to CARBETH to GLASGOW- renewing resistance
The last days were never ending,
The last days were full of endings
sweet laugher
salt tears
in a shared precious present
on the precarious edge of no more
Not knowing what’s been sown,
Not knowing what will grow
unexpected as flowering weeds
Day 20 - Balmaha to Carbeth - salmon leap, fire play (13 miles)
This is the last full day that will run into a shared night, and then a morning after of waking and walking.
A bunch of us are driven from the overnight campsite at Dryman back to Balmaha by Loch Lomond, where w’d en did our walk the evening before.
The ten of us then walk all the way back to this same camp site where we’d made our lunch sandwiches in the morning, carried as we walked, and then ate for lunch back in the same barn we’d made them in, almost half way to the Carbeth huts.
—
As we arrived in Balmaha to start the morning’s walk, my son Blue finally gets through to me to say that the police had visited again this morning. This time in uniform.
They had come the day before the walk began. Now they had come the day before the walk ended. Unlike the day before the walk began, when I was arrested, this tine he told them I was on a long walk so couldn’t be arrested.
The day before the walk, I’d returned home with oats bought to make my porridge, to find two plain clothes police on my doorstep waiting for me. I was concerned because of all the equipment I still needed to get hold of to bring oil the walk the next day, so I hurried through the process at the police station - “Do you want a solicitor?” “No, I just want this through as fast as possible” - but before that I messaged folk I’d said I’d get equipment from.:
“This morning I was arrested and taken to St Leonard’s police station under section 13 of the Terrorism Act for holding a placard saying ‘I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action’. I’m now back home but I may leave it for someone else on the walk to sort getting a gazebo”
The person I’d messaged was someone I’d never met but had offered a gazebo for the walk saying:
“My husband’s family were forcibly removed from their Croft in Sutherland the end of the 18th C. In fact it is documented that Hugh MacBeth was burned alive in his cottage as his son went to Inverness to contest the evictions with Patrick Sellar, the Duke of Sutherlands enforcer.”
Once I’d returned from the police station that morning before the walk, I opened an envelope where I was being summoned to jury service. It was ironic, given I had just been arrested for terrorism participating in an always-peaceful ‘Defend our Juries’ action. Later in the afternoon someone from Police Scotland phoned to discuss next steps in our community’s attempt to bring our local police station into community hands.
There were multiple stops to inspect or pick mushrooms on our way to Dryman. A wet morning with multiple mushroom species and the indefatigable Mim showing us which and where and how.
After lunch at Dryman, seventeen of us headed for Carbeth by foot, while 4 took the two support vans.
On the way there was - for me - the most extraordinary happening.
It began bizarrely,
After a few miles of walking, Manu phoned to ask if Mike was there. Manu needed the key to start Mike’s car, and Mike had taken it on the walk. It tuned out the car could start without the key, and Manu wanted to be sure it would be safe.
Without realising we were waiting for Manu on the road over the old stone bridge, but knowing we were waiting for a few others who were well behind the body of walkers, I got a bit crochety about some being so slow, and asked Ella and Pal why we didn’t walk in two groups so the slow could go slow without slowing everyone down. Ella responded (completely rightly) that we are walking together and we’ll wait for anyone needing us to wait.
After what happened next, I wrote in the group chat:
“The funniest thing is (Ella and Pal will know) I was grumpy about Ben and co being late (without knowing they had a really good reason!) and knew that I would immediately be the last person. Instant karma!”
As everyone left the bridge, the ever-helpful Mike saw a walker carrying a sleeping bag in a bag in his arms as well as a big rucksack on his back. He had clearly set out the previous day to walk the West Highland way, and Mike was concerned that that was a really cumbersome way to carry stuff. The man - German? - insisted it couldn’t fit in his rucksack. Mike didn’t take long to take the rucksack off the man’s back, fit the sleeping bag in, and send him happily on his way.
By now, Mike and I were well behind the body of walkers.
A man walking towards us said “Go though that farm gate until you reach that white cottage, then head down to the waterfall beside it and you’ll see the salmon leaping”
We did.
Apparently they had not been able to leap the falls despite days of trying. The storm rains had filled the river to a cascade, making the waterfall impenetrable. Now they were trying again, and if not today then one day soon the waters will have subsided enough for them to continue their journey, having returned across the Atlantic, to find their way up to where they were spawned, and to spawn and enable their cycle of birth and life and death to continue.
