INFIDELS

This week, for one reason or another, I found myself walking in Frinton, part of the ‘Essex Riviera.’  It was sufficiently packed that we had to drive around for a very long time before we found a parking spot, though on a hot day in the August holidays was not in itself a big surprise.

The beach was busy, but people tended to be walking or seated or sunbathing at least a couple of meters apart. I didn’t feel at risk, but maybe I was naïve. I picked up a stone from the sand that looked at least somewhat like a skull.

Now, I don’t know much about religion but I do know that while I was at the seaside many believers were undertaking Haj, the Islamic pilgrimage to the Kabba in Mecca, a serious walking event, which I gather has been rather different this year than previously.

In past years it's looked like this:

Now apparently this year it looks like this:

 

The latter seems much actually pleasanter, though  I don’t suppose people go there because it’s pleasant.

Apparently stones, skull-shaped or otherwise, play a part in Haj.  As I understand it, I mean I read it in the paper, pilgrims usually pick up stones from the ground as they walk, which they then ‘symbolically’ hurl at the devil.  These are now being provided by the religious authorities, washed and sterilized, in ‘haj kits’ Mine was just washed by the sea. I do hope that’s enough.

Here’s a picture of our hero Sir Richard Francis Burton, dressed for his trip to Mecca.

THE PROFOUND WALK

Walking provides endless opportunities for coming up with profundities, some of them more genuinely profound than others, though we could argue about which are which.  

And when it comes to notions of ‘The Path’ then everything gets ramped up considerably.

‘No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.’ – That’s Buddha

‘Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.’ – That’s Thoreau.

‘Advance, and never halt, for advancing is perfection. Advance and do not fear the thorns in the path, for they draw only corrupt blood.’ - Khalil Gibran

‘Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege. Use it. Dwell in possibility.’   That’s Oprah Winfrey.

And sometimes you find profundity at unexpected times and in unexpected places, such as in the Chelsea Psychic (sic) Garden.

FROM MAJOR TO MINOR

When I was a kid there were a good few family outings to Sherwood Forest,  These involved a lot of walking but that was OK because I knew that as part of the walk we’d visit The Major Oak, the hollow tree in which Robin Hood supposedly, mythically, hid from the Sheriff of Nottingham.  The tree’s named after Major Hayman Rooke, author of a small book titled Remarkable Oaks  in which he described and drew the tree.

By ‘visit’ I don’t mean just standing there looking at the tree or even walking around it, no, in those days you could actually go insidethe tree, into the very cavity where Robin Hood had (supposedly) hidden.  It wasn’t a very big cavity as I remember, not much bigger than kid-size, and the internal ‘walls’ of the tree were worn to a glassy smoothness by all the bodies that had rubbed against them over the centuries. 

I haven’t given this a vast amount of thought over the years but I had no doubt that what we’d all done so innocently back in the day was obviously bad and wrong from a conservationist point of view, and I had seen recent pictures of the Major Oak, with a Dali-esque arrangement of struts supporting the branches.

Turns out it was worse than I thought.  Even walking around the tree created damage.  Footsteps from hundreds of thousands of visitors compacted the soil, preventing rainwater and nutrients from fallen leaves getting down to the tree roots.  A fence was eventually built around it to keep pedestrians and others away and the tree has been saved, even if it’s not looking its very best.

I’m prepared to accept my own small responsibility for the overall state of the Major Oak, on the other hand …

Last autumn I was walking in Essex and came across a big (if not major) oak tree, and under it were a lot of acorns. I picked up a handful, took them home, put them in compost in pots to overwinter, and come late spring there was absolutely no sign of germination so I used the pots and compost to grow other things, including poppies which are fugitive, see Robbie Burns: 

‘But pleasures are like poppies spread,

You seize the flower, its bloom is shed;

But then last week, clearing out the poppies that had been and gone and died, I saw to my amazement that a very minor oak was growing in one of the pots.  Oh boy! 

I realize this is only the very smallest act of reparation for my mistreatment of the Major Oak, but we all do what we can.