There are towns that announce themselves loudly through monuments and merchandise. Key rings and fridge magnets. Guided routes and polished stories.
And then there are places that seem almost reluctant to reveal what they hold.
Saffron Walden is strangely quiet about its labyrinth.
The phrase returns to me days later as I stand in the home of sculptor Henry Moore at his Studio and Gardens, near Much Hadham, moving from room to room with my Mam and sister, led by a man named Neil who receives us, as Henry Moore once received his famous guests.
The house itself feels alive with touch.
Stones. Bones. Shells. Ancient fragments. Fossilised wood. Eggs. Small sculptures covering the surfaces of the dining room and coffee table. A doll-sized Rodin striking a pose in and amongst natural objects as though conversation itself had simply taken physical form and settled quietly into the room.
Neil tells us Moore would invite visitors to hold objects in their hands before speaking about them.
Feel first. Interpret later.
I love this immediately.
How supervisory.
Not:
“What do you think it means?”
But:
“What happens in your body as you hold it, touch it, feel it?”
I think about how often we rush to explanation before sensation. How quickly we move to certainty. As though understanding itself were proof of intimacy.
Outside, the sculptures lie in the landscape like bodies remembering they once belonged to the earth.
Internal and external.
One of Moore’s lifelong themes.
The phrase catches inside me like a hook.
Internal and external.
The labyrinth again.
The way we move close to centre only to be swung outward once more. The way inner landscapes shape outer lives. The way bodies carry histories families never speak aloud.
In Lyon, two weeks earlier, I had stood in the museum gardens taking in L’Ombre — The Shadow — by Auguste Rodin with friends and supervisor colleagues Laura and Geneviève. Geneviève had invited us to notice what emerged as we came into contact with the sculpture rather than speaking about it from a distance.
I remember the strange bodily discomfort of approaching it.
The figure seemed held in tension, as though something inside it was still trying to find its way into form.
I notice now how many moments on this trip have involved standing beside something shaped and asking quietly:
What shaped this?
A sculpture.
A friendship.
A life.
A few days later, walking through Henry Moore’s house, I accidentally say “sculpturer” instead of sculptor.
As I stumble, Neil quietly corrects me.
I laugh.
It reminds me of a dream a former client and fellow coach shared with me earlier that week.
In the dream I am heavily pregnant, teaching origami while deliberately pronouncing it “orijami”, delighting in saying it that way simply because it feels good in my mouth.
What moved me was not only the dream itself, but what she noticed in it.
Not polish.
Not performance.
But play.
Softness.
Permission.
Becoming.
I laughed reading her message because it felt strangely familiar.
There has always been something in me that trusts aliveness over refinement. A slight irreverence around the edges. A willingness to tilt language or experience slightly sideways just to discover what else might live there.
And perhaps that is part of what this journey has been quietly returning to me.
Not reinvention.
Recognition.
And perhaps recognition itself requires a kind of release.
A loosening of who we think we need to be.
The polished version.
The productive version.
The one who always knows.
Making room for something older.
Something softer.
Something already waiting beneath the performance.
This journey began partly as a pilgrimage into the landscapes of my great-great-great-great grandmothers.
Saffron Walden.
Much Hadham.
Places their feet once knew intimately and mine know now only through fragments, parish records, stories, and imagination.
And yet the moments that nourish me most on this journey seem to arrive sideways.
Through wandering.
Through shared meals.
Through bodies beside bodies.
Through laughter in kitchens and sculptures handled by human hands.
Through being received.
I notice too that nearly every meaningful moment on this trip involves companionship.
Supervisor colleagues in Lyon.
My sister-in-law in Provence.
University friends I have loved for over thirty years.
Camilla walking the labyrinth with me each day, rain or shine.
My Mam protesting her way toward the centre and out again.
My sister bringing the sacred.
My people are scattered across countries now.
Canada.
England.
Scotland.
France.
Sweden.
Norway.
Different landscapes.
Different climates.
Different ordinary lives.
And yet when we gather, something in me exhales.
Not because the moments are dramatic.
But because they are embodied.
Walking together.
Eating together.
Holding objects together.
Drinking coffee slowly.
Allowing silence.
Allowing difference.
Being known without needing to compress ourselves into smaller shapes.
I think this is what I have been hungry for.
Not constant intensity.
Not endless socializing.
But something quieter.
A village of recurring presence.
The kind built less through declarations than repetition.
The same faces.
The same table.
The same pathways walked enough times that the body softens before the mind does.
Back at Henry Moore Studios & Gardens, Neil gestures toward piles of books stacked beside artifacts.
Not decorative books.
Used books.
Lived-with books.
Their leaning forms becoming sculpture themselves.
Are we the sculptor or the sculpture?
The question follows me out into the gardens.
Perhaps both.
Or perhaps we are something more mutual than that.
Perhaps we are shaped in relationship.
By landscapes.
By conversations.
By grief.
By bodies.
By mothers.
By friendships capable of holding disagreement without rupture.
By ordinary rituals repeated over years.
By those who receive us without trying immediately to improve us.
The sculptures outside are enormous and yet strangely tender.
Bodies opening.
Bodies sheltering space.
Bodies becoming landscape themselves.
I think again of the labyrinth in Saffron Walden and how irritated I initially felt by the sharp turns. How I wanted to pivot over the curves instead of following them faithfully. How eventually I stretched my arms out like little airplane wings and allowed balance to emerge through playfulness instead of control.
Perhaps this too is sculptural work.
Not forcing form.
Allowing it.
Not perfecting the body into stillness.
But participating in its becoming.
Later, unpacking, I find the feather I slipped into my coat pocket while walking the labyrinth in Saffron Walden.
A reminder perhaps.
That some things are meant not only to be understood.
But held.
This is Part One of a Trilogy — Walking the Labyrinth