Home thoughts of a Pilgrim (Chasing the wind)

JOURNAL ENTRY

 6^th September, Wednesday

“This evening
The wool of traveller’s joy has caught afire
With the westward
Apricot sun.

And look at how the nettles glow
Translucent with the touch
Of unspeakable wonder.”

[MUSIC]

WELCOME

Silence. Stillness. It's been a broiler of a day and you join me on a sticky night of sullen heat. Even the insects seem reluctant to acknowledge the night. 

This is narrowboat Erica narrowcasting into the sultry darkness of warm September night to you wherever you are.

There may not be a warm wind blowing and I cannot really claim there's many stars for it to blow around, but it's lovely to see you tonight. Thank you so much for coming. The windows and hatches are all open to catch any passing breeze, a cooling drink is to hand, step inside and welcome aboard.

[MUSIC]

NEWS FROM THE MOORINGS  

A heat haze shimmers across the fields and the carp lethargically flick their tales in the sunshine that sends shards of sunlight rippling across the water’s surface. This week summer has returned with temperatures climbing towards the 30s (high 80s in Fahrenheit); sometimes even reaching them. It has been the first protracted spell of heat this summer in the UK – although as far as some calendars go we’re technically now in autumn!

The hedges and verges are definitely beginning to turn. It’s not just the clusters of berries and fruit and the flash of late blooming plants. The leaves of hawthorn and dog rose are yellowing and along the canal-banks nettle and grasses are beginning to die back. Oh, there’s plenty of vegetation still! A couple of days ago, a boat tied up a little way down from us. The snip of gardening sheers pruning a neat entry/exit point among the thick foliage. I don’t mind that. It makes sense. The bank edges towpath side can be just as pitted and hazardous as any on the opposite side. Lock landings, bridge holes and winding points (and a few other exceptions) aside, for the most part, boaters are permitted to tie-up or moor at any point along the towpath side of the canal. The bank on the opposite side however, is generally privately owned and permission would need to be sought from the landowner first. However, perhaps due to the mild wet summer, the towpaths have been a veritable jungle of growth. Sometimes this means that getting on and off the boat has necessitated in having to wade through thigh high vegetation and guessing where land stops and canal starts. Making a small clearing on the bank at bow or stern entirely makes sense. It’s the wholesale slashing of the bank for the entire length of the boat that I find more difficult to accept. I haven’t come across it frequently, but I have come across it a couple of times this year. 60/70ft of strimmed bank as close cropped as a crown bowling green. One person remarked, ‘but it does look a bit neater.’ I thought it just looked a bit deader. And so it was for a few weeks, until the next wave of rains came and fresh growth healed the wound.

But even though the canal-sides have a little more russet and fawn than there was a week ago - and gaps too now – there is still plenty of greens. I am grateful for the rain we had. The soil and all the communities that it is home too has something to protect it; to cushion the blow of the sun’s hammer beat. Like them, I seek out the trees and their shade – knowing that their roots, for now, dig deeper into the coolness of a summer of rain. I look up into the emerald and lime canopy of the alder spinney. The sky, heat-blanched, with just the taint of blue. Their leaves are shimmering with sunlight reflected in a rippling dance from the canal. The same sinuous patterns that so often play across our cabin walls and ceiling. When a welcoming breeze plays among the branches, yellow leaves fall – hard and brittle. Pick one up and you will see that they comprise an entire artist’s palette of muted colour, from soft deep earthy greens to mustard and ochre, to burgundy and brown. A masterpiece of colour-work falling all around me.          

It's also the time of harvesters, crane flies, the cumbersomely delicate and ethereal daddy longlegs. They float more than they fly on the evening coolness. Bumping and bumbling around the cabin. The crickets and grasshoppers have been much in evident recently too. We’ve discovered that Maggie has a developed and passionate interest in entomology. Most visits to the fields have become preoccupied with insects and, even if her skills and knowledge in taxonomy and classification are surprisingly poor, her rapacity for the hunt knows no bounds. Springing and bounding with such intense concentration among the long grasses she could so easily have been a Victorian curate brandishing butterfly net and a first edition of Byron in her pocket.

