ROTHENBERG. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY KIND PERMISSION OF THE ARTIST http://www.davidrothenberg.net 

Asturias