Does it count as a triptych if The Threshold Project had three false starts this week?

“False” is wrong, of course. What I had were three ideas, three dances back and forth with shaping and listening. And three relinquishments of a possible partner, with thanks and without regret.

The catalyst for all of this movement has been—walking.

I was talking to a friend the other day about local walks. We live in a place of great natural beauty, with opportunities in all directions for engagement on foot. And yet my walking has narrowed significantly, like the rest of my life.

My life is opening out again now. Part of the way I have always found it is afoot.This is it, I thought. Three new walks.

This was not it. Because my goodness, I am tired. Still.

Was I expecting to recover my strength in a couple of weeks? Very possibly. And I do think that’s beginning. But it’s becoming clear that sustainably stewarding my own energy is a skill I continue to learn the hard way that I haven’t mastered.

So I made lists of walks, the way I make lists of everything I want to enjoy or accomplish or investigate. I slotted items from that list into my planner. And when I looked wearily at my planner every night, I asked myself: Where do you want to walk tomorrow?

Sometimes the answer was, disappointingly: I can’t. The rest of the time, it’s been a single beach. So. I have risen at my usual early hour, and walked on that beach three times this week.

This is not exactly art. It is certainly generative, and clarifying, and full of further questions. All things I associate strongly with creative pursuit.

I walked in slowly-welling sun one morning, downy rain the next. The third, in thick and living fog. The tides—I didn’t plan for this—were negative all three days, so that I walked in expansive calm what is usually the crashing threshold of our continental shelf.

I made beach offerings, of course.

These are small, collaborative, ephemeral arrangements of collected items, and of place, of weather, of tide. They are not actually about me at all, nor are they exactly art (there is no craft to them). A photograph can be crafted, however, and sometimes I do photograph my beach offerings. This time, even that idea failed.

Other photos consented to be made. One—and only one—per walk was offered. Interesting.

I gave them the obvious names, because my first week’s work established a theme, and that has saturated my thinking (and my walking) since.

This triptych hardly feels like a finished work. I suppose it isn’t. It’s three pictures gesturing at the outline of something almost encountered, something emerging. It’s enough for now.