a quickening of all things...
and a hole in the clouds where the sky fell out...
Hello lovely ones, did you see a hole in the clouds too? Did a sunbeam escape long enough to wrap you in its great warm arms of hope as it did me?
Can you feel the quickening of everything?
There is much busyness going on here, everything is in a hurry to be bursting, blooming and bright. Daffodils, violets, and lungwort are lining the lanes, early plum trees are blossoming. In the distance, when sunlight is low, white poplar tree catkins dot the hillside like thousands of candles in a shining light-display far beyond that of any city at Christmas! All this may well be a false start, I know, I know… but it will never not feel like the world’s best cure for winters ailments at this time of year. If I had something floaty and floral in my wardrobe—something that wouldn’t snag on the barbed wire and brambles—I’d be wearing it!
The deluges of January and February left me wondering, fearfully, just how much more of the hill would slide off into the valley? How many more trees both old and young the mud would take in its sticky grasp? Now, at the start of my holidays—imagine at least ten smily emoji’s as I type this next line—the sky is the sort of blue that makes me want to buy borrow a floral floaty dress, forget the brambles and sing while I work.
It’s not going to happen, well the singing bit might, but the thought will carry me far.
Spring is breathing life into me.
Spring sky is filling my kitchen…
Notes and a few photos taken on what is becoming a rare lone walk.
Solivagant - To wander alone. Etymology; from Latin sōlivagāns, from sōlus (“alone”) + vagāns, present participle of vagō (“wander”).
The morning is beautiful, it is Saturday, day one of two weeks holiday, welcomed more warmly than words can say….
Whether there is a deliberate change to the sky or it is haphazard is not important. When the sky has looked like a blank page for longer than the month is long such a gift is best wrapped in silk tucked safely in a pocket and treasured as if it were stardust, no questions asked. Just in case.
My pockets are bulging!
I walk the lane, cut down through the piece of scrubby land consisting mostly of yarrow and teasels and couch grass. Often inhabited by wild boar—today there are none though they are not long gone—this land is framed and hidden by blackthorn and briar. Few people would notice it at this time of year but in a future close enough to touch, the edges will no longer be a tangled thicket of naked twigs but festooned like a bridal veil by a line of blackthorn flowers so long one might be forgiven for believing the Milky Way was fallen from the night sky, landed on earth and is still shining.
From here a steep, slippery descent brings me to a field, not yet a meadow, there are no flowers though the grass is already flushed with spring psychedelia, its ebullience unmistakeable… patience, patience… The edge of the field curls around the badger sett, I follow the line through soaked grass to the beech forest. Without a breath of warning both forest and light disappear rapidly into a deep abyss. Vast boulders form the boundary to one side of the ravine, an impasse where time forgot to be linear and the silence is loud. On the other a sheer bank of impenetrable undergrowth. I slowly pick my way carefully—what luxury, minus the gazelle—across the tops of their strong shoulders. Between each dark crevice and fissure the breath of our ancestors can still be heard in great gasping sighs. They wait for complicity, an echo of comprehension. They don’t understand complicity died so long before they were born the echos were lost in the undertow.
Light only begins to penetrate as I near the end of the ravine, here moss glows in appreciation; beacons to small creatures and lost souls who love the wild—”She walks in beauty, like the night”—The land level flattens, the air changes, whispers fade. And, time returns. A sunbeam ahead of me runs down young tree trunks, along low branches, light explodes in a young oak still clinging to coppery leaves and everywhere there is ivy, its shiny leaves flashing like fairy lights.
Two ravens fly over me as I move through the liminality of dense branches. I don’t see either one of them but they are there, calling, two pairs of great wings change the course of damp air above me, two pairs of bright eyes, there is no doubt, looking down—Huginn and Muninn ever watchful—they fly on. How easy it is to believe in tales and myths down here, if Odin were sat high up in the world tree Yggdrasil, would I be surprised?
Nature has agency on this part of the hill, a collusion of deep symbiotic knowledge passed from tree to fern to lichen to moss to bird to beast, the intricacies of each life system understanding the other and returned. There are predators, of course, fox, weasel, hawk, even water. Each have power but are compliant, if they take, they also give back. Every fallen majesty devoured feeds those still standing; an invisible labyrinthian magic.
Emerging into the light of spring—I am sure the speedwell stole their blueness from the sky—in two different distances I hear the crows. Ever present, they exude a certain seasonal irrelevance, or is it reverence? I cannot decide, I rather hope it is the latter, though I like and understand the former. The eternal cycle of nature continues, the changing of the season it brings, a certainty. Crows know, they accept, have a way of working with and alongside nature that we mere humans could learn much from.
As I return along the lane, the forest and the ravens far below me, two young Roe deer are cavorting on the ridge of the hill and though distant, I sense their joy. I sense it in the same way I sense the ribbons of light that will lengthen the days in which everything living rejoices, in the way the plum trees are an explosion of white and pink blossom; perhaps they sense mine as I feel the last edges of winter spill over into spring…
With forever love and buckets of spring light — and always a huge thank you for being here with me.
Something(s) I’ve loved this week…
Matthew Long’s reading of Esmeralda Santiago's "When I Was Puerto Rican" transferred into an outstandingly well written and perceptive essay asks and answers the questions;
What happens when the place that made you becomes inaccessible? When your roots are forcibly transplanted? Can they survive in hostile soil? Do they adapt or wither? And if they adapt, are they still the same roots?
His understanding of being uprooted to foreign lands, whether through need or desire are worthy of applause.
Perfect! Thank you for these words...As I gaze out at the garden and countryside already glowing in the sun I am off to find my floral dungarees..it would be a floaty dress but as you say..its no match for the brambles...roses..mud and teasels.
I just woke from the strangest dream. I was at an old-fashioned barn dance, where tiny lights looking like overworked fireflies hung from sturdy beams. I was wearing a “floral floaty dress” a bit nightmarish, because I am not a floral dress kind of girl. Yet there I was, somewhat cold without my jeans, though the hearth in the center of the makeshift dance floor kept the chill of the barn comfortable enough. But that is not the strange part. As I stood by myself something—no—not a someone, asked me to dance. I felt its warm damp breath on my face and a faint scent of green wafted up my nose. A gentle breeze that swept me off my feet making my dress fill out like a summer umbrella—and suddenly I was face-to-season with Spring. There I was in full blush, dancing one dance with Spring. Then I woke up. Dew still clinging to my face, I ran to the front door, opened it and there was Winter, still in full glory: 3’ on the ground, snowflakes falling and temps hovering at 8°F. Phew! Though I am not quite ready (not by a long shot) thank you for a taste of Spring. One dance with your Hill—spinning across the dance floor in the shape of your words. (Interview with a hill, indeed!) My new favorite word, cuz I did not know there was a name for what I do on a daily basis, though I am switching it to a verb: solivaganting.