Welcome back! Things just haven’t been the same without you. I have had endlessly wonderful conversations with the juniper tree. I told the tale of Juniper Island, but in all honesty, I was the only one talking. I think you need to give yourself more credit, your company was much more preferred over mine. Well, at the very least, I sat quietly and held his branch in your absence.
“…the River Eden cut to reach her calcareous grey lover, buried for an epoch”. The photograph, she leaves the soft curves of her epitaph written in the stone as she passes .“Rowans and hazel, refugees from the blight and blast of the open fell, reach their roots into her and purr.” Truly, I feel like I am traveling through each and every sentence. Earth, river and sea. Another scene, a place with a magical name, horizons change , a story to tell . Your land sings in an ancient tongue and you are its scribe. “So I prefer to dream that possibility is just biding her time, gathering her strength at the bottom of Skint Gill Pot”. Thank you David, such visions . Continue to chase the wind and I will try to keep up.
Dear Lor. I often fear that I have failed to row my little boatful of words over the current to deliver the meaning intact to the other bank. And then, there you are, paddling in the sandy bay where the current slacks, ready to unpack them and hold them up to the light, curious and generous - adding your own magic where you see the piece of the puzzle I missed, or leaving things be with a smile.
Thanks Kimberly, it is so funny you picked that out. After I wrote it , I read it back and thought, that’s pretty good! How the hell did I come up with that line.
I stumbled upon this, rather unknowingly, in the dim light of my first cup of coffee and I was quickly carried away on a birds wing, watching the humans and the sea. Turning again in to the water that flows from my blood and to the sea, always and through everything. Thank you for the presence and the reprieve.
Your words echo so well the otherworldliness of those strange places where flowing water just vanishes. I've lived not far from Somerset's hollow Mendip hills for decades but I'm as astonished now as when I first moved here to find streams and rivers disappearing into the porous rocks. Here they're called swallets and I find them wonderfully mysterious, though I have never, ever had the urge to explore the underground caves and caverns they travel through, though many do!
Swallets is lovely :-) We even have a stream nearby which in some conditions flows south and disappears into a pothole, but on other days wells up out of the same pothole and flows north to join the Eden. Limestone has a sense of humour.
Drat, hit the button too soon. I love the placenames. I’m used to names like, South St Vrain and Bear Lake. Not nearly as much fun as Nab Fell, and Skint Gill Pot. I have no idea what those are, but I love the sounds of saying them. But the sound I love most in this piece is the one coming from underneath your feet. I hear it as a subtlety-reverberating, finely-tuned bass drum. The heartbeat of the earth, so frequently ignored but so gorgeous. Thanks.
Hi again, Lise. Thanks for reading some more. Placenames are such a gift, for sure. Sometimes I just sit read the large scale Ordnance Survey maps of this area like many people would read a newspaper :-)
Looking at maps is grounding, I think. And wow, does that come across in your writing. But I suspect that the names on your maps are way more interesting than on ours. For example, I know the meanings of each of the words in Skint Gill Pot, but I doubt it means anything like Penniless Fish-part Container. But now I’m wondering if older maps of my area might have more colorful names. Library, here I come.
Well, it is always tempting to see an alternative origin for placenames - and Penniless Fish-part Container is very tempting :-) A gill, in these parts, maybe just including Cumbria an Westmorland, maybe going somewhat wider, is a narrow cut in the valley side made by a stream. Some of them, such as Hellgill, are veritable gorges. Others less dramatic. A pot is just a little cave, a pothole, made by water dissolving away the limestone. There are two places up near where I found possibility's pot which are labeled High and Low Dolphinsty - the mind boggles as to how that came to be so. But I love it all the more for the mystery.
So many names for what water creates. That is so different from where I live, the high desert. The only equivalent I can think of is a tarn lake, a sort of mountain pocket pond created by the action of glaciers millennia ago. No dolphinsty, though, and I’m sure our lives are the poorer for it. Thank you for sharing your landscape!
Thank you, David, once again for your thoughts. Words can so often distance a reader from the very world they describe. Your writing always brings me closer to that world, as though the words are just vehicles embodying the wind, water and sky.
