Billowing, silvery clouds hung in the sky looming over the vast highland landscape. A slight breeze rushed through the air whipping my hair around my face and sending a brisk chill through my body. My boots crunched through the melting snow as I walked arm and arm with my mother down an empty, eerie road. Although this was an unfamiliar environment, I felt immediately safe hidden beneath the Scots pine trees that lined the side of the dusty road. In the distance I could see our destination. As soon as the rings came into my line of sight, I felt a jolt of energy and picked up my wandering pace to a skipping jog. Droplets from the misty air sprinkled across my face as I yelled behind to my mother to hurry up.

I entered the gate into the Balnuaran of Clava, a four-thousand-year-old burial ground filled with circular, layered stone-structures. Thick, spongey moss and soft lichen covered the carefully placed rocks in splatter-paint-like patches. Each stone was unique and seemed to be naturally growing out of the stone that stood beneath it, but I reminded myself that humans, possibly ancestors to my mother and I, stood in this exact spot four-thousand years ago, intricately placing each rock to create a place of rest for the dead. Crisp, shriveled leaves, fallen from the long arms of the towering oak trees, nestled comfortably in between the cracks of the stones. These oak trees stoically watched over the Clava cairns providing shade and protection from the elements above. My mother and I studied each cairn carefully, noticing how each one had either an entrance facing towards the west, exactly where the sun would set or would have no entrance at all. Rays-like mounds of earth beamed out of these circular structures forming a sun on the soft dirt beneath it. Someone clearly designed this sacred place to represent some sort of meaning to honor ones who have passed on. I continued to walk along and through the stone creations, trying to grasp the immense feeling of connection I had to this place. I wanted to climb each oak tree I came across and run my hands over every stone. I wanted to know the meaning of all the circular patterns that followed me and my mother throughout our time in Scotland.

We came here to find a little bit more about our roots. There’s a rumor in my mother’s side of the family that we are related to Robert Burns, the Scottish poet, so we decided to plan for a trip to Scotland to discover if any of that holds truth. Instead of beginning an investigation to find out some answers to our family’s claims, we decided to venture into the highlands of this country to experience the beauty of this new environment. Unexpectedly, the Clava cairns were unlike anything I have ever encountered or experienced. I wasn’t completely sure how to process four-thousand-years worth of history especially with the possible connection it has to my mother and I.

After watching Rivers and Tides, featuring Andy Goldsworth, my experience at the burial grounds was made a little bit more clear. Goldsworth explained his art in such a simple manner; From his circular wood piles that gracefully glided and swirled out on to flowing bodies of water to the stone-egg-guardians that were swallowed in minutes by the sea, each piece was meant to be crushed by the forces of nature. He explained how his experience with watching his art disappear, “doesn’t exactly feel like destruction”, but “that the moment [of destruction] is really in fact a part of a cycle of turning” (Rivers and Tides). In one section of the film, Goldsworth attempts to build a stone-structure that resembles the pattern of a large pine cone. After four long, strenuous attempts, he failed once again as the creation toppled over, releasing hundreds of rocks that had been carefully placed and balanced. He exclaimed with a mix of frustration and gratefulness, “I get to know the stones a little bit better each time I build” (Rivers and Tides). He continued to build, each time the sculpture would get higher and stronger. Once Goldsworth finally completed the rounded “guardian”, he stepped back and let the tide rise and engulf his art, bringing the structure back to a pile of stones. Throughout the movie, Goldsworth brings the theme back to circles and cyclical structures that exist in life. There was an old woman that he talked to in his town of Penpot, Scotland, in which they discussed their perspectives on life and death. The woman said to Goldsworth, “You only see births—I just see deaths”, referring to how he sees all the new families having children in his town, while she is experiencing the deaths of many friends and older family members (Rivers and Tides). His face contorted into one of sadness, but also realization. Goldsworth, extremely aware of the cyclical relationship between his art and nature, seemed to finally see and understand how humans also go through cycles parallel to the lifespan that his art goes through. The carefully placed stones of both Goldsworth’s sculpture and the Clava cairns I experienced, represent a greater truth about the presence of cycles in human life and the natural world. There is a constant emergence of life, while also a recognition of the impermanence of all things that exist in this universe. Emergence flows into impermanence, creating this cycle that is shown in Goldsworth’s work and the work of ancient civilizations.

Emergence and impermanence are topics that are deeply delved into in the text of Tao Te Ching. This guidebook explains the importance of living to the optimal, while staying aware of the observations of being. This includes how things flow (“wei wu wei”), the emptiness of self or ego, and the cyclical nature of emergence and impermanence.

 

“Become totally empty

Quiet the restlessness of the mind

Only then will you witness everything

unfolding from emptiness

See all things flourish and dance

in endless variation

And once again merge back into perfect emptiness—

Their true repose

Their true nature

Emerging, flourishing, dissolving back again

This is the eternal process of return” (Verse 16, Tao Te Ching)

 

Lao Tzu, the mysterious creator of the Tao Te Ching, explains how once you recognize this true cycle of emergence, you will be able to see the entire process of return as a whole. As I look back on the time when I questioned the reasons behind the circular, stone-structures of the Clava cairns, I have come to realize that maybe thousands of years ago, people wanted to honor this “eternal process of return” and created a physical representation of this as Andy Goldsworth does. The Tao Te Ching goes on to discuss topics of ego and suggestions on how humans should exist in the universe, but a central theme that continues to return is to recognize the cyclical nature of almost everything that exists. “The Sage sees the world/as an expansion of his own self/So what need has he to accumulate things? /By giving to other/he gains more and more/By serving others/he receives everything” (Verse 81, Tao Te Ching). Reciprocation is something that the Sage earns by understanding the cyclical nature of giving and receiving without involving his own ego, which might have an unbalancing affect on this cycle.

When humans believe they are above or can go against nature, this cycle of reciprocity is broken. “Those who look down upon this world/will surely take hold and try to change things…The world is Tao’s own vessel/It is perfection manifest/It cannot be changed/It cannot be improved/For those who go on tampering, it’s ruined/For those who try to grasp, it’s gone” (Verse 29, Tao Te Ching). This is directly reflected in the stories told in The Control of Nature by John McPhee where humans attempt to keep a river from merging, stop volcanic flow, and build up into mountains that just continue to mudslide down into the valley. There is something extremely damaging about this mindset, that humans are a separate entity from the natural world and have the power to alter wild environments no matter how drastic the situation may be. After volcanic lava was stopped from washing an entire Icelandic town away, this statement was said by Thorbjorn, a man who help fight against this natural force. “The true extent of the victory be known—the role of luck being unassessable, the effects of intervention being ultimately incalculable, and the assertion that people can stop a volcano being hubris enough to provoke a new eruption” (The Control of Nature). Thorbjorn is aware of what is being broken in this situation. There is a chance that the people of this town will believe that they will always have the power to stop the lava when that is not the case in reality. There are actual dangers when it comes to not recognizing the true relationship that humans have with nature. We need to recognize and respect the reciprocal connection, not fight against it.

The wall of the inner part of a cairn is tightly-packed with jagged gray stones that gleam when the warm sunset beams line up perfectly with the narrow entrance. The ground is dark with rich dirt, densely-packed down from curious visitors like my mother and I. Underneath lies ones who have passed on and returned as a part of the “eternal process”. Although we didn’t find out if Robert Burns was in fact my great-great grandfather, the Clava cairns allowed me to understand a little piece of how the universe might work. Circular structures are found in ancient and indigenous civilizations across the world, representing cycles and reciprocal relationships in both humans and the natural world.