I ran home from Helston on Friday, around the lake. I am trying to radically cut down on petrol. I left my car in for repairs and decided not to even take the bus back. Needless to say, I didn’t geo-code as I went, but I looked fast for what I knew and clasped onto water. (It was a hot morning.)

Key things that flitted past me: gorse seed pods, a forest of Foxgloves at Debigna and wow, I am pretty sure a Silver-studded Blue butterfly Plebeius argus on the bar. (I stopped and got close). In ten miles I saw three people. Nice.

Nikki and I last walked the beginning of this route two months ago and recorded the gorse in flower. Above is a drawing of it. We were really concentrating on Goat Willow. (I am just finishing painting this, so more on that later.) But the yellow of the gorse and the willow were running close together, and the smell made us notice the gorse. What Malibu memories it brings back. As its seed pods start to pop, the Western Gorse at the Lizard and Penwith peninsulas will start flowering. (In a month I will embark on painting Western Gorse. Note, this is not found at Loe Pool.)

European Gorse
Ulex europaeus

50.09255
-5.28369

50.09307
-5.28388

50.09395
-5.28397

50.09451
-5.28399

I’ve marked gorse in four places on the map so far, to show how it runs along the North side of the Cober River into the Pool. (The fruit pod explodes when ripe. In dry, sunny weather, the gorse seed pods suddenly open and the seeds explode out, with a noticeable popping noise. The seeds are thrown quite a distance from the plant. http://www.naturegrid.org.uk/biodiversity/plants/fppea.html)

from geological time, laid bare at the crumbly cliffs on each side,

to the (modern time) myths as a succession of strangers come and go home,

and tell of unexpected and unforgettable encounters with the sublime.

rare bugs - crawl through - rare flora - beneath - rare trees

- but perhaps it is the Bar itself that is truly rare -

mythic power
the slow poetry of place

So what can an old neo-modernist artist contribute (suggestions are welcomed)?
other than - avoid the clichés - go for the bigger picture - go outside the bigger picture
or perhaps just a sideways look?

SO :- Chris took a close-up photo of the tallest tree in the valley (a Scots pine?) and I saw it sideways
and gave it an azure tint and thought of bark ridges breaking, like the waves on the other side of the Bar
—— but in very-very slow motion. Steve

Dr. Tony Stebbing, who helped me with very early research, described that “Cornwall is like the bow of a ship. This part of Britain is heading south due to climate change”. He and Sarah Myles of the Cornwall Wildlife Trust both said that this part of Britain was an important area for people to map change. Loe Pool was chosen as the first area for theirwork to map because of its positioning and watery habitat. It lies very close to the most southerly point of Britain. In addition, as William Howarth points out, wetland areas have become important places to examine because they help us to see how place functions, and help us to see new ways in which to think about a place (2001: 65). ‘In their wildness, wetlands dispossess readers of old codes and lead towards a new syntax, where phrase may begin to reassemble’ (ibid).

Here’s a meeting I had with Sarah about some of the GIS data held there

Get Howarth’s brilliant wetland essay if you haven’t read it (2001) ‘Reading the Wetlands’ in Adams, C., Hoelscher, S. and Till, K. (eds) Textures of Place: Exploring Humanist Geographies, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, p65.

The brilliant eco-exhibitionist Matt Groshek pointed me towards this book. Later, I will give away more about Matt.

As a neogeographist, and perhaps some would say a pyschogeographist, next year I am going to present three projects that map elements of the physical and virtual world. Each project is linked not just by mapping but also by the fact that they ask indirectly for people to take action about the environment in which they live. Harnessing the power of the web, as well as the commercial image, the drawn picture and some people-power; the fields of ethnography, phenomenology, sustainability and open source are going to be explored.

people-power = theirwork and quotes Emmet’s nice language (can’t remember which post to ref., but it was one like this that he wrote about theirwork.)
neogeographist = I believe I am one of the new geographers who’s using locative technology and this quotes platial.com users (again, lost which post, but eh, they are banding it about.)

Will post more details about this talk later.

Steve and Mary, originally uploaded by theirwork.

Steve’s comin’ to blog here soon. He’s a great artist and dog lover. Here he is with Mary on our last butterfly walk - it was meant to be a butterfly migration day, but it rained. It was still amazing. We geocoded 88 different things.