Thanks for reading again, Carri, and for being so thoughtful. I used to wonder if words didn't get in the way of things, touching too heavily the things I wanted to describe. But of course it was always me and my big clodhopper feet that were too heavy :-) I try not to be there when I write - if that makes any sense - and try just to let the wind speak. (Guess I'll never make a good writing coach!)
If you happen to have your binoculars out, scanning one of your many endless vistas , and see what looks to be a small woman waving a Juniper branch (given freely from one of our locals) yup, that’s me , washed ashore and stuck in the sand. I brought a picnic basket 🧺, bringing you one of my absolute favorite treats this time of year, a maple creemee. Though I’m not so sure if it remains in the same consistency as when I packed it, hmm, should have rethought that one. Ah, but I do have a lovely wooden box filled with freshly picked, well, they were when I left the distant shore, strawberries. The ones that are almost as big as a plum. So juicy you have to hold a handkerchief to wipe your chin between bites. I have packed more than enough for two , you need only bring your words. Leave the porridge and the black pudding at home, no offense, I’m just a wee bit queasy from the trip.
My way of saying thank you to your wonderful reply. I am extremely touched.
I hope you beat that tricky chapter into moonlit shape David, it is good to have you back in this space again. Your witchery of words were much missed.
I have just received a birthday gift in the post, Robert Macfarlane's recent 'Is a River Alive?', as yet the pages rest unturned - these last weeks of term too busy to allow such frivolity - and then here, as if I need enticement to begin, I find I am peering into your Mallerstang sink holes and swallows and all the mystery and magic therein... "Pale dwarf trout, their eyes pinked by generations in the darkness, dart and dance and tickle her feet" I am teased. Your melodious chant weakens my resolve!
Hi Susie. It is a strange world you and I live in. One where the question needs to be asked - 'Is a river alive?' I recently saw someone revealing that they thought dogs had dreams - as if this were a discovery. What a lot of work we have to do, to write the bleeding obvious back into the discourse ;-) How lucky are a small group of French children to have you as their guide.
Popping in to say, the answer is obvious to us, of course! That said, Robert Macfarlane’s latest book (“Is a River Alive?”), which I am currently reading, is a beautifully written exploration of that question.
Sad and true, our work is endless I fear... but today we will dig a little deeper, try to ignite a passion for the ancient mysteries below the ground and the River Tarn with a sortie scolaire to Millau and all its wondrous ancient, and modern of course how could we not, sites. I hope we can distract attention long enough from this blazing inferno of heat is all... wish me luck!
I listen to the purr of the rowan and hazel, pressed between bodies and baggage on an airport bus in Kraków, waiting to be packed tighter into a plane. And for a moment, I am in the fells, barefoot in bracken, a breath of upland air threading through my ribs. Thank you for the wilderness of possibilities that have transported me from this metal cocoon.
I’ve read this three times now, my grin more sure and delighted each time. And just before my third pass, I finished reading Jason Anthony’s essay on the necessity of healthy watersheds with an excerpt by Robert MacFarlane’s book “Is a River Alive,” where he suggests that much of our environmental crisis is a failure of imagination, our inability to animate nature and conceive of her rights. All this to say, you don’t have that problem David. You are repairing humanity’s relationship with nature one gorgeous essay at a time.
Dear Kimberly. Just when I waver and wonder if I just love the creatures in this valley too much to make any sense at all in my rambling writing - there you are with a helping hand to get me up over the rise and set off down the path again. Bless you :-)
Hi Diane. Thanks, that's kind. I'm showing that post as available for free to everyone, as intended. Are you hearing that people can't get to it? That would be a worry :-(
A lovely piece of writing. It makes me want to go out and run in the hills, listen to my footfall and imagine I can catch my younger self, still!
Thank you, Thia. Imagining is half the battle :-)
Welcome back! Things just haven’t been the same without you. I have had endlessly wonderful conversations with the juniper tree. I told the tale of Juniper Island, but in all honesty, I was the only one talking. I think you need to give yourself more credit, your company was much more preferred over mine. Well, at the very least, I sat quietly and held his branch in your absence.
