Walking The Unpath - Stepping in and outside the lines.

Angie Rogers, Following In The Steps Of The Old Ones, Charcoal on paper, 50 x 50 cm

Do you tend to prefer sticking to the path on walks? It is the best strategy for getting where you want to go of course and I’ve trod so many of the hundreds of ancient little paths that criss cross the land around my home in Hebden Bridge.

I know my way around. And yet sometimes a strong yearning comes to walk the unpath. To commit a minor transgression by treading on ground not obviously sanctioned for walking. Does that ever happen to you? And if so, do you ever act on that urge?

It feels liberating to make your way across the trackless moor occasionally or to wander freely through a maze of tree trunks in the woods. You are untethered.

​The sense of adventure always carries an edge of fear though, you might get lost or fall and not be found, some evil might be lurking. You must keep the balance in your mind.

​The whole of life can seem like that, the need to be safe and the longing to feel free in constant struggle. This struck me acutely one day when I saw an escaped bunch of colourful party balloons all snagged up on a barbed wire fence between snow-filled fields and the open moor.

The scene made such an impression on me I made a tiny (3 inch square) picture book about it from my photographs. The horse, once a free-roaming herd animal running across the plains and an avatar of freedom, now with his comforting blanket and fenced-in.

Angie Rogers, Poles Apart, concertina fold book.

Titled Poles Apart with some brief text, a kind of haiku summing up the freedom v safety dichotomy - “Cold light of day underlines, the need for security and the desire to be free, in implacable conflict”.