Stone Will Answer: A Journey Guided by Craft, Myth and Geology

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Fascinated with the mysterious footprint stones of Northern Europe and the ancient Greco-Roman world, stones closely associated with travellers, saints and the inauguration of Kings, she follows in their footsteps as her stone becomes a talisman, a bedrock and an offering to those she meets along the way. Storied impressions and whom we feel compelled to wield in the titanic efforts of believing in being human. Should you find yourself walking along the St Olav’s path today, you may hear tell of a mysterious figure who is sometimes seen there, lugging a small piece of Orkney behind her. Parallel to these discoveries is another factor, the dawning realisation that as a stonemason, serving her apprenticeship at Lincoln Cathedral, her work might be ‘upholding the unnatural stasis of a startling and shifting material’.

From breakfast, alongside some of the attendees, who were talking books with each other a mile a minute, to the public event at The Sheldonian where everyone was lively and engaged – I felt I had arrived in a kind of literary heaven. I thoroughly appreciate hearing her sharing this story and all the peculiar intricacies of a peculiarly intricate path. Why would a slight young Welsh woman want to drag her own bodyweight of Scottish rock and metal for hundreds of miles across the Norwegian countryside? Fans of Raynor Winn, like myself, will love Searle's lengthy and challenging journey through a semi-isolated natural world.I came away buzzing and reassured that we still have in this century a wide ranging community fascinated not just by famous authors (I’ve rarely seen so many concentrated in one place) but by challenging ideas and questions. It is also a treatise on human relationships, to places and to other people; and the meaning these relationships will always hold in a person's life, even when severed.

It can be ubiquitous but often differs in quality within one postcode, within one quarry, within even one section of one quarry. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. I heard the author speaking on Radio 4 and I was impressed by how thoughtful, reflective and honest she was about the unusual Pilgrimage journey she had made with her stone.

As she concludes, ‘I had thought it was an act of generosity to bring the stone; in the end it was our encounters with those on the path that revealed that I had been seeking and making real my own foundation myths’.

There is the physical journey itself, by turns difficult, sometimes downright dangerous, occasionally comedic, here and there euphoric.

T comes across as a decent person, though like Searle, he experienced moments of extreme physical and psychological distress. Stone Will Answer is an unusual adventure story of resilience and homecoming, of weight and motion, of rediscovering love and faith, and of journeys practical, spiritual and geological. Stone Will Answer is not only a brilliant contemplation of the spiritual and historical power of stone, but a riveting travelogue through Norway's wilderness. Fascinated with the mysterious footprint stones of the ancient world, Beatrice follows pathways forged by travellers, saints and kings in an astonishing feat of human endurance.

All of this is intertwined with a fascinating travelogue type description of the pilgrimage with its challenges, traumas and moments of elation and triumph. Despite having read Beatrice Searle account of her extraordinary journey, I can’t pretend to fully understand what drove the then 26-year-old to sculpt a pair of footprints onto a 40kg lump of Orkney siltstone, traverse the North Sea with it on a century-old sailing boat and then haul it over hills and bogs on a home-made trailer while camping by night among the woods and wastelands. At the age of twenty-six, stonemason and artist Beatrice Searle embarked on an expedition like no other. It may sound a bit unlikely, but it is a story everyone can relate to because it unfolds as a metaphor for life, in which the hardest journeys can be the most rewarding.

It was a summer spent learning to work with indigo dye and seeing the power and process of creativity in times of mourning and recovery and how the patterns and routine of daily life are an important backdrop to the art we create. But I’ve certainly learned some interesting things about history, myth, stonemasonry and, above all, human resilience. I loved learning about the essence of stone, the craft of people who work with it and the impact that doing something different and brave can have upon our lives. She will follow the old pilgrimage paths to Trondheim with her stone, inviting people to stand in it along the way and discover for themselves a place of anchorage and strength.