A cusp. The exact point of transition between two states. Not one thing, not the other, the moment of change itself. No way to inhabit it. A threshold.
Happy Solstice.
#Solstice #Scotland #Photography
Remote
Kristie
@kristiedegaris@mastodon.scot
mastodon 4.7.2#Photographer // #Writer // Drystone Waller // #Scotland
Author of 'Drystone - A Life Rebuilt' out 7th August 2025
#Neurodivergent // #Covidisnotover // Pronouns She/Her
(Banner image is five images of the cover of my book 'Drystone - A Life Rebuilt' which features five stones in green, yellow, purple, grey and blue on a beige background)
Profile picture is of a woman with short brown hair, wearing ablue denim jumpsuit with a black and silver belt with green spring fields behind her
4357 Followers
633 Following
50 Posts
Joined July 01, 2023
Book Pre-Order for those in the UK:
Website - Photography and Writing:
Website - Drystone:
Links:
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Before I became a drystone waller I knew nothing about how walls were built, or by whom. That's the thing about drystone, it's everywhere, it's ancient, it's extraordinary, and most of us walk straight past it.
The very first Drystone Diary is live. What drystone actually is, how it works, and why it matters.
https://kristiedegaris.substack.com/p/drystone-diary-what-is-drystone
#DrystoneDiary #Craft #Scotland #UK #Ecology #Sustainable #Nature #Environment #Writing #History #Culture #Women #Countryside #NatureWriting
Boosted by @trending@homestead.social
For decades, descendants of the people who built Great Zimbabwe were told by colonial archaeologists that they couldn't possibly have built it. This despite all the evidence & Zimbabwe meaning 'houses of stone' in the Shona language.
The ancient aliens industry applies the same logic to Sacsayhuamán in Peru.
Yet nobody questions who built the impressive structures in Rome or Greece.
Sunday's Drystone Diary: Whose History Is Worth Keeping?
#DrystoneDiary #Nature #Writing #Scotland #History
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A drystone wall isn't one habitat, it's several, stacked vertically. Each zone has its own microclimate and its own community of species. Taking down a wall is an education in this. Also, occasionally, a surprise toad situation.
This week's Drystone Diary is about the fauna of the wall, from stonechats on the cope stones to adders in the foundations.
https://kristiedegaris.substack.com/p/drystone-diary-the-living-wall-fauna
#Scotland #DrystoneDiary #UK #Countryside #Nature #Stone #Animals
🎵 Biffy Clyro - Mountains🎵
(Image taken as we drove through Glencoe today)
#Mountains #Scotland #Photography #BlackAndWhite
Wrote a brutally honest, slightly irreverent, definitely funny thing for The Times on what 'summer body' means to me.
*Bikini? No, I'm in my full body mosquito suit.*
Read more over at The Times
https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/article/bikini-no-im-in-my-full-body-mosquito-suit-2cfdbwvz5
#Scotland #Health #News #UK #Women #Writing #Outdoors
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Time to broaden your drystone horizons!
New Drystone Diary: Whose History Is Worth Knowing? From Great Zimbabwe to Sacsayhuamán to the famine walls of the Scottish Highlands. Who gets recognised and who gets erased was, and still is, a story told by the same people about the same people.
https://kristiedegaris.substack.com/p/drystone-diary-history-worth-knowing
#DrystoneDiary #History #Nature #World #Scotland #Writing #Craft
When you're chronically ill, having a bedroom/home you like is so important. It's also a privilege, and I am so grateful to love where I live.
Life keeps coming at me hard and fast this yeah but there’s some good news that I will share soon. Just want to double, triple, quadruple, no takebacksies check it’s definitely going to happen ;)
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I'm so pleased to say that I have been awarded significant Creative Scotland funding to explore this. I'm excited to share more as the work develops.
In my multidisciplinary era, baby 🤘🏽
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I’m lying here in the dark, waiting for the sun to rise and thinking about the Fortingall yew.
Experts place its age at around 5,000 years old. A path leads towards it, and along the way, stones mark the events in human history that it has seen. It’s seen a lot. Too much, maybe. It looks tired.
And yet stones are not remembered this way, though they have seen more.
#Writing #WritingCommunity #Reading #Scotland #UK #Climate #Sustainability #Books
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First time reader of Wuthering Heights here. Yes, Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” finally forced my hand. Admittedly, I'm coming to this late.
I’d heard the rumours that Heathcliff was brown, and based on the tone of those discussions, I assumed this was one of those literary debates. Something implied, maybe intuited. Subtext argued over in seminars by white men.
I am laughing so hard right now.
#WutheringHeights #Books #Reading #Writing #WritingCommunity #Scotland
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Reviews call it brutally honest and lyrical. Unputdownable, with an extraordinary literary voice that resists tidy resolution while still delivering real arc and growth. One review compared it favourably to Eat, Pray, Love, but with, one might argue, considerably more grit and considerably better prose.
I’ll take that ;)
When your ten year old daughter is working on a story for a competition and this title lands in your inbox 😍 😂
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Turns out they're both by John Carslaw, son of Evelyn Carslaw who was part of the Glasgow Girls and the Ardencaple group. John, obviously a very good artist in his own right.
So, follow your heart, trust your gut, adventures ensue.
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I’ve gotten quite a few messages from disabled people who benefit from AI in the same way I do but feel unable to admit to it because they are scared of backlash.
I will start by saying I understand concerns about AI, they are real. AI is energy intensive, data centres use water, a resource that is already scarce in many places, and the companies behind these products are unethical in so many ways.
Alnwick.