We finally caught up with everyone at a cafe. Kipchumba pointed out that the cafe only existed where it was because of the West Highland Way passing right beside it. He wondered about holding the East Africa indigenous peoples women-led assembly as a walking assembly for land justice, like this one. Many walking not from one of the indigenous communities to a place of colonial power like Nairobi, but walking from Sengwer land at Embobut in the Cherangany Hills to Mount Elgon Ogiek land at Chepkitale, or from Ogiek lands at Chepkitale across the border to their cousins, the Mosopisyek’s, indigenous lands in Uganda. I wondered whether it might also be useful to explore whether there are livelihood opportunities that could be developed alongside such a walk, whether in future well-wishers/ visitors/ walkers might come and follow the same route - learning about culture, land and resistance, and building south-north solidarity.
We are now walking along a a muddy path through this lowland country. Ahead there is a rounded sacred-looking forested hill, standing alone in the flat valley, with hills rising ahead of us on either side. There are gates to open and close, and there is a mound (covering a huge pipe carrying water, to what?) accompanying us to our right as we walk.
I am walking with Mike again. Being a practical person, he says: “Whoever thought the idea of everyone trying to decide what to put on the banner the night before, in the barn in Dryman, was crazy”.
I explain it was me.
Although we were all tired and it was no time to make such a decision, it was also probably our last chance to discuss this question we all knew was crucial - especially given we’d be walking into Glasgow on October 7th. We followed a sociocratic two-stage process that had the the best of equality (having everyone’s input) and the best of hierarchy (in then delegating/ trusting a few people to decide what to put on the banner, informed by our input).
Mike has brought Susie from Glenelg near Skye to join us for a couple of days. She has travelled the world a lot, and asks about Heartpolitics. I explain that our sense is that if people who care, including those who are tender, don’t step forward then we leave politics in the hands of those who have been hardened by it. We either learn to step forward and reclaim the world from those whose compromising is taking us ever-further into disaster, or we dare to try to take responsibility while trying to enable each other to keep our hearts open. Unless we collectively step forward, we leave politics in the hands of those who cause harm.
Having somehow become at the font of the walk, I sit on a broken branch, leaning back on it’s curved support, and suggest to those passing that we walk in silence for ten our twenty minutes, as has often been our custom.
On the way I read Wapac’s extraordinary writing, which I return to way below. His writing fills me with his total grief, his gratitude, his tentative tenacious courage.
After about twenty minutes I see the earth flag up a small hillside to the right, and walk up to arrive at Ben sitting in silence looking out across the landscape, Alec filming a fairly house to his right. Bec, Gab, Skye, Mim, Kim, and Pal all arrive, having tried to reach a standing stone below the rounded tree-full sacred hill, but stopped by cows who were protecting their calves or protecting the hill or both. Mim describes the standing stone, the rounded hill and the far hills as a sacred landscape.
Arriving at Carbeth we pass through some sweeping lowland hills and parkland woods. We come across a poster for this evening’s fire play in the community hall (the larger hut) of Carbeth huts, It is sodden and almost unreadable in the rain, but augurs well.
Finally we curve through the paths that wend between the spaced out huts to get in out of the rain into the community hut where wonderful hot food awaits us and we scuttle to retrieve bowls and places from our rucksacks piled up sodden and dank in the vans. Tonight there is not need for us to get the gas burners out to cook.
A joke is made about our not having walked enough, and we are all outside with wizard white light align sticks to watch a walking performance where David and the Red Flag Players tell some of the stories of Glasgow, Carbeth and resistance.
Then we are back in the community hut for the fantastic Red Flag Players’ ‘Fire play’, before hearing Natty tell, sing and recite some of the Torry play, and our wonderful storyteller from Dundee tell the story of 9 daughters and a dragon. The hut is full of over a hundred folk standing or stiting, it can fit no more. Many folk from earlier in the walk rejoin us here, and many come just for this moment, most especially those who are Carbeth hunters.
In the late evening, sharing Fran’s generous hut with seven others on floors, couches, futons and mattresses, I’m delighted to joke with Maisie who is maybe 12. Ashe has a great twinkle in her eyes.
