I arrived beside the river this morning and made my 'payment' – a few stones from the riverbed at Marchey, the other side of the moors where the Brue used to meet the Axe. It's a bit more cloudy this morning, but it looks like it will clear and be hot before very long.
I wrote yesterday that it was the river spirit who had led me to this spot. I felt encouraged to do my best to engage with her when a friend suggested that the land itself held the memories of – for instance – the seventh century; that I should get in touch directly rather than relying on research and books ...
A pair of swans are quietly making their way past me, swimming slowly down the river ...
I don't really know how to tap into that memory of the land, all I can do is follow what presents itself and trust that I shall get where I need to. Some of it though is quite visible: between Baltonsborough and Glastonbury there are flood banks, built perhaps a thousand years ago to extend the grazing period on the land either side of the river. Before that, flooding would have been very frequent. The land is entirely flat and even in summer the water level in the river is not much lower than the surrounding fields. The banks have tamed it and contained it; before they were here the landscape would have been quite different, 'wetland' in the real sense of the word, treacherous to cross if you didn't know the way.
The reeds, the water plants, insects, birds, would have spread with the water across the low, flat landscape. Now this community of species is settled down along the narrow, winding strip that is the river; once, at least for much of the year, the swans would have had a much wider area in which to explore and feed. This is quite accessible to the imagination ... and this is how the land would have been in Petroc's time.
I wrote yesterday that it was the river spirit who had led me to this spot. I felt encouraged to do my best to engage with her when a friend suggested that the land itself held the memories of – for instance – the seventh century; that I should get in touch directly rather than relying on research and books ...
A pair of swans are quietly making their way past me, swimming slowly down the river ...
I don't really know how to tap into that memory of the land, all I can do is follow what presents itself and trust that I shall get where I need to. Some of it though is quite visible: between Baltonsborough and Glastonbury there are flood banks, built perhaps a thousand years ago to extend the grazing period on the land either side of the river. Before that, flooding would have been very frequent. The land is entirely flat and even in summer the water level in the river is not much lower than the surrounding fields. The banks have tamed it and contained it; before they were here the landscape would have been quite different, 'wetland' in the real sense of the word, treacherous to cross if you didn't know the way.
The reeds, the water plants, insects, birds, would have spread with the water across the low, flat landscape. Now this community of species is settled down along the narrow, winding strip that is the river; once, at least for much of the year, the swans would have had a much wider area in which to explore and feed. This is quite accessible to the imagination ... and this is how the land would have been in Petroc's time.
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