As well as discussing blogging stuff, we’ve been chatting about developing the theirwork basemap. We’re going to look at some Wainwright drawings to inspire us. I might set up another basemap Green Map drawing workshop.

Emmet and I are currently preparing our second article for publication. Pretty ace. Here’s part of the abstract -

theirwork is a living mapmaking project, which by its nature rejects a top-down system of classification, or taxonomy, and adopts instead a system of labelling, or what has been dubbed “folksonomy”. Working from a conscious standpoint, which views authoritative and hierarchical taxonomic systems as disempowering, folksonomy enables the theirwork end-user, who works online, to collaboratively generate open-ended labels for map-based data. Forgoing other top-down systems that often produce hegemonic systems and organisations (such as copyrighted base maps and copyrighted Geographical Information Systems data), this essay descriptively reveals how theirwork is developing a rhizomatous model of collection, presentation and dissemination.

grey gurnard, originally uploaded by theirwork.

The theirwork sea mapping adventure. More to come!

A Red Admiral woke me last Sunday. It was a sign. Today I had to go to Loe Bar and follow up on the news that fish were swimming up river, seemingly trying to get away from the pool. And no, they were not reported as Salmon. We don’t get Salmon there.

I went with Nikki. She had reported the news to me. Her mother, whilst walking the dogs had seen the fish and the Environment Agency at the riverbank. She spoke to the EA and they explained they were testing the water to see if they could ascertain what was happening.

It was within minutes that Nikki and I were confronted with the same sight, w -5.28373 n 50.09340. The water was boiling water, just how I imagine Piranha to kick up. Nik’s dog Troy jumped in and played madly with the shoal.

I can’t report on what’s going on yet, but I’ve found these bits and so I know things haven’t got so warm that we’ve got Piranha!

“Global warming may be one of the reasons there are shoals of fish in the River Cober at Helston. The fish - identified as roach by angling expert Roger Baker - have been in the river for what has been reported as more than a week. Roger said: “It’s a bit unusual for them to shoal up like this, especially at this time of year, they normally go like that when they are spawning in the spring.”
http://www.thisiscornwall.co.uk 08 November 2007

“I was recently down the Cober and discovered this 150 yards stretch of river teaming with fish such as roach and perch. As someone who fly fishes down the Cober and catches brown trout in the moor area, I’ve fished there for a while - I’ve never seen anything like it!”
Chris Hodgkins, Helston
http://www.thisiscornwall.co.uk Comment section

(We also saw more roach at w -5.28371 n 50.09286, and they seemed smaller)

stinging nettles.jpg, originally uploaded by theirwork.

Here’s some of us discovering and investigating miniature stinging nettle tents during the butterfly walk. Tents lined the edge of the lake. Who makes the tents we ask? The caterpillar of the Red Admiral and Painted Lady says Phil. (Yarrow and the Yellow Horned Poppy grew really close to the nettles.)

Last Sunday we entered the world of butterflies via butterfly expert Phil Harris. He took us out for a four and half-hour butterfly foray. It was an amazing time. As soon as we hit the path, not only did we come across a colony of about 40 Silver-studded Blue, we realised that in our midst was our first theirwork hero. Phil led us through a journey that none of us had experienced before. In no less than about a 2 mile length of land we wound our way through snake pits, found disbanded parking-lots, investigated miniature stinging nettle tents and sought out rare moth sand tunnels. Phil lives up the road, and so what’s more, not only is he as passionate and enigmatic as the great Simon King, he’s green - just like our picnic, he was sourced locally.

Phil offered to take us out again in the Autumn. We’re close to booking the date already. We saw 2 of our target speices, the Silver-studded Blue as mentioned, and the Small Heath. Our unsighted was the Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary. Incidentals we picked up were 1 Painted Lady, and 6 Meadow Browns. We maybe saw a Brown Argus of which Phil says ‘the 50% sighting of Brown Argus should be further investigated during the second brood in August to ascertain whether this is a definite site… Brown Argus are quite rare along this stretch of South coast of Cornwall’. In the meantime, we’re having a moth and bat night, and there are plans building for a water mapping session.

We collected a huge amount of data from this walk. This will be entered onto the map via me, and a computer butterflyshop session later in the summer. More on this later. and photos will come later.