Carol Taylor

Crawling To The End Of The World- Carol Taylor

Summer Edition, 2021

It’s dark, cloud covers the promised moon and I am lost.

It was placing my hand flat on the slug that caused the problem. Slick! Wet! Squishy! Yuk! I tried scraping my hand against whatever my fingers encountered, but some of the slime was caught between them. Inadvertently, I moved off the path wiping my hand uncontrollably.

I lost direction. The smudgy glow of moon through the clouds is only enough to distinguish shapes. So here I am trying to find my bearings where everything is a blur. I keep my head down so as not to have a tiny branch poke my eye. That’s when I realize truly that I am no longer on the path, full realization comes when my knees sink into soggy moss. It had rained lately. I could be anywhere. Old twigs snap as I move from the low lying ground.

Why am I doing this? A tired old woman, lonely maybe? I’ve seen no one, touched no-one since the Isolation began. No one human being has been near me for almost four months. I wonder if I am real. But my dream was real, so here I am, maybe thirty feet from my straight path with wet pant legs. So far from a goal I promised myself I would do this morning when I woke. I dreamed this goal and I am determined.

Resignation sets in but I will finish my crawl to the end of the world.

My cold hands, my wet knees supply enough information to navigate. The problem the slug caused will be remedied soon, I know well this bit of natural world in which I live.

Feeling less apprehensive. I’m past the soft crunch and crackle of maple leaves; I continue. My knees snapping small twigs, my hand feeling the squirming mass of them under the poplar. I scrambled over a patch of mushrooms, their musky smell released as my hands flatten some, they’re slippery when my knees sink into their whiteness.

Crawling To The End Of The World- Carol Taylor

St. John River Geodes, 2010

clay, glaze, ashes, acrylic on board

The River Geodes were shown at Fredericton's Beaverbrook, Wolastoq: Beautiful River exhibition in 2010. When I was invited to be part of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery's St .John River exhibit, my first inclination was toward the layers and edges of earth that hold the river water, but I kept returning to the water itself and how precious it is to our lives.

Geodes are rock-like and usually spherical; their hollow insides contain sparking mineral crystals of concentric layers of minerals. Often beautifully coloured, they are frequently found near riverbeds.

My geodes contain clay drawn and glazed miniature map sections of the St. John River from it's beginnings in Maine to its end at the city of Saint John harbour, reminding us of the river's importance in our lives, and their form speaks of the preciousness of water itself.