Along a river shining...
a short walk between limestone and forest
Hello dear ones, I am dashing in and dashing back out again, a routine which seems to be making the shape of my holidays. Regardless, welcome new subscribers, I am delighted you’re here. Welcome old friends too, I love that you are here again. Thank you all, for sparing these moments of your busy days to pop by. You are so very appreciated and I love you all.
I seem to have reached a milestone here on Substack I never dreamed would happen! 1000 of you have subscribed to my publication, 1000 wonderful readers have read my letters and thought them worthy, thought they might like to read another. Maybe I shouldn’t care, maybe I should be more like my beautiful, eloquent friend from the other side of this constantly spinning blue planet who wrote this when she reached 50 subscribers;
Fifty is a lot in this space. But the right kind of a lot. A cashmere-socks-in-winter kind. A warm-bread-with-butter kind. A you-didn’t-know-you-needed-it-until-it-arrived kind.
Well I don’t know a whole lot about the feel of cashmere socks mine are generally thick woollen affairs, scratchy around the ankles but toasty warm inside wellies in winter, I do know that a thousand of you make me feel like the fluff of a trillion dandelion seed wishes have picked me up, wrapped me in their softness and carried me to that place in the forest where only birdsong and psithurism and the sweet scent of damp moss hold hands in ecstasy, I am breathless with gratitude.
But, more important than my gushing is this; Kim’s writing is like walking in warm rain with sun beams shining down on you when you suddenly discover the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is not just a fairy story, and not only is it real, not only is it full of glittering gold but there is more than one pot! And, they are filled with the most gorgeous prose you could ever imagine!
From the softest place in my heart, for your endless support and belief in me, I am humbled, I am ecstatic, thank you, thank you, thank you. ♥️
I have a house-full, not in the number of people but the size of the beautiful, exhausting, memory-evoking, young love between them filling every room.
They asked if I would drive them to the River Lot… they have a paddle board, I have my note book and camera, ‘pourquoi pas’ Why not, I reply…
Cloud shadows are making a dark and light spectacle on the hill as we leave, a brisk wind is shooing them along. Their hurry is contagious. Two young loves in my car whispering soft, giggled secrets in each others ears are urging me to drive like cloud shadows.
Along winding roads to the long Lot River, I drive through wavering, dappled light. In places what remains of Napoleons Plane trees still stand sentinel in imposing shade-giving lines either side, a constant, elegant testament to the grace of time. Three bridges are crossed before sweet agreement is reached at a quiet spot beckoning them to wild swimming, calling me to wild walking…
No lover has need of spectators.
They find a quiet place to abandon their picnic and I leave them to their whisperings.
I amble rather than walk, tall forests surround me, the land steeply sloping down to watery edges. Trees are not silent companions I notice, when they are sun baked at their tips and creaky in the wind but this is the flux and flow of ordinary here on the river bank. Lush low branches reach over the water, reflecting back glistening light in fresh damp air, high branches are cranky, groaning in the relentless dry heat. And the river, she is gliding, gently on this part of her long journey between pale limestone cliffs and the darkest of forest greens and layers of schist and basalt where wilderness meets water in obvious verdant symbiosis. Every twist and turn and oxbow and inlet carries ancient stories of a distant people, a life on Earth that swayed like the tree tops precariously between struggle and survival and life. She has swept along every detail, memorised each one in her ripples.
Ahead I hear the low, gushing, rushing roar of water falling over a weir, voices somewhere beyond. Through a clearing in the forest a mighty cloud of dust is billowing from parched land where a tractor drags a harrow. Several buzzards follow behind, heedless of dust, forever hunting the hunted, forever calling. And, the river is continuing, endlessly flowing in spirals and splashes where rocks and islands think they have won an ancient crusade, through tree-roots sensible enough to keep their feet damp lining the riverbank. The water glitters under a lowering sun, continuing, on her perpetual journey southwards, she asks nothing of me nor anything of the land and yet I know, she holds more power than us both.
From somewhere—and nowhere—a dog swims across the river towards me. I peer up and down the path in the hope of seeing his owners but the path is as empty as the sky is cerulean blue. He swims to the bank in front of me, trots up through soft river sand—startles a mottled green frog who, in one leap, reaches the water to swim away—then stops only long enough to smile as he shakes his black’n tan coat over my legs and runs off in the direction I have just walked from.
‘Hello and goodbye and thanks for the shower…’ I call after him.
There are no bridges to cross in this wilderness of carved out valley, older by eons than even the trees can remember, meaning I am—reluctantly—forced to return by the same path. Sun-light is lower now, shadows no longer chased by clouds ripple on liquid gold incandescence, the constant hum of small hidden creatures accompany me. Purple Loosestrife in great crowded clumps of tiny flowers in rocket shaped blooms shoot skyward, as if in permanent floral readiness to reach the stars, to be in orbit. I watch them sway a while, lost in the high of their roseate haze I half expect them to take off then explode like fireworks into deeper and deeper blue.
I walk myself dry again. Somewhere, deep in the forest behind me, a tree gives up its struggle for life. I hear only the breaking of branches as it falls then the finality of its vanquished thrump, a last sigh of acceptance when it hits the ground. A second of silence follows—for prayer perhaps—then birds, their many different twittered words of sorrow erupt into a brief winged crescendo, then fade just as quickly as they settle in other branches, in other trees, with roots robust enough to hold tight to thin soil covering brittle layerd rock.
I wish the living luck, I wish the living love and walk into a matrix of falling light.
The picnic spot we chose is as quiet as the dusk that’s falling. I find them, my two young lovers, curled in each others arms, still whispering, their bare legs still glistening.
‘On y va alors?’ Shall we go then? They ask, as if they’d been waiting for me all this time, as if I too wasn’t once young with the sparkle of love in my eyes. As if I too, hadn’t felt love on a river walk in a forest deep in a shadowy valley.
With love and my deepest gratitude to each of you for being here
How do you do it Susie? You allow us to linger in your day of "liquid gold incandescence", taking in every single breath alongside you. If I were to write about the same experience it would just be, "it was a lovely day by the river!" 😄 It takes so much talent to write about nature in the way you do. Evocative, sensual, gorgeousness!!
Congratulations on reaching 1000 subscribers. That takes a lot of hard work, talent, commitment and reciprocity. 🌟🌟🌟
Much love and respect. 🙏❤️
'the fluff of a trillion dandelion seed wishes have picked me up, wrapped me in their softness and carried me to that place in the forest where only birdsong and psithurism and the sweet scent of damp moss hold hands in ecstasy' ⚡