“…the River Eden cut to reach her calcareous grey lover, buried for an epoch”. The photograph, she leaves the soft curves of her epitaph written in the stone as she passes .“Rowans and hazel, refugees from the blight and blast of the open fell, reach their roots into her and purr.” Truly, I feel like I am traveling through each and every sentence. Earth, river and sea. Another scene, a place with a magical name, horizons change , a story to tell . Your land sings in an ancient tongue and you are its scribe. “So I prefer to dream that possibility is just biding her time, gathering her strength at the bottom of Skint Gill Pot”. Thank you David, such visions . Continue to chase the wind and I will try to keep up.
Dear Lor. I often fear that I have failed to row my little boatful of words over the current to deliver the meaning intact to the other bank. And then, there you are, paddling in the sandy bay where the current slacks, ready to unpack them and hold them up to the light, curious and generous - adding your own magic where you see the piece of the puzzle I missed, or leaving things be with a smile.
Your words conjure places both visible and hidden. I admire how you can read the land aloud to us as if narrating a bedtime story.
Hi Julie. I'm just lucky to live in a place which has a lot to say :-)
“Your land sings in an ancient tongue and you are its scribe.” Yes Lor, this!
Thanks Kimberly, it is so funny you picked that out. After I wrote it , I read it back and thought, that’s pretty good! How the hell did I come up with that line.
Under the spell of David’s magical words!
You do it all the time!
That is exactly right!
I stumbled upon this, rather unknowingly, in the dim light of my first cup of coffee and I was quickly carried away on a birds wing, watching the humans and the sea. Turning again in to the water that flows from my blood and to the sea, always and through everything. Thank you for the presence and the reprieve.
You are very kind, pam. Isn't stumbling across things just the best of it? - especially early in the morning :-)
Your words echo so well the otherworldliness of those strange places where flowing water just vanishes. I've lived not far from Somerset's hollow Mendip hills for decades but I'm as astonished now as when I first moved here to find streams and rivers disappearing into the porous rocks. Here they're called swallets and I find them wonderfully mysterious, though I have never, ever had the urge to explore the underground caves and caverns they travel through, though many do!
Swallets is lovely :-) We even have a stream nearby which in some conditions flows south and disappears into a pothole, but on other days wells up out of the same pothole and flows north to join the Eden. Limestone has a sense of humour.
I hear the sounds in this piece! The slow, quiet trickle of the disappearing stream. The soaring of bats. I snicker at gnats being haute cuisine.
Drat, hit the button too soon. I love the placenames. I’m used to names like, South St Vrain and Bear Lake. Not nearly as much fun as Nab Fell, and Skint Gill Pot. I have no idea what those are, but I love the sounds of saying them. But the sound I love most in this piece is the one coming from underneath your feet. I hear it as a subtlety-reverberating, finely-tuned bass drum. The heartbeat of the earth, so frequently ignored but so gorgeous. Thanks.
Hi again, Lise. Thanks for reading some more. Placenames are such a gift, for sure. Sometimes I just sit read the large scale Ordnance Survey maps of this area like many people would read a newspaper :-)
Looking at maps is grounding, I think. And wow, does that come across in your writing. But I suspect that the names on your maps are way more interesting than on ours. For example, I know the meanings of each of the words in Skint Gill Pot, but I doubt it means anything like Penniless Fish-part Container. But now I’m wondering if older maps of my area might have more colorful names. Library, here I come.
Well, it is always tempting to see an alternative origin for placenames - and Penniless Fish-part Container is very tempting :-) A gill, in these parts, maybe just including Cumbria an Westmorland, maybe going somewhat wider, is a narrow cut in the valley side made by a stream. Some of them, such as Hellgill, are veritable gorges. Others less dramatic. A pot is just a little cave, a pothole, made by water dissolving away the limestone. There are two places up near where I found possibility's pot which are labeled High and Low Dolphinsty - the mind boggles as to how that came to be so. But I love it all the more for the mystery.
So many names for what water creates. That is so different from where I live, the high desert. The only equivalent I can think of is a tarn lake, a sort of mountain pocket pond created by the action of glaciers millennia ago. No dolphinsty, though, and I’m sure our lives are the poorer for it. Thank you for sharing your landscape!
Thank you, David, once again for your thoughts. Words can so often distance a reader from the very world they describe. Your writing always brings me closer to that world, as though the words are just vehicles embodying the wind, water and sky.
