The Clootie Wall - Processing a Pandemic

The Quarantines have brought us to this strange and lonely place where we feel simultaneously more isolated and yet more connected than ever. While I feel blessed to have virtual access to my friends and loved ones, I'm craving the physical connection with them more than ever. Constructing this space gave me a place to process the wild emotions stirred up by our surreal circumstances. Rooted in the traditions of my ancestral Scotland and Southern Appalachia, this piece is a longing, a meditation, a wish, a prayer. Welcome to my quirky backyard. (More about the Clootie Well that inspired me can be found here.)

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In April 2017, our band Coracree was in Scotland, performing at the Portsoy Haal Music Festival and the Aberdeen Folk Club. On a sunny off-day we took a side trip to visit the Clootie Well at Munlochy. A Clootie Well is a place, usually at a spring surrounded by trees, where people seeking healing make a ritual offering of a piece of cloth (cloot). Sometimes the cloth is dipped in the spring waters or used to wash the ailing person before it is offered. The belief is that as the cloth rots away, the illness leaves the afflicted person. We know this particular site has been in continuous use since before 620 AD, when the missionary Saint Boniface came to be associated with it.

Located just off the highway, the unremarkable approach to the Well. A parking lot, some trash cans, signs like you would see at any park. As we walked up the path, we notice that the site began to appear increasingly quirky - whimsical even. A pair of trainers over a tree limb reminded me of my Philly home with end-of-school-year sneakers tossed over telephone wires. A string of plastic beads festooned a shrub. A few grubby stuffed animals peered through the foliage. As we wandered deeper into the wood, the air became still, the birds quieted, and a full view of the offerings came into view.

It took my breath away. I don't think I've ever seen anything so human in all my life.

Thousands and thousands of wishes and prayers for healing tied to every tree and vine. Suddenly I could see the sneakers were no longer thrown on a dare - they were a teen with leukemia. The bras dangling from a branch weren't a drunken afterthought - they were a mom with breast cancer. Some people left healing prayers for the world, just wanting everything to be better for everyone.

I've seen the site described as "creepy" or "weird", but it was different for me; I felt surrounded by longing and a desire for connection and peace. Here in this ancient grove people still come, as they have for more than a thousand years, to say, "I am one of you. I share your pain. Let's ask for help together."  

In March of this year, Coracree set out on another tour, this time to play contra dances in the deep South. The Corona virus was hitting the East Coast and our home dances in the North had cancelled, but Southern dances had not yet come to that decision. After a flurry of phone calls and emails, when we were halfway to North Carolina, the first dance was cancelled. The rest of the tour quickly followed suit.

On the ride home, we jokingly renamed our band “Coronacree” and discussed having T-shirts made in honor of our cancelled “Don’t Touch Your Face” tour. Within days of returning home, cities were locking down, TP and sanitizer were running out, and the theatrical rigging business I work for furloughed all of its employees. I was out a tour, out of work, and worried for my family and friends. While my husband Bill Quern continued to work as an essential employee, I was stuck at home with too much nervous energy to sit still and not enough creative energy left for art.

So I started to sew. I began with a pattern I found online and made masks for Bill and myself. I adapted the design to make it more comfortable, thinking of the long hours Bill had to wear it. I sent masks to family and began getting requests for masks from friends and then friends of friends. So I kept sewing. Each mask I made helped me calm down. The repetition of stitching was soothing and, knowing that I could help in this small way, felt like the best use of my time. The box of scraps under my table grew fuller, and when I was about 300 masks in, I found myself thinking about the Clootie Well in Scotland.

Spring was in full blossom and May Day was coming up. Knowing that we would likely be celebrating the day from our backyard, I lit on the idea of creating a festive backdrop for a May Day video. As it happened, my backyard neighbor had decided to remove the beautiful, old cedar trees that bordered our yards. He replaced them with a stark, and very unfriendly, wood fence. I was mourning the loss of greenery and I craved something more organic to look at than those sterile wooden slats. With images of May Day, Clootie Wells, and Morris rag suits dancing in my head, I started constructing a simple trellis from bamboo and string.

Shaping the backyard sculpture came to be my daily meditation where I would bring the scraps from the day’s work and tie them up while thinking of the folks I had sent masks. The ritual of simply knotting cloth to branch gave me time and a quiet space to sort through my frustration and fury and to ask for strength and calm. I visualized the outside world as a place as peaceful as my backyard, quieting, becoming still, healing. I started adding other offerings (I no longer thought of them as decorations) - blue bottles to trap bad energy and send it to ground, some old taps from clogging shoes representing how much I missed dancing with friends, empty thread spools were for the other mask makers sewing like mad, an empty packing tape roll for the postal workers, and thank you cards from friends. Bill suggested I call it “The Clootie Wall” and so I did and began sharing photos of The Wall’s progress on social media.

Then a remarkable thing happened – people started sending me offerings to add to the Wall. Everything from “cloots” to photos of grandchildren, farewells to people who had passed away, poems, tunes, drawings, jewelry, messages of longing expressing grief, hope, fear, and love. Our friend Ann Mintz made a special excursion to the wall to add a treasured scarf that had belonged to Jack McGann, one of the founders of the Cherry Tree Folk Club who had died during the height of the AIDS epidemic.

My strange project had taken on a life of its own, drawing together friends, family, and strangers to affirm our connection in a time of isolation, to give each other strength and focus in a time of chaos. Here, in my little urban backyard, through these offerings, we could hold hands, singing & dancing our fears away among the shimmering cloots under a banner that reads, “Pain shared is halved and joy shared, doubled.”

Recently I noticed that a volunteer squash plant has escaped the nearby compost pile and had started up The Clootie Wall. The deep yellow flowers cheer me immensely. As the flowers swell into plump little fruits and the vines spread across the wall, I give thanks for the gift of nourishment and life bursting between the cloots and offerings. The beloved catbirds that I was sure I had lost to the felling of the cedars, have come back to holler at me from the top of the wall, their screeching displeasure at my proximity to their nest sounding like the first joyous cry of a newborn baby.

The Wall still stands despite several violent thunderstorms and a large squirrel population. Mother Nature will probably decide when it’s time for The Clootie Wall to come down, but for now she embraces it - embraces us – feeding our bodies and hearts through the hard times, protecting this tiny oasis and murmuring, "I am one of you. I share your pain. Let's ask for help together."  

Sarah Gowan
August 2020