On the Leading Edge of Spring

JOURNAL ENTRY

 26^th February, Wednesday

“For me, there are few things more beautiful and soul inspiring than this:
      Rain on water,
      Old growth by the waterside,
      Time-bleached reeds
      Standing like Nepalese prayer flags.
      The song of home.
      Signals of transcendence.”

[MUSIC]

WELCOME

Mist folds and wraps itself along the towpath and sheep pastures, shrouding trees in a soft darkness that tastes of snowflakes caught on mittens and smells of mystery. A very new moon has already dipped below the skyline and even Venus looks smudged and diffused - as if a careless sleeve has brushed across a pastel-coloured sketch. The scent of woodsmoke hangs in the still owl-soft air.  

This is the narrowboat Erica narrowcasting into the darkness of a misty March night to you wherever you are. 

I'm so pleased that you could make it tonight. It's a lovely night to be out in, but there's an edge of cool to it too, and the temperature is set to fall even lower. So come inside, the coals are glowing cherry red in the stove, the kettle is singing on the hob, the biscuit barrel is on the side. Let's go inside and welcome aboard.   

[MUSIC]

NEWS FROM THE MOORINGS  

Last night. The vespered sun bleeds across the western skyline red-gold, and tangerine, peach and yellow. Even now, Venus signals strongly, her sharp pinprick of steady light shining in the afterlight where the yellows blend to grey and then pale blue. It’s far too light for other stars and planets to show, but the evening star guides their ways across the tilt and turn of the night. Venus guides us too, back to the boat and a warm stove and a welcome mug of tea. But not yet. Maggie seems to be in no hurry and contentedly sits down on the hillside, looking out into the vale below – sniffing the air, waiting. It suits me too – to stay here a while, to watch the last of the day sink beneath the Cambrian hills of Wales. Earlier the rooks had circled on their way to roost -just a few hundred yards to the northwest. A glorious, chaotic, kaleidoscope of wings, calls, and life. They wheel, and dance, and spar; parrying and harrying. A spell-binding, gothic, carnival of dancing figures that are following the daily rhythms of times long past. After a few minutes, they streamed north-east (away from the roost), a couple of stragglers, cawing to the turning sky as they too followed the smoke trail north. Five to ten minutes later, hidden in the dark, I can hear them settling among the canal-side ash and oak. Their calls softened into a comforting, companionable, bubble of melody by distance and the quiet-stillness that only crows and rooks can practice.     

The rooks are home, enjoying their final contemplative silent zazen of the day; couples shoulder to shoulder, sharing branch and the whole wild world together. And we must start making tracks too. I can spot the Erica below us. A crooked trail of pale white smoke lazily rising from her chimney. The cabin lights flickering on the almost still water. The lamp on the stern that we use to guide us home on dark starless nights, is glowing in the deepening night. I look down at Maggie and she, lost in a world of her own, realises I have moved and looks up. Silently we head back down towards the canal.

The water’s surface is almost mirror still. A female mallard calls out – insistent, barking, calls. For a while I cannot see her, but then a little body emerges, gliding on quick-silver making barely a ripple. The smaller figure of a moorhen ferries across from one side to the other - no doubt with some business in mind. The stillness of water can have an almost overpowering effect of drawing you in. I can feel myself almost toppling forward. Maggie keeps me grounded. The wonder of peace and tranquillity can have the same pull as gravity. Narcissus did not need to see his own reflection for him to fall into the waters of the pool of Cepphisus. Still waters speak deeply to us and have a power all of their own.

Suddenly, in the centre, the water churns and erupts. Concentric circles spread silently out across the glassy surface. Perhaps a carp, or some other large fish, twisting and somersaulting invisible, in its unseen world beneath the surface.

Two drake mallards arrow through the gathering darkness, a few feet above my head. For a few brief seconds they are caught silhouetted against the last embers of crimson lake and orange blush, the ochres and burnished bronze of the western sky. They cut round 270° clearing the alder heading back down the canal. In perfect synchrony their wing beats cease and the glide downwards, descending towards the water, and then they are swallowed into the deep pools of indigo night shadow. I wait for the splash as they touch down. The ruffle of disturbed water that tells me that they have landed. But it never comes. Perhaps other corners, other lines of sedge and reed, other stretches of this mirror-bright strip of water calls to them more compellingly.     

