Getting there
Meet at Friston Forest Car Park at 8.30 am. Friston Forest Car Park, Seaford BN25 4AD.
If you are coming by public transport please contact me, this car park is a little way away from the Visitor Centre.
Weather
The weather is looking like it will be cloudy and drizzly, and the walk will likely be wet and slippy underfoot. Please wear good walking or hiking boots and dress warmly!
Themes
I have been thinking about the project, this walk and the later event at Beachy Head Story in a few of ways which I would like to share with you.
Please feel free to use these as jumping off points for your photo taking if you would like to, or see if they are similar to your own thoughts about the work we are doing together.
1. I have been thinking about the forest as an archetype. In fairytales, the forest is often a place of mystery and transformation, a place without firm and familiar boundaries. See below for a scan of a page on the archetype of the first from the Taschen Book of Symbols – I hope you enjoy it!
2. I have been thinking about trees!
Friston Forest was planted in the 1930s and 1940s by the Forestry Commission and is mostly made up of Beech trees which do well in chalky soil. Exceat, which was the name of the now vanished medieval village at the site of the visitor’s centre, I understand to be a a Saxon word meaning Oak Premonitory. I find this contrast interesting. Symbolically, the Oak is seen as the “King” of the trees. Its qualities are sturdiness and endurance, longevity, it has a special place in English folklore and tradition. The Beech is known as the Queen of the trees and its symbolic meanings include the death or end of something and changes that come about through realisation. I found these contrasting meanings interesting!
3. I have been thinking about how identity changes in different contexts. I have been thinking about how we all have different places to be each of our identities and how these change depending on context and place. In one place we are a daughter, father, son, in another a teacher, in another a visitor. I have been thinking about the images of puddles which looked like space that we took on our first walk (Cuckmere Walk Gallery) and thinking about outer space and how as we zoom in or out, how we see each other and are seen changes dramatically…