ZEN

Last year I achieved one of my personal ambitions. I spent a week at the stone-carving workshop on the Island of Portland. Portland is a rock outcrop that stands out from the Dorset coast into the English Channel, linked to the mainland only by the great sweep of Chesil Bank. Portland was shaped by quarrymen. For centuries these men have carved the landscape and given it distinct contours. They also formed the local culture and even the superstition, for instance the word “Rabbit” is not used on the Island as running Rabbits were associated with falling Rocks and bad accidents. The course was at the Tout Quarry. I walked through a landscape part shaped by man part by nature. A series of gullies and wild plants and stacked up rocks. These plants were blown by the wind here and without any intervention had turned the landscape to a Garden of Eden>>>FULL TEXT