[MUSIC]

CABIN CHAT

[MUSIC]

ON THE LEADING EDGE OF SPRING

The calendar pages turn and we find ourselves on the leading edge of Spring. Not that it is here yet, but there are signs. Signs and an almost imperceptible feeling in the air. Along with the subtle shifts in tone and light that come with the season’s change, there seems to be a corresponding shift in our own psyches – and the closer you seem to live with the elements, the stronger that perception grows.

I’ve spoken in previous episodes about that natural tendency in winter to hunker down – if not quite hibernate, certainly draw in, slow down, find restoration and recuperation within the days of long nights: Winter Wisdom (Wintrum frod). During these times in winter, there’s a natural flow into reflection and contemplation. The season has that effect. The contemplation born from sitting still, watching the slow passing of time. I know that I have also reflected elsewhere about the association that is often seen between winter time and old age. How the old almanacs, like the sixteenth and seventeenth century The Kalendar of Shepherds, and commentators mapped the year’s seasons with the birth, youth, flourishing of maturity, and then old age and death onto our calendars.

And I can see why. Winter can have the effect of becoming aware of age and the passing of years. Even when you might not be old, there is that recognition that time has passed and the body grows old. Perhaps it’s about an underlying awareness of mortality. I am not sure.

These things, in themselves, are not bad. We need these times to recognise Eliot’s ‘the skull beneath the skin’ not just in abstract terms, but in the reflected image of our own faces. And also, the ‘growing’ in our growing old is to be as cherished and prized as much as the growing we experienced in our childhood and youth. I’m learning that it is just as exciting and frightening, and wonderful and frustrating as all the growing pains and disorientations of my youth.

Winter perhaps affords us time to grow into and come to terms with our aging (whatever age). Perhaps that is also why, so many poems about winter, often look back.

This is beautifully illustrated by Frank Mansell’s poem ‘Winter’

[READING]

However, I want to read another poem – or a version of a poem – that expands on that. It is one that I have wanted to read on this podcast for a number of years. What made me reticent was that there is something about it that is almost intolerably sad – about loss. It is such a beautiful and evocative poem, and yet the older I get, the sadder it becomes. I needed to find away to include it so that the beauty of its evocative images is celebrated rather than just leave you feeling miserable.

It's a poem by another Welsh poet, Idris Davies from his anthology Gwalia Deserta published in 1938. There it is just titled XXXIV. The version I have is an adaptation made by Max Boyce when he set it to music in his song ‘When we walked to Merthyr Tydfil’.

Idris Davies poem XXXIV (adapted by Max Boyce)

[READING]

I haven’t been able to find a copy of Gwalia Deserta and so haven’t seen the original. Nevertheless, I find this version compelling and beautiful in the way these words play with the association of a wintery scene, memory, age, and the contemplation of loss. It strikes me as a poem (or at least the train of thought that is expressed in it) could only have come from reflection during the long nights of winter.

And the seasons turn and with it comes the shift in tone and light and we become aware of different stirrings, different patterns of thought emerging as winter slowly transforms into spring. Listen carefully, watch closely, to the landscape and to your spirit and you will find a sea change happening, the sap moving up when it previously moved down, the swing of the sun from south to north.

Writing in 1833, William Howitt gauges the quickening of the pulse well in his Book of the Seasons when he writes:      

[READING]

If winter makes us aware of our age and feeling old (even if we are not – after all Idris Davies was only 48 when he died and could have been no older than 32 when he wrote his poem about his winter night walk to Merthyr), spring reminds us of our youth and makes us young again (even if we are not).

I am going to finish with another piece of writing that rejoices in the wild rumbustiousness of spring and its counterpart in youth. Kenneth Grahame writes masterfully about the season. He is probably best known for his book The Wind in the Willows which begins with his unforgettable account of Mole, far underground and beginning his spring-clean, sensing Spring and rushing up and out into a world that is coming awake with life and colour and light. But it is from another of his books – one which I think has been totally underrated and. although very different, to my mind is as every bit as good as The Wind in the Willows and it is The Golden Age. The Golden Age is a collection of reminiscences of childhood (no doubt through rather rose-tinted spectacles) and told from a child’s perspective. It introduces a world of wonder and profound beauty, and also filled with complexities and contradictions. The book is cast in the style of the Greek myths with the heroes, the children who are set on making their adventurous way through this brand new world and pitted against their adversaries, the Olympians (adults) who have totally forgotten how it feels to be young or know how to have fun. 

[READING]

SIGNING OFF

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

WEATHER LOG