We can have a strange attitude to age, as if as you get older you lose more and more of something. But is it the opposite? Can every shift of age be the gaining of a new ring to the tree? No ring vanishes, all ages persist, and relating to all ages persists. If you have spent your years living then is it not so much that you grow old but that you grow? You gather more and more of what it is to be human. There is no age better than another. Each offers a chance to live, rather than to wish yourself a different age, a different person, a different place.
Day 21 - Carbeth to Govan - a river flowing (15 miles)
My turn in the van. I am taking everything into Glasgow - the last stretch - and park on Harmony Lane near Govan old parish church. I jump on the clockwork orange (no longer orange?) and then the train back to rejoin everyone at the start of the West Highland way at Milngavie (pronounced Muhl-gai).
People get off the train to start their walk. We’ve been walking against the flow of people heading north to the Highlands, and now from Milgavie we’ll walk first on pavements (where most folk honk or shout there agreement and a few swear at us) and then along the Kelvin river to the Clyde.
I missed visiting the Craigalian fire (place) this morning. I’d suggested to David that we take wood down and relight the ‘eternal flame’, which caused him to panic because today’s walk is lingo and we’ve promised folk we’d reach the Botanics at 3.30 so they can walk the last hour with his down to the Clyde.
Those who organised for a memorial to be built to those who kept the flame alive were undoubtedly well-intended. The fact they built the memorial to the fire in a way that meant no one can light a fire there any more seems strange. As if the struggle against fascism, and for workers rights and access to the land, is a struggle of the past not a continuous struggle in the present. Maybe that’s how it felt to those who commissioned the monument a few years ago, including close relatives of the fore keepers, but it is not how it is today. It is - and always has been - a never ending struggle for ever emerging life.
Maybe one day the good folk of the Carbeth huts will remove the monument and relight our fire.
Meanwhile 23 walkers walk into Milngavie town square, where we eat our lunches, wave our flags, and talk with people. Mim talks with a man who says he has to pay £200 to fish, when rivers and fish can’t be owned.
We walk pavements and suburbs and down two the river where we at first walk past piles of rubble. Ben explains that thews three piles of rubble were once three high rise flats, perfectly serviceable high rise homes. Folk battled to save them, but in the end the developers (in cahoots with he politicians) had their way, and the homes were demolished to make way for expensive riverside-properties. Clearances. Evictions. Now.
We are walking the last hours now.
A walk that became a living community: helping and being helped, sharing / hearing voices and experiences - whether fellow walkers, or those we meet, including eagles, salmon, rainbows, mushrooms, trees, minke wales.
A couple of fragments from these last conversions:
Talking with Jay about our having entered mythic time. It feels like we’ve opened a gap, found a thread that can pull a string that can pull a rope. How do we continue and deepen this?
Talking with the Dundee storyteller (who performed last night) who asks about anthropology and I explain my take. When anthropology is alive, it is not about colonial objectively or paralysing relativism. It is about actively engaging with and valuing others, and objecting when anyone does not value others (a ‘not valuing’ or ‘not valuing equally’ that we can all do, and that we all need liberating from). I call this ‘liberation anthropology’. It asks: “Are you/ am I in good relations with others? If not what do we need to do to restore good relations?”
When we reach the Clyde, and gather between the futuristic transport museum, the huge old sailing boat, and the bridge to Govan, we have gathered a good crowd. On the outskirts of our singing or listening, there are the young boys on bikes dressed in black who Ben engages with. Singing The Freedom Come al Ye is singing of a world where we have triumphed over colonialism and restored the valuing of all as equals, restored good relations.
Walking on towards Govan, and then the extraordinary 9th century Viking tombstones in Govan parish church. They are arched like the salmon were, leaping into the next life.
There is tea and coffee and banners and waiting and talking, and finally walkers, well-wishers and locals gather and listen to David talking about the history of Govan, its part in Empire and its resistance to Empire, we join in an Irishman and his kids song about Mary Barbour and Govan’s resistance, and we hear Alastair’s talk about our having been on a journey which is cultural and psychological and even spiritual, and how we are concluding this pilgrimage in this ancient sacred site. We hear Annie’s inspiring stories, and hear Wapac’s recordings of his brothers, accompanied by his own speaking and his profound tears, and then we hear blue Ali’s extraordinary Gaelic singing, and finally Skye and Bec sing their friend’s song “In the land of no prisons” where “We bring the clocks down”.