Come see me at Alnwick Story Fest on Sunday, 10.30am, Alnwick Playhouse Studio.
Don’t worry, in person my extremely poor mental health is virtually undetectable.
https://alnwickplayhouse.co.uk/event/stone-by-stone-rebuilding-a-life-with-kristie-de-garis/
#England #UK #MentalHealth #Scotland #Alnwick #Historic #Books #Writing #WritingCommunity
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On the BAFTAs
I understand that years of media conditioning have trained us to reach for polarised, black and white opinions, but what happened at the BAFTAs is not well served by outrage or by denial. I remind you that two things can be true at once.
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I've been thinking about how to move beyond a visual narrative that keeps asking the same questions, or making the same statements about belonging. The forces that shape us are absent, their consequences are absent.
Environmental forces act on a body regardless of whether that body is welcomed or recognised as belonging. That is where I want to make work.
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I have been thinking about what that means for how I make images.
Within photography, black, brown, and mixed-race bodies are often placed within landscapes to signify identity, presence and belonging. While such images have been important and have opened important conversations about visibility, they often remain symbolic: the body appears within the image usually centrally in the frame, but the forces that shape it remain outside the frame. Unrecognised, unknown.
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Four hours later on the way home, spur of the moment, I asked Luke (ex husband number one) to go back so we could get her. And we did.
At home my daughter insisted I look to see if it would be easy to reframe and as we removed the backing we discovered a second portrait in oil pastels. Perhaps disliked by the artist, perhaps unfinished, then used to back a more favoured endeavour. Personally, I love it.
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For potential readers, here's a little about the book. It is a memoir about navigating a fractured past while learning the ancient craft of drystone walling in the Scottish Highlands. Readers are a witness to both my undoing and the rebuilding that follows.
For anyone doing the 52 Book Club Challenge this year, my daughter just pointed out to me that my book 'Drystone - A Life Rebuilt' works for prompts 10, 18, 19 (stick with it, they do appear and what an entrance!) and prompt 32.
She added me to the specific prompt lists on Goodreads and you can vote for the book there if you are so inclined.
#52BookClub #Books #Book #Reading #ReadingChallenge #Writing #WritingCommunity #ReadingCommunity #Scotland #UK #Goodreads
The Wuthering Heights people remember is not the book Emily Brontë wrote.
I read it just in time for the release of Emerald Fennell’s adaptation. She has said Wuthering Heights left its greatest impression on her at 14. Here’s my interpretation at 41, feeling world weary & no longer susceptible to the charms of beautiful men who behave badly.
It turns out it isn’t really about love at all, but about inheritance, race & power.
https://kristiedegaris.substack.com/p/wuthering-heights
#Books #Scotland #Writing #UK #Reading
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4/4 I also found this in the dark corridor of a junk shop in Dundee. Painted on sackcloth. Not for everyone, but I'm obsessed. I find it interesting how abstract paintings always have a clear orientation. This, the other way up, does not have the same appeal.
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I’ll be at #AlnwickStoryFest next weekend 8th March, 10.30am in the Alnwick Playhouse Studio. Very excited to be back in Northumbria. My only event in #England this year.
Tickets at link below.
Buy a book and have it signed, bring your book and have it signed, don't buy a book, don't bring a book, don't have it signed, come and say 'Hi', and and if you don't want to buy a ticket just wait outside & shout 'Hello'.
https://alnwickplayhouse.co.uk/event/stone-by-stone-rebuilding-a-life-with-kristie-de-garis/
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@gusseting@mastodon.social It's the same in Scotland, many of our walls were build through indentured servitude. Every thing that gets built, has people's lives and bodies in it. Far more profoundly when they had no choice.
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@bodhipaksa@mastodon.scot Oh no way!!!! That's so interesting, a small world indeed. It's probably my favourite thing we have built! Not just in terms of how it looks, but also the building process there, I loved it.
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@gusseting@mastodon.social It's not in the book but something I talk about a lot, and have written about elsewhere. Not just in that context but also in the context of drystone walls lasting hundreds of years at least, but we really don't know what the world will look like in even fifty years now. Drystone's relationship with time, deep time, and climate is something I think about a lot.
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@tor_haxson@heads.social I always tell people how stone shaping and dressing is a craft within a craft. It's something I've found a lot of frustration and satisfaction in. Learning what each stone type likes, and doesn't etc.
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@ColesStreetPothole@weatherishappening.network Hahaha!! I got worried there for a second.
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@masp@wandering.shop I am pretty won over by its charms too. Looking forward to Barter Books tomorrow.
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@peterbrown@mastodon.scot I've been before and honestly had the time of my life! It's closed while we are there for renovations or something but will go back in the summer with the kids for sure. Will definitely be going to the bookshop though! Thanks for the tip!
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@maxheadroom@hub.uckermark.social Ah thank you! It's been a really tough stretch of time (ongoing) but it's good to be back. I have a tendency to isolate, and I'm working on that.
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@fahrni@curmudgeon.cafe There is honestly something terrible wrong with those who run every platform that is free to write on. I was on Ghost for ages which is brilliant and ethical but as subscribers grew it was costing me more and more when I was earning nothing. And not just earning nothing from writing articles, I earned £2500 total for my book (this was the advance) for over 3 years of work. I get paid £1 or less per copy of my book sold (this is pretty standard) and it's unlikely I will ever earn out.
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@bodhipaksa@mastodon.scot Yes! I think so! And he was indeed lovely. Also Subhanaya, who was also wonderful. We really loved worling with them and for them.
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@aho@ioc.exchange I love these. haven't seen them before. Turns out the Scottish landscape and venus might have a lot in common ;)