More than skin deep

There is so much to learn about this place, how it became and what will it become. Some describe the Essex landscape as a multi-layered cake, I see this landscape in a living anatomical way. When I take my dogs for their daily jaunt around the fields and ex-gravel pits near the village, I take in the landscape, the gentle rolling hills (if you can call them hills), the sound of the wind blowing through the wheat fields and the skylark's birdsong. It sounds nearly idillic, but then I look at the landscape again in a different light, as violated - a disguised mutilation. There are no natural meadows here filled with colourful splashes of wild flowers and the buzzing of honey bees, just acres of farmed land to feed the masses. I see this land peeled of its protective layer of skin, not just an abrasion but a dissection, a scalping. An alopecia like loss of hedges and woodland replaced by a wig of conformed, genetically modified matting. Perhaps this way of thinking relates back to my time as a nurse and strengthened with my recent return to hospital work as a part-time theatre healthcare assistant in the burns and plastics unit at the local hospital. Observing invasive life-saving surgical procedures is very much like the way I see how we operate on the landscape. This is progress, but progress always has its side effects.

The quarry is a surgical dissection, through the skin and the epidermis to reveal the fatty deposits of rocks left by the over feeding of the ancestral Thames. When the liposuction of the sand and gravels have been removed from above the muscle of the London clay bed rock, a regenerative skin grafting return of chalky bolder clay will heal the Earth's surface and nature will return with the added biodiversity of areas of wetland. So although other quarrying around the world for finite materials can have devastating impact on wildlife, climate change and human displacement, this quarry not only teaches us about deep time history but adds little to impact the detriment of the environment and possibly even improves the ecology of the area when the excavation has ended.

Land Liposuction

Since May I have ben exploring the site. Searching the 'epidermis'  glacial till for Jurassic fossils and using this chalky bolder clay and seeded willows on the site to experiment figurative hand-building techniques (which needs practise) I have collected samples of the different pigments in the 'muscle' bed rock London clay and collected fossils from there too. And finally from the 'fatty cells' in-between I am building up a great 'exotic' rock collection including the very aptly named puddingstone.

The geological history of this site and the identification of the fluvial rocks, would be very difficult without the help I am getting from local retired geologists Ros and Ian Mercer. Their knowledge and passion for the landscape is immense. They have just published to the most incredible book about the geology of Essex Essex Rock  by Pelagic Publishing and available in most bookshops, it is extensively illustrated and written so we can all understand it. They also run Essex Rock and Mineral Society, which I have become a member of, I have learnt so much from the talks by visiting specialists, and the organised field trips. 

Next week I shall be returning to the local primary school to do a 'dig' with the children. The idea is for them to connect with the riches of the earth, to discover and learn about the objects found and how they can be used to make art. I shall share their creations with you next time along with my quarry anatomical anomalies.