Detail: Woodland Walk - near Hornton-cum-Studley, Oxfordshire, UK on 11 October 2021

Pathway – an invisible dance

A path is made by travelling – often repeatedly – along a route and trampling the ground. There is a performative element to it, and the path is a memento or record of movement making a pathway. We could say that we ‘path the walk’ though we usually say that we’ve walked a path. Here is documentation of a walk on the edge of a woodland near Horton-cum-Studley in Oxfordshire which I made in October 2021.

Woodland path – near Horton-cum-Studley

Woodland Walk - near Hornton cum Studley, Oxfordshire, UK on 11 October 2021
1) Looking into the distance of my walk – near Hornton-cum-Studley, Oxfordshire, UK on 11 October 2021
Woodland Walk - near Hornton cum Studley, Oxfordshire, UK on 11 October 2021
2) Looking at the woodland floor, the path is more evident now with leaves in the foreground
Detail: Woodland Walk - near Hornton-cum-Studley, Oxfordshire, UK on 11 October 2021
3) See how the leaves fall in the depression where the grass is trodden down

The invisible dance

Walking a path involves movement and hence dancing thus a pathway is an invisible dance. Once, an artist created a sculpture and it was sunk into a lake thus becoming an invisible sculpture. It could not be seen but it was known to be there. Knowing was seeing – or we might say believing is seeing!

My dancing created a path – I was not visible like the sculpture I mention above … but surely, it’s better to say that the path is an invisible dance – invisible sculpting if you wish.

My walk

Below is a short film (7 minutes, 35 seconds) showing parts of my walk along the woodland path on 11 October 2021. It actually takes about 15 minutes to walk to the end and back – from near the road to the byway which you’ll see at the end of the film. Notice how movement is present in many ways – beside my travel along the path with the camera.

Walking through the coppice woodland near its boundary

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