Notes from the River in the Early Morning Light
Plus What to Look for in Summer - four week course FREE to paid subscribers
Before I tell you about my river walk, I need to tell you about two other things:
Firstly, my nature/landscape memoir The Ghost Lake launches into the world on 15th August 2024. In ten weeks time! Here’s a lovely endorsement by Adam Farrer, author of Cold Fish Soup:
You can pre order The Ghost Lake here: The Ghost Lake
Thank you so much for your support and engagement, it means such a lot to me. Writing memoir is such a vulnerable experience, but I have felt welcomed by the community here on substack.
The second thing I need to tell you about is my upcoming online course, What to Look for in Summer.
This four week online course is FREE to paid subscribers of Notes from the Margin, my substack newsletter. If you are already a paid subscriber you don’t have to do anything, you are automatically enrolled and your course notes will arrive via a paywalled substack post from Friday July 5th.
If you want to sign up for a year of Notes from the Margin, which includes access to all my courses, and my closed facebook group I currently have a 10% discount on annual subscriptions for new subscribers.
If you would rather sign up just for the course, without becoming a paid subscriber, you are welcome to do so, for just £25. The PayPal link to sign up can be found on my website:
The course notes will be sent directly to your inbox (please make sure your PayPal email is the one you want your course notes delivered to) on Fridays in June from 5th July.
Now, back to the river.
I rise early, before six, and throw on my shorts and my cotton T-shirt and my old, battered walking sandals, grabbing my binoculars from the ledge by the door and stepping out into the haze of early morning in June. There is no one about. It’s far too early for most people, even the dog walkers, but I am a light sleeper and now my foot is healed I wake and want to be out in the air.
It’s cool, overcast, the grass is still dewy when I walk on it, cool to the touch, and it is pleasant to feel my body as an interface between the wild external world and my wild internal world. I am listening to the world with every cell in my body, tuning to the shush of beech leaves, the pockets of warmer and cooler air I am passing through and the early sky larks. Through the sleeping village, past the manor house with its expanse of lush garden and its lazy cat sleeping on a wall. Down a lane still thick with cow parsley, then out and on towards the farm and the sound of the breeze shifting something loose and metal in a barn, the scent of grain in a silo.
Something is moving through the crop; a hare perhaps, or a fox. I watch for a while as the wheat parts and closes around this unseen animal. The air feels thinner the further out of the village I go, past the expanse of rough ground where I know the lapwings are nesting. A common kestrel is hunting here, sliding and stopping, hovering.
It is good to feel my foot injury healed, though it is still stiff, still a little sore. I recently found out I have a mild autoimmune condition, a watered down version of the conditions my mother has. I feel so grateful to know it is manageable, that I’ll not suffer in the way she has, that I can have medication to help. But still, to sit in the consultancy room and know that your body is somehow at odds with your desire to live freely and healthily is an unsettling thing. My body has been a mystery to me, always surprising me, rarely in a good way. I have been at odds with my body for a long time, but we were just becoming friends again after years of IVF and miscarriage and still birth. I sometimes feel like I am searching for answers to explain my body’s failings, but perhaps the failing is in my mindset. My body, after all, has fought hard to keep me alive, to keep me going through terrible situations and events. I should cut her some slack and look after her a little better, I think. And I will. I am doing it now, by being outside in this pale light, feeling for the wild on my skin.
The river is itself, the water different at every second of its existence, but also the same as it always is. I stand on the bridge and listen to the water running. The river Hertford, small and slack and barely there at all, manhandled into a straight line from its languid curves is still of value, is still a place for birds and insects and ducks, a kingfisher and, so people say, otters. Though I have never once seen one. It’s value is in its existence, nit for what it is capable of. It just needs to exist to be of value to the world around it, to me, to the animals, the plants.
It is good to stand in the early morning light and listen to a river running. I should do this more often. I should release myself from my desk and re-wild myself more often. I should stop punishing my body for being big, for being broken, for being itself. It has value for simply existing.
I hope you know that you have value by simply existing in the world too.
Until next time
x