2nd August – crawl two – I wandered lonely as a cloud

Today I felt as though I broke the back of this project, thanks to the sunshine, visibility and temperature.

I managed to crawl quite a distance in 43 minutes (the duration of the Go Pro batteries) even with my lack of orientation – I found myself moving in the wrong direction entirely at the end.

All but the 2 Go – Pro’s on my thighs were attached to my body properly today, allowing me to move without constantly adjusting them and worrying, I just need to buy 2 new attachments and then I’ve finally got them all sorted. I wasn’t too hot, I didn’t get too tired, the gloves are perfect, the knee pads are perfect and well actually it was very enjoyable up there in the sunshine. The views were fantastic and I even met some sheep. The 5 1/2 mile crawl suddenly felt do-able and relatively easy, a deception I fear!

Hannah and Destina filmed and photographed me as I crawled, this felt much more dynamic than previous shoots where I had re- enacted the performance for the sake of the camera. The performance felt powerful as they scrambled to catch me and frame me. I guess I had a little less anxiety knowing they were there but I still found myself very much in the ‘zone’ i.e. very connected to what I was doing, the landscape, my body, the cameras and what the project was about.

We agreed that Hannah would operate the GPS and make regular Waypoints as she followed me, but I realised as I wound my way along and away from the sheep tracks that my meandering path, navigated from down there in the peat, Sphagnum moss, grasses and bogs was the path that needed to be flagged. Mine was a path made from the perspective of down there.

I am excited to see my paths tracked on the GPS and translated into maps, that is the next thing to work out.

What really excited me today was the feeling of moving through the landscape, through each different type of terrain and vegetation without conditions or expectations, without trying to accommodate or adapt, just moving through whatever confronted me, it felt exhilarating, empowering and certainly an experience I have never had before, I felt I was getting closer to an unmediated experience of the landscape, just for some moments.