Crystal woods — Tüdderner Venn 3

All journal-items with the title ‘Crystal woods’ form a whole and are part of a new project. During 2017 I expanded my research for nature and life-energy to seven woods in a range of 10 km around my living place. The Crystal-woods-journals. The Crystal woods story consists of photographs, maps and paintings. In Crystal woods — Introduction one can find global information about this project.

Dancing tree

August 24, 2018: At 9.15 a.m. I walk through the forest near Tüddern, taking the path beside the fishing pond. After about hundred and fifty meter I notice a series of shallow holes. The Iron age grave field was located nearby. Hundred meter further where the slope is round as an amphitheatre, I see an clearing with in the centre the remarkable silhouet of a sweet chestnut. It takes completely its own space. Long branches turn with wide, horizontal bows around the stem. The sun brakes through while I’m walking around the tree with astonishment to get a better overview of the complex growth.

Inside my own painting

A moment later I sit inside my own painting (Lichtung, Spring), leaning against the oak that I painted last week. On the painting the leafs of the two rowan trees are bright green, but now their leafage has already been withering. The White-place looks more compact and intimate than in my memory. In my back I feel the White-place oak, before me lays the trunk of a uprooted tree and the lying sweet chestnut — how graceful it bends its crown, leaning against the high oak that stand just at the edge of the dig off that limits the White-place. It is the first cool day, a first announcement of the coming autumn. Now and then the sun breaks though making the leafage of the chestnut in front of me translucent. For a moment I fully merge into what I see.

Coordinates Tüdderner Venn

Cover shield and wing

Lately it’s becoming clear to me that the central theme of the Crystal woods project — connecting of opposites — finds place not only in the outside world, but also and mainly inside of me! At any time I did make a division — not knowing — between my experience of the inner- and outer world, between nature (positive) and society (negative). It is the right time to clear and let go these emotional blockades. I also realise that I always used my painting as a cover shield and a shell, while it is my wing. On the painting below that I made at the beginning of my quest, I already portray how I spread out my arms as wings to embrace outer- and inner space.

Life lesson

13 November 2018: How many times meanwhile I did visit all Crystal woods locations, wishing to complete the representation of the life-energetic triangles and Places of connection? And again I ask myself the question what made me so obsessed to see and to map all these places in their coherence? Since a few weeks I have the awareness that time has come to stop searching for more places of connection and surrender to the place of connection in myself. Letting go of old ballast of emotional patterns. Outer and inner world become one, at last.

Apparently this Crystal woods quest includes a life lesson: facing the inner conflict between my longing for wholeness and the need for analysing and knowing. My thinking often is too compelling (fear of control loss?) and impatient, often pushing aside the precious moments of coming near to nature with patience and respect. Here the Crystal woods project enters a new stage, and the following journals will be a mixture of observations before and after 12 November 2018…