Siblings, cousins to alders - oh yes! I was a dry land child and oak trees grew around me. I spent long afternoons climbing as high as I could to my nest protected in the branches. This one oak was old, gnarled, and had spacious branches strong enough to hold me. That tree knew every thought and feeling I had growing up - my heart in her heart. Thank you David for allowing this childhood memory come alive. Today I live with maples!
To the one reared by brook and alder, a dreamlike telling tracing the embered roots of your apprenticeship to the wild world. Quietude and love everlasting breathes through it all. Did you choose your home for the river and the alders? They look back at me with wise faces. xo
Hi Carmine. Sorry I've been quiet lately - thesis dragging behind me like a ball and chain. Yes, the people who sold us the house were most perplexed. Barely a glance at the bathrooms and the leaky roof - but a long slow tour of the riverbank :-)
Hi, Patricia. Glad you stopped by again. Its easy - I just put up a sign saying 'Auditions Today' and the whole valley is queuing up at the garden gate :-)
not a false note in this prose poem....alders proliferate in this climate i see their red stalks by the river after snow melt....they bear testimony, mangrove of the North
Mysterious and beautiful writing. Otherworldly images from this planet. I would love to read more. I would certainly buy you a coffee but since my finances shift and shape no allegiances. Thank you.
100% David, this was once my little piece of Heaven..maybe we were all once water sprites, who dwelled within the banks of the river or beneath the gnarled oak tree, chanting the songs of the flowing waters, of the ancient language carried upon the flowing waters from the mountains of millennia high above, the Source of all wisdom which the beings called humans can no longer hear 🍀
My tardiness belies my love of your poetic ode to kith and kin David… once again!
Just one alder is brave enough to inhabit this old, dry hill. I visit as often as life allows me to dip my toes into that cool damp oxbow in the river in a shady valley where it stands, its own feet permanently numb, wrinkled by rainfall flowing around its many toes. It seems a little timid at first cocooned as it is by might ash and oak but soon bends its boughs towards me, and, yes in spring my eyes too "swoon at a profusion of alder buds and receive the sacrament of their faint lilac" isn't that scent intoxicating!
Less so geese, these are a mean beast if ever there was one, my wariness of them is only beaten by that of the swan, I still have the faint scar of proof on my face!
Alders are magical. They are what keeps Venice afloat, the trees that grow the tiny cones that faerie folk gather to heat their thimble cauldrons and their windharvested leaf-fall makes the most beautiful purple prints on cloth.
Oh heavens, yes, India. You'll know the colours and the dyes that I can only see hinted at. That feint purple fuzziness when you see them from a distance in spring - and it almost isn't there when you get up close. Alchemy. No wonder they told stories about Alders.
I am left wondering, David, if, in your awareness of your water sprite genealogical leanings, you've ever made much sense of its origins? Well beyond affinity and time spent, and into the realm of out of the womb nature.
Not a soul in my family is watery but me. And though I am the only Pisces within a few generations that I am aware of, I sometimes don't trust the simple, formulaic explanation of an astrological birth sign to explain things as I have encountered them. No one else ever gave a fig about fishing, but I could spend all day. Wading too. And creek swimming. Even working on a catfish farm. Part of me was right at home. I didn't learn any of this affinity from anyone in my bloodline that I am aware of.
Makes me wonder how it was for you.
I could understand some of the 'laws' that seem to rule me if I had learned them by watching and spending time learning from my father or aunt, or granddad, if we had been a boating family or a sailing family, or a let's go fishing family, or scuba divers from the get-go. But nearly everyone I grew up with could take or leave water, at best, and mostly saw it as dangerous and something to be avoided.
But I love this notion of bonds formed and barriers crossed whilst standing, shoeless for days in the same stream that lampreys are swimming and alders standing beside.
Do you suppose that you came from a water sprite sort of family? Or were you raised by Water Muggles who always looked at you a bit askance, wondering where the hell your affinities and comfortabilities came from?
Oh heavens - you'll spot a whole host of things here that I should have noticed but never have :-) There was a strange hawker working above the swollen river this afternoon but I was too slow and too ignorant to recognise it. You'd have got him in an instant.
Many thanks, fellow alder-kin! For your fluent telling of both memory and present company by the river. Here in the Pacific Northwest our kin are Alnus rubra, a cousin to yours, and as a child I marveled at their blood-red-orange hearts exposed when cut, inhaled my woodworker father’s workshop scent of cedar and alder both. Only later did I learn of their incredible gifts as nutrient-bringers and nourishers of soil. Autocorrect had that as “nourishers of soul” and for once got it right ;)
Yes, they must be very close cousins. Wrapped around the world. The turning red of the initially pale wood has prompted a whole, half-forgotten folklore in these Atlantic fringes of ours. To have breathed them. Now, there's a gift :-)
Gorgeous David. This reads like an opening chapter in one of my favorite books The Overstory. I don’t have to know you in person to feel how your synapses tangle with those alder roots, how your bodies reach to source in the same sweeping breath.
