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Charlotte Huddleston
A Rock is a Page in the Earth’s Autobiography [i]
Let’s go for a walk. On this journey through time, space, and legend I’m bringing two companions: one from the past - the ancient Gaelic deity and Divine Hag Cailleach Beira, and one from the future - the geolinguist created by the writer Ursula Le Guin.
The figure of Cailleach Beira has taken on many roles throughout Celtic and Gaelic cultural history. In folklore, numerous versions of Beira appear in Scotland, Ireland and the Isle of Man. She has many names.[ii] Generally, she is known as a creator and destroyer who has a “geotectonic role in landscape formation; a status as divine ancestress with numerous progeny of tribes and people; the characteristic of being an epitome of longevity in passing repeatedly through the cycle of youth and age…”[iii] As a personification of natural forces, Beira is believed to have formed stone cairns atop mountains and placed large rocks in waterways and lakes, demonstrating her earth-shaping abilities. The creation of certain islands in the sea and lakes in mountainous regions is attributed to her. Her influence is also seen in specific rock formations on hillsides and mountains. Some rocks are said to bear lasting imprints of her feet or hands, and some accounts of Beira have her turning to stone. Natural forces such as thunder, storm winds, tides, and powerful waves are interpreted as manifestations of her enduring presence and power in the physical realm.
The geolinguist is described by Le Guin as someone who can speak a “wholly atemporal, cold, volcanic poetry of the rocks. Each one a word spoken, how long ago, by the earth itself, in the immense solitude, the immenser community, of space.”[iv] The geolinguist can perceive and voice a far, far larger realm of time, space and being than humans are typically confined to. In evoking this figure Le Guin presents a compelling way to relate ourselves to the massive scale of space, time, and material we exist amongst.
Both Beira and the geolinguist come from deep time - Beira from the past and the geolinguist from a speculative future. As mythical and storied figures they encourage us humans through our cultural modes to speculate; to make sense through stories; to imagine; and to enliven our ability to connect with the immensity of time and space and the formation of the natural environment. They are fitting companions to Virginia Were’s project An Intimacy of Long Unfolding which seeks to forge these connections through photography and writing.
While the term deep time is attributed to author John McPhee who first used it in his 1981 book Basin and Range, the idea that Earth's history extends far beyond human experience has much earlier roots including analogues in some ancient Greek philosophers, many Eastern traditions, and Indigenous cosmologies. The Scottish gentleman farmer and geologist James Hutton is often credited with introducing the concept of deep time to Western science. In his 1788 paper Theory of the Earth, Hutton proposed that the Earth's features were shaped by slow, ongoing processes over immense periods. At the time, biblical narratives heavily influenced geological understanding, limiting the perception of Earth's history. As a result, "any view of time stretching beyond the three or four-thousand-year span of recorded history was simply inconceivable," effectively eliminating any notion of Earth having a long, complex geological past. [v]
As something that is “massively distributed in time and space relative to humans”, deep time is an example of philosopher Timothy Morton’s concept of the hyperobject.[vi] Many things can be hyperobjects: plastic pollution, nuclear waste, collective human knowledge, the biosphere, and the Internet. Hyperobjects can simultaneously offer benefits and pose challenges. Their nonlocality means they aren't confined to a single place, instead manifesting in various locations while eluding complete perception. My companions, Beira who comes “from the long eternity of the world,” her origins predating the Celtic traditions, and the geolinguist who is folklore for the deep future, can be considered companions to hyperobjects.[vii] Their very existence results from human attempts to conceptualise and relate to the massive, disruptive, time-stretched phenomena of geological and climatic forces. Both figures present mythological and speculative approaches to bridging the cognitive gap between human experience and the overwhelming scale of hyperobjects like climate change.
There’s a need for both the ever-evolving knowledge of science and the story telling that builds relationships required to be in a state of “living in the world” as opposed to “living outside the world.”[viii] Stories engage us in “spatial dreaming” that can “shape and reflect our cultural and political hopes and anxieties."[ix] Our fleeting presence here is both significant and unimportant, as our personal lives unfold amidst ongoing deep time. This paradox is captured by Morton, who suggests that while our individual selves may seem inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, our actions are significant: "me, myself, doesn't matter, but everything that I actually do really does matter."[x] More and more we are confronted with the negative environmental impact of humans en masse which makes us responsible but feels insurmountable on an individual scale. Perhaps through stories we can begin to come to terms with the hyperobjects that haunt us.