Sitting with her on the hill, doing nothing but watch the light and feel the evening air, brings it home that I’ve not actually had much chance to do this with her this summer. Sitting and simply watching was something I used to regularly do with Penny. She even got to know our favourite spots and would get to them before I did. But this year, the weather has simply just not been conducive. We had a long hot and dry spring, but that was before we had met Maggie. Since then, we’ve had quite a few nice days, but not the sort of ‘sit on the hill and watch nothing with your dog’ type days.

It’s been a strange old summer.   

[MUSIC]

CABIN CHAT

[MUSIC]

CHASING THE WIND

I mentioned last week that I was delighted to receive an email from my old friend, Tony Bell, in response to the episode on ‘listening to the rain’. In it he attached something that he had written a few years ago and I think it is beautiful and am sure that you will also enjoy it. 

As I say, Tony is an old friend of mine – we were actually at school together – or to be a little more accurate – we attend the same school at roughly the same time. Tony was a couple of years ahead of me. In those days, that age-gap was an almost unbridgeable canyon. Our paths have converged and diverged over the years, but the friendship remains – as all real friendships do. In previous episodes I have mentioned him, usually in reference to our frequent camping exploits. More recently, he has moved to the north-east coast of Ireland where his wife is the vicar of a Church of Ireland church. In one way or another, Tony has spent his life outdoors. A trained tree surgeon, he has latterly been a groundskeeper and, from what I can gather, person who can and will turn his hand to just about anything. It always strikes me that it is a life that has grown through a patient listening to the earth, the elements and those living in them. A life formed by the unhurried, unforced earthy wisdom of patiently listening to the soil, and the elements, and everything in them.

It's through watching Tony that I get a glimpse of how life works and how it should be lived – now I know he won’t be able to see this at all, we never do. But, when I see him – or read his words – I see the old Tony, the young, sometimes exuberant, sometimes pensively quiet Tony. In some ways, he hasn’t changed – he’s still there, but now, oh now, the richness of the colour. Like a ripe chestnut that has just been broken open, there’s such depth of colour, smoothness of texture, patinaed and varnished by experience (not always comfortable or welcome), a fulness that only maturity can bring. I’d always thought that through life one was meant to be transformed, to become something totally different. But that is not the case, nor should it be. Oh, of course there'll be some changes and differences, but the essence remains true. Like being able to see the sapling in the matured form of an ancient tree, so we too grow into our lives. Seeing Tony grow so beautifully into the fulness of his younger self has been a revelation and a call for revaluation.    

And so, I have appreciated my friendship with Tony and appreciated the knowledge that I am living in a world in which there is a Tony Bell. This sounds frighteningly like a eulogy and so I will stop!

I am so pleased that Tony has given me permission to read it out to you – I think you will enjoy it.

Interestingly Tony has entitled the piece ‘chasing the wind.’ I am sure that the influence of Qoheleth that ancient teacher to which is attributed the biblical book of Ecclesiastes can be found here. ‘Chasing the wind’ is a common image in the book – particularly its early sections. Early on, the author sets up the image:

⁶ The wind blows to the south,
   and goes round to the north;
round and round goes the wind,
   and on its circuits the wind returns.

Like the never-ending circuits of the sun and moon and the running of the streams, who knows where they come from and go? Life, the author concludes is a continual chasing after the wind – a wind beyond our control whose destination is unknown. Of course, it is not as simple as that. The word 'chase' could as just as accurately be translated as ‘striving’ or even ‘devouring’, while the word for wind, ruach, can also mean ‘spirit’ and even ‘breath.’ Such interplay of language adds significant and (to my eye) delightful nuances to this text. What to some is a world-weary cynicism, to others is a beautifully deep, profound wisdom. 

Chasing the Wind

Rattling rain on the corrugated iron roof reminded me of countless feet climbing the steel steps from the playground.

In bygone days when, like now, I could stand and engage with my dreams and fantasies captivated by the numerous pounding of composite soles on steps.

Then being dragged back to reality by the shock of afternoon school such as it was.

The happiest days of my life they told me.  They told me lots of things.

But now here I am free, free to be imprisoned, constrained by the walls of my mind, my memories, my honesty and deceit, the purity of thought stained with the lust of desire.