Thanks for reading again, Carri, and for being so thoughtful. I used to wonder if words didn't get in the way of things, touching too heavily the things I wanted to describe. But of course it was always me and my big clodhopper feet that were too heavy :-) I try not to be there when I write - if that makes any sense - and try just to let the wind speak. (Guess I'll never make a good writing coach!)
Dear David,
If you happen to have your binoculars out, scanning one of your many endless vistas , and see what looks to be a small woman waving a Juniper branch (given freely from one of our locals) yup, that’s me , washed ashore and stuck in the sand. I brought a picnic basket 🧺, bringing you one of my absolute favorite treats this time of year, a maple creemee. Though I’m not so sure if it remains in the same consistency as when I packed it, hmm, should have rethought that one. Ah, but I do have a lovely wooden box filled with freshly picked, well, they were when I left the distant shore, strawberries. The ones that are almost as big as a plum. So juicy you have to hold a handkerchief to wipe your chin between bites. I have packed more than enough for two , you need only bring your words. Leave the porridge and the black pudding at home, no offense, I’m just a wee bit queasy from the trip.
My way of saying thank you to your wonderful reply. I am extremely touched.
Ha. A picnic for the gods :-)
I hope you beat that tricky chapter into moonlit shape David, it is good to have you back in this space again. Your witchery of words were much missed.
I have just received a birthday gift in the post, Robert Macfarlane's recent 'Is a River Alive?', as yet the pages rest unturned - these last weeks of term too busy to allow such frivolity - and then here, as if I need enticement to begin, I find I am peering into your Mallerstang sink holes and swallows and all the mystery and magic therein... "Pale dwarf trout, their eyes pinked by generations in the darkness, dart and dance and tickle her feet" I am teased. Your melodious chant weakens my resolve!
Hi Susie. It is a strange world you and I live in. One where the question needs to be asked - 'Is a river alive?' I recently saw someone revealing that they thought dogs had dreams - as if this were a discovery. What a lot of work we have to do, to write the bleeding obvious back into the discourse ;-) How lucky are a small group of French children to have you as their guide.
Popping in to say, the answer is obvious to us, of course! That said, Robert Macfarlane’s latest book (“Is a River Alive?”), which I am currently reading, is a beautifully written exploration of that question.
He's a mighty clever fellow, for sure. We were lucky for sure that he came to the light and didn't end up on the dark side of advertising copy :-)
Sad and true, our work is endless I fear... but today we will dig a little deeper, try to ignite a passion for the ancient mysteries below the ground and the River Tarn with a sortie scolaire to Millau and all its wondrous ancient, and modern of course how could we not, sites. I hope we can distract attention long enough from this blazing inferno of heat is all... wish me luck!
Wishing luck - and sending some of the relative cool that has returned to the north-west :-)
I listen to the purr of the rowan and hazel, pressed between bodies and baggage on an airport bus in Kraków, waiting to be packed tighter into a plane. And for a moment, I am in the fells, barefoot in bracken, a breath of upland air threading through my ribs. Thank you for the wilderness of possibilities that have transported me from this metal cocoon.
Happy travels, Emily. Hopefully the upland air won't set off any security alarms :-)
I’ve read this three times now, my grin more sure and delighted each time. And just before my third pass, I finished reading Jason Anthony’s essay on the necessity of healthy watersheds with an excerpt by Robert MacFarlane’s book “Is a River Alive,” where he suggests that much of our environmental crisis is a failure of imagination, our inability to animate nature and conceive of her rights. All this to say, you don’t have that problem David. You are repairing humanity’s relationship with nature one gorgeous essay at a time.
Dear Kimberly. Just when I waver and wonder if I just love the creatures in this valley too much to make any sense at all in my rambling writing - there you are with a helping hand to get me up over the rise and set off down the path again. Bless you :-)
I have missed you! Sublime as always.
Well, I had a lovely week off (sort of ;-), punctuated by some clever person's revelations of dragonflies :-)
What a spell you cast!
Hi Jill. Thanks, but I'm just the spell-ee not the spell-er, I'm afraid :-)
Such a delight to read more poetry than prose grateful the words came out of the paywall that some can't breach for whatever reason. Thank you
Hi Diane. Thanks, that's kind. I'm showing that post as available for free to everyone, as intended. Are you hearing that people can't get to it? That would be a worry :-(
Beautiful writing
Thank you, Sharon. That is kind :-)