Wander With Me: Jane Porter
Stories of place, memory and wilderness
Welcome to our collaboration feature here at Wild Quiet Folk!
Substack is an endless source of inspiration, a cacophony of unique voices that can lead a reader through the weird, wonderful and wild.
Here, I have collaborated with other creatives to bring you their meditations on place, story and wilderness - the heart of Wild Quiet Folk. This series is in an interview format, but offering creative prompts rather than questions - the freedom is with the contributor, to respond in whichever way they see fit, be that words, photos, drawings, anything that enlarges rather than restricts.
Our contributor this month is Jane Porter. I was lucky enough to join Jane’s comic class recently, and I had so much fun. She has a great newsletter too, full of creative inspiration - I highly recommend taking a look.
Thank you for being here, and I very much hope you enjoy the below:
The last walk you went on
A friend introduced me to somewhere very special in March – the Corbenic Poetry Path, in Perthshire, Scotland. It’s a moss-coated three-mile trail through a soft gentle forest, dotted all along with poems - carved into the stone walls, etched into wooden blocks, and placed on pebbles on the ground. It’s a shortish walk, but it takes a while as there’s so much to see.
The sense of peace is immense, and all the words are so well chosen and thought-provoking. But it was the lichen-draped majesty of the trees themselves that left me most awe-struck – here’s a drawing which nowhere near does justice to the ancient texture and detail in that bark. (It’s from my comic diary, something I’ve been using to record life’s small and large experiences for ten years now).
A celebration of season
I’m a little bit obsessed with the changing of the seasons and eagerly spot signs that a new one is coming, from the first fritillary to the sound of a dry leaf falling in August. My favourite season is always the one that’s about to start, though I find the peak of summer rather exhausting and tend to start fantasising about Autumn very early. Top seasonal treasures include: making marmalade in January, hearing the first skylark, cow parsley in May, river swimming in June, and spotting bracket fungus in October. Every winter I dream of snow, but it almost never happens…
The things in your pockets
A hankie, my phone, purse and keys – and occasionally a few extras I’ve picked up. If I spot any oak galls I’ll put them in my pocket for future ink-making.
A place that feels wild to you
The Cheviot Hills in Northumberland. At the start of January I was there on a glorious very cold, blue sky day. But unfortunately, I was ill and could only manage a miniature walk – I’m going to revisit and put that right soon. Even with a heavy cough and cold that sense of being on top of the world was unmistakable – the landscape is wide open, wild and undisturbed.
A moment of care
I am very bad at slowing down and giving myself a rest. It’s a skill I definitely need to learn! But being outside, close to nature, is something that’s essential to my wellbeing and sense of balance in life, so even if I wear myself out (and often I do), it’s worth it.
A place that holds history, yours or others
As mentioned earlier, I’ve recently been to Perthshire – the main purpose of the trip was to go to the Niel Gow fiddle festival in Birnam and Dunkeld. It was my second time at the festival, but I’ve been to Birnam many times since early childhood, as my grandfather grew up there, and my great aunt lived there her whole life. My great grandfather was a fiddle player – until the death of his oldest son in 1918 made him too sad to pick up the instrument ever again. But I now have his fiddle, and I have been learning to play it – and was so happy to take it back to this village on the river Tay to play some of what I hope might have been the same tunes, written by Scottish fiddle legend Niel Gow.
This year as part of the festival, I joined a guided walk along the river, all the way to the small cottage where Niel Gow lived in the 18th century. We were led by expert fiddler Pete Clark, who stopped at intervals to play tunes, and finished with a beautiful Lament at the cottage itself. I was thrilled to discover that a drawing I did at last year’s festival was on the wall in the cottage! Here’s that diary drawing of the session at the Taybank hotel – it was so exhilarating to experience.
A story you found in the land
Many years ago, when I was starting as an illustrator, my agent said I should do some black and white work for my portfolio. I wasn’t sure what to draw, and while I was contemplating this problem I went for a walk in Sussex. Something by the roadside caught my eye – and it was literally a ‘list of illustrations’. I had my brief! I’ve no idea how it came to be there, but it definitely seemed to be waiting for me to come along.
The last thing you read and loved
Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain is a book I’ve meant to read for years. I loved its evocation of the Cairngorms and poetic exploration of the interconnectedness of all life there – it’s a book I’ll definitely return to.
A small thing you learnt recently
That making a fiddle is too hard for me! I was doing a course to make a violin from scratch but it’s very, very difficult. However I have learned how to put on new strings and get things set up ready to play.
Jane Porter is a children’s author and illustrator, community artist and comics teacher. You can find out more through her monthly free newsletter Story Street, her YouTube channel (featuring creative inspiration and interviews with fellow picture book makers), and her website.