It is an extraordinary ending in Govan old parish church.
At the same time, there is something about being contained in the stone of old Govan parish church that feels like it cuts me off from the earth, from the fundamental of underlying equality.
I mention this to the Dundee Storyteller (I must remember her name! We all have names!) and she tells me she loves stone. I say if it was a stone circle or a long barrow then yes I love stone too. Maybe it’s too many days spent in churches, and what the lovely Irish singer said when we couldn’t hear David at the pulpit, all of us sitting in semi-circular rows of church wooden seats. We couldn’t hear because there was suddenly the roar of a heating machine behind us, filling the space (and me imitating being a dragon roaring its noise). The Irish singer stood up behind me midst the roar and said “Don’t worry. This is the total experience of being in church. Some man up the front speaking at us for an hour, and us listening and not understanding a word”.
There were many endings to the walk. Just as there were many beginnings.
Each beginning from our own place in our own way for our own reason.
For me, in one way it began from suggesting it at November 2024’s land moot and then sitting - 4 of us at a table - to start to flesh it out. But that suggestion came out of decades of pilgrimage (to Africa walking the mountains between communities) that has followed on from making and walking the peace walk from Greece to Vienna, and from Faslane submarines to Greenham Common cruise missiles, and before that cycling from Iona to Canterbury in the same cause of “How do we recover our humanity? How do we stop a system that’s out to destroy us, and instead live and let live?”
There were many beginnings to the walk, and there were many endings.
There was that ending at Govan old parish church, that itself ended with a circle of Auld Lang Syne that outflanked the lines of chairs, and then Kipchumba wanting me to take his photo with Gabs, Skye and Bec, and an Indian woman insisting on taking my phone so I could be in the picture, then so many walkers being pulled in, or piling in, until maybe all walkers who were there that evening were in it. Then there was throwing October 7th birthday boy Manu in the air, and the ending after that that was 18 of us walkers round for an ‘empty’ at Annie’s - Annie of the wonderful smiling eyes, 73, and a kindred fighting spirit.
At Annie’s, folk had gone out to get pizza (paid for by Kim, with others hopefully paying her back, marking the transition from “walk pays for all”), with me arriving late because I’ve been on the phone to Eva who today heard that her 89 year old dad - lying unconscious in a hospital bed, not eating - has an aggressive cancer eating away at his pancreas and liver, and won’t last beyond hours or days.
Eva sounds wounded, so tender. She is in her dad’s house with all his photos and books and objects, and remembers different decades of life, and how her relationship with him shaped her, and what they’ve shared. And I remind her that I’m here, that the boys are here with their big hearts and big love, and there is this wider web of relations, of life, sustaining her and welcoming him back into itself.
And as I write this at 4am (actually I now see it’s 5.50am) my arms reach out wide to David, Eva’s dad, and to all his relations and friends, as if we are standing in a widening circle, some faces I know, and many I don’t. “All will be well, David. All be well”. And I see the edge of the smile in him as he goes. The faded smile of threadbare spirit, but spirit nonetheless. “Go well”.
And I am crying, sobbing, for him, for Eva, for Eva missing these last few days to - quite rightly - be with him, and for the fact I have so missed her being here. I have walked many times alone these last few days because - I now realise - I’m walking with her, missing her presence, her perspective, all the skills she’s developed and insight she’s gained - not just through what she’s been naturally given, but maybe much more crucially what she’s learned about how to make groups safe enough for everyone to speak in, everyone to be equally valued in, everyone (and therefore our ‘we’ nature) to be heard. The pearl of wisdom of inclusivity, grown from the grit of feeling excluded, alone, unable to feel at home in groups.
Eva needed and wanted to be with her dad as he died. Eva needed and wanted to be with us all on this last stretch of the walk as we walked. What I’ve learnt on this walk is that there are highly important opposing truths/ needs (for example: ensuring the walk can include everyone, yet ensuring no one walks a mountain if it’s not safe for them) and these opposing truths are like lighthouses: don’t go direct at them or you’ll crash on the rocks. Use them to help guide your way between the crashing foam.