Yes - entanglement :-). I try not to get involved with complicated theories about how it all works. But simply wriggling in amongst the mulch and the roots and going to sleep. I always wake up in a better place.
Your alders are much different than the ones in the PNW. Ours are slender and scrubby. It's rare to see an old one. They mostly mind the line between the thicker forest and the open spaces. An edge plant.
Yes, ours also live in wetlands and carr, where they have to stay modest and scrubby because there's nothing firm to root into. These big fellows by the riverbank are maybe the exception :-)
Yes. Yes to trees as a haven and our companions in this temporal world. When I feel adrift or out of step, I find there's nothing like a visit to the deep woods to ground me. So I visit the trees. Trees that stood before I was born. Those same trees that will stand after I pass on. There's a measure of comfort to me in that knowledge. They speak to me. Growing up I was a climber. Any tree, anywhere. I would climb to the highest branch that I thought would hold me and we became friends. What a wonderful telling David. As usual. There's a tree that I climbed in my youth. It was old and huge then. Some sixty years later, it still stands there quietly in the woods. I found myself, just the other day wondering if I could still climb it again. I might just go down and see!
I love that gentle swaying that even a big old tree does when you sit in its lap. Almost imperceptible like a whisper you might not have heard. Getting louder and more urgent as you approach the highest branches that can hold you.
Siblings, cousins to alders - oh yes! I was a dry land child and oak trees grew around me. I spent long afternoons climbing as high as I could to my nest protected in the branches. This one oak was old, gnarled, and had spacious branches strong enough to hold me. That tree knew every thought and feeling I had growing up - my heart in her heart. Thank you David for allowing this childhood memory come alive. Today I live with maples!
Hi, Sharon. Weren't we the lucky ones - allowed to climb up in to the leafy sky, never to be forgotten :-)
To the one reared by brook and alder, a dreamlike telling tracing the embered roots of your apprenticeship to the wild world. Quietude and love everlasting breathes through it all. Did you choose your home for the river and the alders? They look back at me with wise faces. xo
Hi Carmine. Sorry I've been quiet lately - thesis dragging behind me like a ball and chain. Yes, the people who sold us the house were most perplexed. Barely a glance at the bathrooms and the leaky roof - but a long slow tour of the riverbank :-)
I love how everything comes alive in your writing, David.
Hi, Patricia. Glad you stopped by again. Its easy - I just put up a sign saying 'Auditions Today' and the whole valley is queuing up at the garden gate :-)
not a false note in this prose poem....alders proliferate in this climate i see their red stalks by the river after snow melt....they bear testimony, mangrove of the North
That is very kind of you. Mangroves of the North - I will go and tell them that. It will make them smile :-)
Magic ripples from river to us via you. Thank you David
Hi again, Ambermoggie. Yes, ripples go out out and bounce of you, and come all the way back again :-)
So beautiful for even more reasons than the imagery and flow of words. Deep memory...
Hi again Hele. Glad you had time to stop by. Yep, many memories in the soles of our feet :-)
Mysterious and beautiful writing. Otherworldly images from this planet. I would love to read more. I would certainly buy you a coffee but since my finances shift and shape no allegiances. Thank you.
Thanks, Rhea, for kind words. Good luck with your writing.
Beautiful description David especially for anyone who only feels at ease and at home by the water’s edge
Thanks, Jeanne, that is kind. I guess there's a big tribe of us water-babies, passing each other in the street, unknown to one another :-)
Ps I tried to send a photo of the banks of the river in the gardens of where I used to live but for some reason am not able to upload it
The wonderful photograph came through, thank you. That is a dream that will last a lifetime, for sure.
Thank you David
100% David, this was once my little piece of Heaven..maybe we were all once water sprites, who dwelled within the banks of the river or beneath the gnarled oak tree, chanting the songs of the flowing waters, of the ancient language carried upon the flowing waters from the mountains of millennia high above, the Source of all wisdom which the beings called humans can no longer hear 🍀
My tardiness belies my love of your poetic ode to kith and kin David… once again!
Just one alder is brave enough to inhabit this old, dry hill. I visit as often as life allows me to dip my toes into that cool damp oxbow in the river in a shady valley where it stands, its own feet permanently numb, wrinkled by rainfall flowing around its many toes. It seems a little timid at first cocooned as it is by might ash and oak but soon bends its boughs towards me, and, yes in spring my eyes too "swoon at a profusion of alder buds and receive the sacrament of their faint lilac" isn't that scent intoxicating!
