by Kathryn Garner
As the first cases of COVID-19 were starting to be reported in Europe, my husband and I exchanged contracts on a converted barn set in two acres of land in the wilds of Northumberland. We had bravely moved our young family up from the suburbs of Bristol only a few months before, leaving treasured climbing buddies (who we will meet half-way in the Peak District), school, nursery and long-term work colleagues.
We haven’t looked back. In the first few weeks of lockdown we began improving the streams and ponds on the site, the largest of which we hope to dig deep enough to swim in. We put in gravel beds to filter the water coming up from the two springs, and we’ve already planted over thirty trees, with plans to plant many more. Recently, we harvested the hay from the meadow, learning much more about the changeability of the storm clouds as they roll towards us along the valley from the west.
Now that restrictions have lifted, we have been able to explore more of the local area, it being completely new to us until we moved here. This year, our children have spent more time in rivers and streams than they have swimming in the local swimming pool. We’ve watched a pair of swallows build a nest in our garage (we had to discourage them from settling on the climbing wall itself), listened for the cheeps after the eggs hatched and spent a morning lying on the lawn as the baby birds tried out their new wings. Rabbits run by our window as we eat breakfast, and we’ve shooed sheep from our field on many an occasion, although we’re now constructing a gate to let them in – and leave – more easily.
When I began the Explorers Connect Adventure Writing Workshop with Bel in Bristol last November, I’d been working on a novel about a trip I’d taken around the USA by Greyhound bus when I’d turned 19. I was wading through pages of description, trying to get my word count up. I’d written and re-written several times in first and third person, to see if one would come easier than the other. Curiously, the part of the course that resonated with me most was how to constrict and focus ideas to three words before exploring and expanding on them. This led me to an online Flash Fiction workshop with Meg Pokrass in December, and the impetus to re-draft my ‘novel’ as a novella-in-flash. I seem drawn to the challenge of trying to fit a whole story into just a few hundred words, which words can be lost, and which earn their keep when left behind.
Perhaps it’s moving to this breath-taking landscape, perhaps it’s fed in from putting my lectures together for the new semester, but at some point I realised I could change the dimensions of the story by adding illustrations. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wanted to write and illustrate a children’s book, and once I realised this, the words and pictures began to tumble onto the page.
I now have a fully formed story about a little girl called Violet. Violet unwittingly makes a discovery that prevents thousands of trees from being cut down, preserving the homes of countless creatures and plants and the environment to explore. My adventure with Violet has become one of the most exhilarating things I have ever done – and it’s only just begun! I hope to begin looking for a publisher for my book this Autumn, so do check back for updates.
by Kathryn Garner