There was the ending that was singing Hamish Henderson’s ‘Freedom Come All Ye’ at the bridge over the Clyde and the wonderful Gaelic singer (who later sang to us in the church) joining us with her wonderful voice, her knowing all the words, and her bringing the banner of solidarity that Wpasc and David and others had made in Carbeth that morning, that said “Clearances no more. Solidarity from Scotland to Palestine”. And just behind and beyond that banner there was Ben talking with the young boys in black on their bikes, boys who were anti-immigrant and probably saw a bunch of (what they thought were) middle class do-gooders who could afford their consciences. Another time, would we instead turn our focus on them? If so, how? Create a cycleway between us and see if they could navigate it? Would that be tokenistic or a step towards inclusivity?
There was the ending that was walking down the Kelvin river to the Botanics and then to the Clyde, gathering people and banners as we walked.
Not marching down streets, but wending our way by the water we have walked by and through and with from the islands and the highlands down to here where we see the city above and around us, almost out of sight of us, as we walk our way to the Clyde where so many folk from so many communities who were broken, were taken and used to break and clear other communities elsewhere in the world from their land.
There was the ending that was the circle at the Botanics. And my son Blue turning up on his mum’s bike out of nowhere. His presence making me so happy - that totally full of joy feeling that means one’s existence could stop and that would be fine. We make a circle holding hands. and he is standing beside me holding my hand. Happiness.
David asks me if I want to say something. Afterwards I realise he may have meant “Do you want to say something practical about next steps?” because after I’ve spoken and someone else wants to speaks, he suggests contributions wait until later by the Clyde or in Govan old parish church. I let folk know how much Eva is missing not being with us for these last few days and that she’s sent a few reflections she’d like to share, and I’d like to read:
Reading Eva’s words out loud at the Botanics:
“I so hoped I'd be able to do this last part of the walk with you, but we're still waiting to hear from the doctors about my dad who's remains very ill, and I can't leave without getting some sense of what their next steps will be. So I just wanted to send a very short reflection on the walk, if there's a moment to share it.
“I was really struck by a deep shift that happened for me - and maybe for others - somewhere around a week into the walk. Prior to that, I was operating within an emotional range that was familiar to me. I was pleased and interested to meet people, a bit judgmental at times and sometimes working hard with familiar old internal patterns around feeling left out, or feeling I was getting the balance wrong between taking care of others and making sure my own needs were met.
“I didn't exactly wake up feeling different one day - or maybe I did but just didn't notice at the time - but somewhere around a week in I suddenly noticed that I'd been feeling different for a while: I was just aware of loving everyone on the walk hugely. I don't know where it came from or what caused it, but it was a profound shift into a heart opening feeling of connection and togetherness. All my previous internal chatter settled down, and I just felt a huge appreciation for each person - and for 'us' as a group. I'm really interested to know whether there was something similar for others, but it feels like there probably was.
“Before the walk, the organising group thought a lot about the kind of culture we wanted to try to foster in the group. Whether or not that work contributed to what we made together, for me, our shared culture couldn't have been better. It felt like a shift from being just a bunch of people doing something together, to feeling like we were together - doing whatever we were doing - walking, talking, making porridge, designing banners, singing songs, treating blisters, setting up, taking down...
“I’m sure there were multiple factors that made this possible, but there are two that stand out for me. One was time - it's incredibly rare to have that much exposure to other people all working towards the same thing - it overrides the habitual boundaries we have when we're working together - like the end of the zoom call, or going home at the end of the day, and requires us to find new ways to relate. That transition can be uncomfortable, but I think that feeling of togetherness is on the other side of it.
“The other one for me, was being outside, on the earth. Most people I know (including me!) spend a lot of our time trying to keep separate - from the rain, the cold, the ticks, the hard ground - and that, along with the many distractions made for us by capitalism, means we don't have much space to experience just living in the environment.
“One of the things the very diverse indigenous cultures around the world have in common is their insistence on the importance of the planet, not just as the basis for our survival, but as an active, interactive presence that takes care of us as we take care of it. My sense is that some of the feeling of 'us-ness' that we fell into, came from being more and more in the direct presence of our mother earth, so we began to directly experience the deep energetic support she brings to those who live in community, not separating themselves from her.
“Whatever the reasons, my experience of this walk, these people, this land have been transformative and I'm hugely grateful for the experience and for the connections I made to each of the people I met.
