Celebrated on the last day of the Roman year Terminalia is marked on February 23rd.

Terminalia was an ancient Roman festival in honour of the god Terminus, who presided over boundaries. His statue was merely a stone or post stuck in the ground to distinguish between properties. With it’s origins pagan, walking the boundaries between properties and parishes became absorbed into English religious practise when the festival became known as Beating the Bounds. With this in mind I thought that marking Terminalia (without any religious overtones) a good excuse to propose a boundary walk

This project was offered as an open call-out to the Walking Artists community

Walking the Invisible

A short walk of any distance from 5 paces to 50 kilometres that takes place along an invisible boundary

The walk can take place anywhere - in town or country - desert - mountain - under water

It can be a county line, parish boundary, outline of a former road or building, map contour or grid line - your choice.

Walking an Invisible Line Kel Portman 25th February 2020

The line I’m following is invisible. Real and unreal.

I’m walking a line that doesn’t exist.

A line that doesn’t exist, except it does, at least in my mind.

I’m walking a line that has just crossed this River and now crosses brook and rhyne, crosses fields and hedgerows.

The line that’s invisible is reddish from the recent floods, when land turned to water.

The reddish mud sticks to my trousers and boots, holding me to the ground and stopping me from escaping the line that doesn’t exist.

Once upon a time a cartographer breathed life into the line and it came into being, straight and unbending, stretching over all the country. But only in his imagination and much later, in mine.

Skylarks performed in spring above the line that doesn’t exist. Skylarks don’t appear on maps, but perhaps they should. Skylarks exist hovering above the line that doesn’t exist. The line I’m walking, always west until I reach the sea.

My walk today, along the line that doesn’t exist is short:just 408 metres. Just 644 paces. I need to cross water-filled rhynes and have to divert. It’s hard, leaving the invisible line. Nowadays with climate changing, these New Grounds often flood. The line that doesn’t exist is a wet line. The land cringes, worried that soon The River will take back the reddish mud, it’s grasses, it’s trees. But the line may still be here, though invisible. I find a wave-rider, a small plastic fish from Japan. Deposited with driftwood by the Bore after surfing up the estuary and left noiselessly on the tide line, attracted to the invisible line where it crosses. The line I’m attracted to, that will take me west and over mountains until I reach the sea. Today’s invisible wind is strong, buffeting grasses and trees, blowing heavy, rain-filled clouds. The wind follows the line that doesn’t exist, from west to east. The opposite direction that the line takes me.

The line that doesn’t exist passes through railway lines, motorways, buildings and walls. It passes through grazing cattle, trees, blades of grass, soil and mud. It passes unhindered across borders. It passes through valleys and mountain ranges.

If I stand still for long enough, will it pass through me and will I become part of the line?

The line I walk is visible and invisible, here and not here, real and un-real, it doesn’t exist, except that it does. I can’t see it or touch it. Yet my feet are following it. From East to West, eventually over Welsh mountains and on to the sea.

Follow the line:

622 00

///reddish.breathed.performed

621 000

///nowadays.cringes.rider