You go yours – and I go mine – the many ways we wend.
Many days – and many ways – ending in one end.
George MacDonald
For a quarter of a year, people from all over the world have been walking together Under One Sky as part of Slow Marathon 2020.
Now, as the global walk – the distance of the circumference of the earth – reaches back round towards it’s symbolic starting and end points of Huntly, Scotland, we’re inviting walkers from here, there and everywhere in between to walk some of those last miles and km together.
As we’ll set off on this group walk, around 95% – or over 49 million individual human footsteps – of our collaborative journey will have been walked, taking us symbolically through more than 30 borders in our vision of a borderless world.
Project artist Iman Tajik will be joined by the Deveron Projects team and local Huntly walkers at 2pm UK time on Sunday 23 August. The distance people walk is not important; this walk is about the solidarity expressed through the project. Provocations will be given before and during the walk (see below), to bring us together regardless of location and help us be mindfully present in our walking together. The walk will be broadcast over Facebook live, and there will be opportunities for walkers to add their own experiences and thoughts there afterwards.
Global walkers can join us offline or online in their equivalent time zones and locations. Should walkers want to engage in real time with the Facebook live, this will be broadcast from 2:30-3:30pm UK time on the Slow Marathon: Under One Sky facebook group.
Local walkers to meet at 1:45pm, Huntly Mart car park, and bring facemask, hand sanitiser and bottle of water. Please wear sun/rain protection as appropriate and wear sturdy walking shoes. Social distancing will be strictly observed, but within an atmosphere of inclusivity, solidarity and human warmth.
Provocations for the walk
We invite walkers to think about the following questions, to help us all be fully present as we walk Under One Sky and consider the themes of the project.
- Consider the borders which surround us – these could be field boundaries, fences, roads or waterways which intersect your walk, or they could be socio-political, from a council or parish boundary, to a nationally-enforced border control. How do they affect your reading of the landscape, or your freedom to move through it?
- Contemplate how things have changed since you first starting walking with the project. Has this been in response to Covid/lockdown, your sense of your body, relationship with your surroundings, relationship to society?
- (Around 3pm) Take a moment together to observe the sky above our heads.
- What does 'solidarity' mean to you? Do you feel connected to something larger? Can you express this in words or in gestures?