“My hope is that having experienced the power of our connection to one another and to the land, we will find the inspiration and strength to take our next steps in this journey towards reclaiming our full humanity - which always has been, is, and will be in loving connection with each other and the land.”
After sharing Eva’s reflections, I briefly offer my own, saying:
“It’s been wonderful to walk with you, to become alive with you.
“Capitalism, colonialism, the domination system, call it what you will, looks so powerful and can make us feel so isolated and powerless, but we know, just as indigenous communities know, that there is a far greater power beneath our feet as we walk, a far greater power that is also above us and all around us, and is us.
“The land, the sky, the waters - this earth is who we are, these bodies of ours, they are the earth, we are the earth. If we can feel and speak and act from that truth then we are available to the enormous power that will shrug off and destroy these puny domination systems. Whether we are shrugged off too, or whether we are part of the earth shrugging them off, either way those systems will be gone and we the Earth continue.”
Before that, before Glasgow, there was the ending that was Carbeth, crammed into the hutters common hut out of the rain for the Fire Play, and watching the faces of hutters listening to their own story - as if (it felt to me) for the first time - recognition dawning, rebellion renewed, and us all - hutters, walker’s old and new, and well wishers - listening to the story from Torry told by Natty so clearly, so engagingly, so well, and also to the Dundee storyteller with her 9 daughters being eaten by a dragon, and the lighting giving her 4 scary gesticulating arms as she spoke.
There was the same hut the next morning, 25 of us in a ragged circle, preparing to leave for the last day’s walk from Carbeth to Milngavie on the West Highland Way, then on by road at first, and then by the Kelvin river to the Clyde.
In the hut there were few of the usual practicalities of who is driving, who supporting, and the route, but Kipchumba said he wanted to speak of two things.
The first was the old story of the man relaxing by the water having caught a fish and met his needs, and so able to relax; and the rich man coming and encouraging him to work hard to build up a business which at the end of the day would mean a huge amount of work for what? To be able to simply do what he can already do: sit by the river and relax.
The second thing Kipchumba spoke about was much more challenging.
He spoke of Chelagat Mutai, a Kenyan woman who became an MP in the 70s or 80s. She fought long and hard for people to have their land returned to them, and had to flee into exile, and returnjng - was sent to prison and hard labour - and in the end was a broken woman, defeated by the system. And Kipchumba’s point was that even if in the end we are each broken by the system we are up against, we still need to fight for the things we may never see so that our children or our children’s children may.
What Kipchumba said was shocking to me - not the possibility of being killed or defeated, but the possibility of being broken. That is so hard to take, so hard to realise that even that would be worth it. I rely so utterly, and always have, on my spirit not being broken.
Is being an unbroken spirit the purpose of all I do? From playing with kids in the play park in Milngavie (dipping the flag to meet their face as they spin round in a ludicrous playground metal spinner) to talking with old guys in the same Milngavie square (old guys whose dad’s also fought in the Second World War and couldn’t believe what Israel is doing to Palestine, and what the UK Government is supporting).
That some day I may have to let my spirit be broken like metal on an anvil for the sake of the cause of reclaiming our humanity (our equality with all beings) is so hard to hear, so tough to take. Are you melted red hot to be bended and broken on the anvil?
I remember how much torture there has been over the centuries, how many centuries of struggle there can be in any place, I remember reading of a British colonial soldier who loved nothing better than to smash at Kenyan freedom fighters (Mau Mau) prisoner’s skulls until they broke.
This morning, when Kipchumba told this story, it echoed so strongly Wapat’s words that I read as I walked in the silent twenty minutes of the walk yesterday, on that last stretch approaching Carbeth. Wapat’s words were about keeping the spirit while so many succumb to the self-destruction urged on any who are still alive and not fully (or sufficiently) aligned to the killing machine that kills culture, kills collective power, kills spirit, kills our connection with each other, with the spirits of the land, with the land.
Yet.
We are the earth.
We are nothing less than the earth.
If we act on that truth, on the extraordinary truth that we are alive at all,
can we recognise the miracle that we are each a spring bubbling up out of the ground?
can we let ourselves flow, and flow together?
can make an unstoppable river that receives the sky, restores the land, and reaches the sea?
We’ll see.
There were many beginnings to the walk. Not one.
There were many walkers walking. Not just this one.
There were many endings to the walk. And there are none.