So it is that I look through the rain drenched glass to a world stretching away into the weather and a perceived reality.

Condensed moisture trickled down the window to form small puddles on the tired paintwork, cracked and flaking revealing the silver-grey wood of the glazing bars beneath.

 How old is that wood, what events have passed it by through the years while it grew? Then the forester’s saw, and mill, timber yard, workshop, builders, and now.  What stories could it tell, what history has passed it by?

What lesson of life would it teach me, how many cautions, what encouragements or maybe nothing.

 You’ve done alright boy, just keep on keeping on.

Who should decide, who sets the criteria by which I’m measured? Should I even be measured; and for what purpose; what defines success and should or do I care?

So many answers to those things they think I never quite fully grasped, which sometimes I didn’t. And what of the concepts that I never adequately expressed?

Arrogant assumptions lacking perception thrown down with confidence in my direction.

Realisation coming slowly that I, like them, am just as guilty.

 Expressing thoughts from an untamed ego while only half listening to others thinking.   

A sheep moves into view manicuring the closely grazed grass which runs down towards the beach, just yards away.

Oblivious of me, engrossed on its task or should that be pleasure.

Musing, I wonder do sheep like grass or just eat it to stay alive? Do they like it because they have to eat it, would they prefer ice cream and jelly, or perhaps a nice hot mash?

Joe comes to my mind, an Irishman to the last, he would love nothing more than to sit and eat a plate of potatoes for his tea served with a generous lump of butter, pleasure indeed.

What a wonderful gift, to be able to enjoy the simple things. Sophistication may have its merits but oh, to rediscover the simple things in life.

A friend told me how he enjoyed scallops and chips, as a fisherman he knew their worth but then he just enjoyed them just as they were.

Was his enjoyment and appreciation any less than those who enjoy them while fine dining in a restaurant?

Do we need sophistication to fully grasp the beauty of simplicity?

Rather, do the wise already appreciate simplicity as the bird escaping it cage does its freedom?

The sheep moves off through the bracken following a long, established path.

Feeling a shiver, I turn and walk the short distance across the bare dusty wooden floor to pick up the small black steel shovel before persuading some of the coal on to it from the dirty galvanised bucket.                      

 Opening the lid, I throw the coal into the old iron stove.

 It lands black, contrasting the dull red glow within, scattering ash and embers as it settles.

I allow my mind to drift back through so many memories.

 The distinctive smell of wood smoke mixed with livestock on a freezing night in a snow-clad Austrian village where the air hangs dry and cold in your nostrils.

A damp late afternoon in a Welsh village as the smell of burning coal drifts through the cold damp air and golden light spilled through small cottage windows, reminding me of countless other times. 

How a country pub has beckoned with the sweet smell of a warm fire, hinting at the good ale, food and company within, and all thoughts of further progress starts to slip through the cracks of my mind.

Only for resolve to eventually return and be employed as I stiffly re-enter the gathering gloom and am enveloped into the landscape again.

And onwards as carrying my rucksack as I tramp through yet another costal town in the growing dark of evening. 

Warm living rooms with televisions, lights shining forth and the occasional local eyeing me with suspicion as I proceed street by street with a growing sense of solitude.

People coming and going with purpose; cars parking up for the night with occupants returning from a hard day’s work; or a parent taking kids to some class or club, all caught up in the busyness of their lives.

And now, here I am, inside looking out; no strangers here, just rain falling and the waves endlessly colliding with the beach.

Looking out from my cosy rudimentary comfort upon a gloomy afternoon, it’s hard to believe that somewhere over the distant horizon there must be a town or city with teaming streets and noise with sunshine pouring from a clear blue sky.

But for me, I have the solitude of a quiet afternoon.

With time to enjoy, just to be, set apart for a while from the madness of a world that seems to know no rest.

Books sit unread and the battered old radio lie undisturbed on the table and as for the present I’m content, rediscovering simplicity.

Tony Bell ©April 2020.

SIGNING OFF

This is the narrowboat Erica signing off for the night and wishing you a very restful and peaceful night. Good night.

WEATHER LOG