Less so geese, these are a mean beast if ever there was one, my wariness of them is only beaten by that of the swan, I still have the faint scar of proof on my face!
Alders are magical. They are what keeps Venice afloat, the trees that grow the tiny cones that faerie folk gather to heat their thimble cauldrons and their windharvested leaf-fall makes the most beautiful purple prints on cloth.
Oh heavens, yes, India. You'll know the colours and the dyes that I can only see hinted at. That feint purple fuzziness when you see them from a distance in spring - and it almost isn't there when you get up close. Alchemy. No wonder they told stories about Alders.
I am left wondering, David, if, in your awareness of your water sprite genealogical leanings, you've ever made much sense of its origins? Well beyond affinity and time spent, and into the realm of out of the womb nature.
Not a soul in my family is watery but me. And though I am the only Pisces within a few generations that I am aware of, I sometimes don't trust the simple, formulaic explanation of an astrological birth sign to explain things as I have encountered them. No one else ever gave a fig about fishing, but I could spend all day. Wading too. And creek swimming. Even working on a catfish farm. Part of me was right at home. I didn't learn any of this affinity from anyone in my bloodline that I am aware of.
Makes me wonder how it was for you.
I could understand some of the 'laws' that seem to rule me if I had learned them by watching and spending time learning from my father or aunt, or granddad, if we had been a boating family or a sailing family, or a let's go fishing family, or scuba divers from the get-go. But nearly everyone I grew up with could take or leave water, at best, and mostly saw it as dangerous and something to be avoided.
But I love this notion of bonds formed and barriers crossed whilst standing, shoeless for days in the same stream that lampreys are swimming and alders standing beside.
Do you suppose that you came from a water sprite sort of family? Or were you raised by Water Muggles who always looked at you a bit askance, wondering where the hell your affinities and comfortabilities came from?
I am always transported by your words. I feel them deeply in a way I can’t explain. Thank you.
We planned to walk in Mallerstang this week, but unexpected events and poor weather meant we have had to re-arrange. Soon!
Oh heavens - you'll spot a whole host of things here that I should have noticed but never have :-) There was a strange hawker working above the swollen river this afternoon but I was too slow and too ignorant to recognise it. You'd have got him in an instant.
I think you notice everything! I saw a few hawkers and emporers myself today. I show myself to dragonflies. While I still have time. 😊
Many thanks, fellow alder-kin! For your fluent telling of both memory and present company by the river. Here in the Pacific Northwest our kin are Alnus rubra, a cousin to yours, and as a child I marveled at their blood-red-orange hearts exposed when cut, inhaled my woodworker father’s workshop scent of cedar and alder both. Only later did I learn of their incredible gifts as nutrient-bringers and nourishers of soil. Autocorrect had that as “nourishers of soul” and for once got it right ;)
Yes, they must be very close cousins. Wrapped around the world. The turning red of the initially pale wood has prompted a whole, half-forgotten folklore in these Atlantic fringes of ours. To have breathed them. Now, there's a gift :-)
Gorgeous David. This reads like an opening chapter in one of my favorite books The Overstory. I don’t have to know you in person to feel how your synapses tangle with those alder roots, how your bodies reach to source in the same sweeping breath.
Yes - entanglement :-). I try not to get involved with complicated theories about how it all works. But simply wriggling in amongst the mulch and the roots and going to sleep. I always wake up in a better place.
Your alders are much different than the ones in the PNW. Ours are slender and scrubby. It's rare to see an old one. They mostly mind the line between the thicker forest and the open spaces. An edge plant.
Yes, ours also live in wetlands and carr, where they have to stay modest and scrubby because there's nothing firm to root into. These big fellows by the riverbank are maybe the exception :-)
Yes. Yes to trees as a haven and our companions in this temporal world. When I feel adrift or out of step, I find there's nothing like a visit to the deep woods to ground me. So I visit the trees. Trees that stood before I was born. Those same trees that will stand after I pass on. There's a measure of comfort to me in that knowledge. They speak to me. Growing up I was a climber. Any tree, anywhere. I would climb to the highest branch that I thought would hold me and we became friends. What a wonderful telling David. As usual. There's a tree that I climbed in my youth. It was old and huge then. Some sixty years later, it still stands there quietly in the woods. I found myself, just the other day wondering if I could still climb it again. I might just go down and see!
Peace, love and understanding.
David
I love that gentle swaying that even a big old tree does when you sit in its lap. Almost imperceptible like a whisper you might not have heard. Getting louder and more urgent as you approach the highest branches that can hold you.