As well as stories, an antidote to the giddying effect of hyperobjects is topophilia. Literally ‘place love' topophilia refers to the emotional, mental, and cognitive bonds we form with our surroundings, especially with places to which we feel a strong connection. Were’s photography and writing in An Intimacy of Long Unfolding are topophilic. Topophilia and storytelling are deeply interconnected. The emotional bonds people form with places often become part of their stories, and these stories, in turn, reinforce and perpetuate those bonds. Were uses both the camera and her writing to study deep time and human influence to story her observations and experiences of place. She has long-term connections with many of the places and areas she has photographed and these connections have their own narratives. The body of work presented in An Intimacy of Long Unfolding was developed between December 2019 and April 2023 as part of Were's Doctorate in Fine Arts. Presently, it includes an unbound photobook, a series of photographic prints, and the online PhotoForum exhibition derived from this research. It is a responsive, non-homogenous project. Were takes what she describes as “a boundary crossing approach – combining disciplinary fields which have traditionally remained separate. Diverse subjects – photography, science, philosophy, poetry – are woven together in lyric nonfiction essays that combine objective and subjective modes of writing.”[xi] The writing introduces new aspects to the context of the photos, storying them with observations and reflections on the subjects and Were’s personal life synchronous with her academic research. The combination of photos, essays, and poems explores the potential of photography and writing to deepen our understanding of and connection to scales of both space and time, from the cosmic to the microscopic, far beyond our everyday perception.
We experience our lives through the tint of our inner thoughts and feelings. During the COVID-19 lockdown in August of 2021 Were had to keep to a reduced home range in rural West Auckland. A characteristic of the lockdowns is a kind of drawing inward as the ability to travel is curtailed. This feeling is present in Were’s writing from that time. In the essays An Intimacy of Long Unfolding and The Milky Way Were is haunted by a recently departed lover as she goes about her lockdown life, continuing her research as best she can. Were deftly captures the tension between the confinement of lockdown and the expansive emotional terrain of memory, loss, and deep time. The poem The Loved Ones responds to the impact of Cyclone Gabrielle and has the urgency of danger and flight, as the “Pleistocene cliffs were in freefall…”[xii] Were’s poetic response to the chaos of this weather event and its impact is a way of processing the fright and telling her story of the experience of the cyclone. It is also a telling of the event that no doubt will be especially resonant to those who experienced it.
When dealing with vast, complex phenomena that span immense periods of time or space, our usual vocabulary can fall short. This makes it challenging to truly grasp or envision such concepts. Were wonders if “perhaps images and stories can do this work more efficiently than data and scientific diagrams.”[xiii] When I look at the photograph of the 17 million-year-old rock formation in Pillow Lava, Maukatia/Māori Bay, my companions Beira and the geolinguist are right there with me serving as storied bridges to these extended temporal dimensions. Beira, with her geotectonic role and ancient presence, and the geolinguist, with their ability to articulate the atemporal language of rocks, both connecting with the vast, non-human timescales that shape our world. I also think of departed lovers and empty pillows.
[i] Arthur Holmes quoted in Wood, Barry. “Petrotemporality at Siccar Point: James Hutton’s Deep Time Narrative.” Time’s Urgency, edited by C. Montemayor and R. Daniel, Brill, 2019. 176
[ii] Including Cailleach Bheur, Cailleach Bhearra, Cailleach Bheurrach, Cailleach Bheartha across Scotland.
https://cailleachs-herbarium.com/2015/08/the-cailleach-a-tale-of-balance-between-darkness-and-light/ Accessed 12 August 2024.
[iii] Ó Crualaoich, Gearóid. “Continuity and Adaptation in Legends of Cailleach Bhéarra.” Béaloideas, vol. 56, 1988, pp. 153–78. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/20522313. Accessed 11 July 2024.
[iv] Le Guin, ‘Keynote’ Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet conference, Aarhus
University, Denmark, 8 May 2014.
http://anthropocene.au.dk/arts-of-living-on-a-damaged-planet/ Accessed 31 January 2016.
[v] Wood. 159
[vi] Morton, Timothy. Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. University Of Minnesota Press, 2013. 1
[vii] https://weewhitehoose.co.uk/study/the-cailleach/ Accessed 28 July 2024
[viii] Le Guin, Ursula. Always Coming Home. Gollancz, 1986. 149–153.
[ix] Strauss, Kendra. “These Overheating Worlds.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 105, no. 2, Dec. 2014. 348.
[x] Jiménez de Cisneros, Roc. “Timothy Morton: Ecology without Nature.” CCCB LAB, 13 Dec. 2016, lab.cccb.org/en/tim-morton-ecology-without-nature/ Accessed 31 July 2024.
[xi] Were, Virginia. Temporal Leaps and Spatial Shimmies – Thinking About Unfamiliar Time Scales to
Challenge Anthropocentric Discourse. 2023. University of Auckland, Doctoral dissertation. 46
[xii] Were, Virginia. “The Loved Ones.” An Intimacy of Long Unfolding, 2024.5
[xiii] Were, Virginia. Temporal Leaps and Spatial Shimmies. 18-19
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