Five Finger Widths (above the horizon)

JOURNAL ENTRY

 23^rd June, Friday.

“The alder saplings are growing thick at the water’s edge
Vying with the green spears of teasel
And purple knapweed plumes.

This time last year
Some of them were forming as catkins
On its parent tree, under a sun
That fiercely blazed and under which
We welcomed its shade
And the coolness of grass.”

[MUSIC]

WELCOME

The sky is a polished bowl of ice-blues. Ribs of cirrocumulus and fingers of cirrostratus lie just above the skyline, bruised mauves and greys, forming tropical lagoons from the shallow seas of the night sky. The sharpened hook of a crescent moon, unblinking and bright, lights the west.

This is the narrowboat Erica narrowcasting into the dark to you wherever you are. 

I'm so pleased you could come; I was hoping you would be here. It's been a sticky, sultry day, but the freshness of night-time is beginning to fall, the kettle is on, come inside and welcome aboard.

[MUSIC]

NEWS FROM THE MOORINGS  

There has been a few heavyish bouts of rain this week, but mostly it has been a week of sunshine and chasing clouds. At times, the clouds have rolled, elephant-grey, and there have been a few distant rumbles of thunder. However, it has remained mainly dry, if rather humid and sticky. Perfect conditions to create a hay fever nightmare. There has been a lot of sneezing going on this week!

We have encountered two sets of new ducklings here. One hatching is very new and small. Tiny puffs of black and dark yellow fluff; like dandelion heads blown across a pond. The others are a couple of weeks older. Seven of them, more duck-like in appearance, loosing that early downy-ball like profile. There’s quite a range of colours among them. The mother shepherds them around the boats accompanied by whistling peepings.

One local character who has not been around for some time is the Archdeacon. I’ve not seen him since April or early May. He had developed a habit of striking off alone (unusual for him) up the canal. One day, he simply did not return. I am not sure where he headed for or what has happened to him. I have to admit that I rather miss his pugnacious and rumbunctious presence. Although, no doubt the females and the younger males are happy of the respite!

[MUSIC]

TUESDAY MORNING, 5.30AM

Warm silky sun and air that swims with the lace of wingbeats.

Hidden in the thick canopy above, a blackcap’s insistent song calls down through a mosaic of leaves. I’ve still not seen too many dragonflies, but there are lots of small common blue damsel flies. One hovers eye-level to me, before darting across the water.

The dogrose flowers that were in such profusion last week, have all but gone. Only humans mourn their passing – perhaps it reminds us too much of time and times gone. Just now, I watched a narrowboat passing through. Negotiating the narrow bridge-hole with surgical precision. The woman at the tiller was all smiles and greetings of the new day. When it is hot, it makes sense to start early. When the sun is young and the ground is still damp with the breath of night.

The horses are down by Penny’s Pool. Flies gather to make their necks and withers shiver and twitch. One of the piebalds ambles over to me. Huffs on my outstretched hand, but that is enough. The sun is gaining strength. Politeness is one thing, being expected to engage in in-depth conversation is another. So, she stays at armlength and pointedly grazes the grass. The bay snorts as he always does. I get the feeling it is a not altogether welcoming snort. That too is fine. This field is his home. He gets to call the shots.     

But it is nice and cool down here. I can feel the damp seeping through my canvas shoes. I should have worn boots, but it is nice sometimes to feel the coolness of the dew. And anyway, my shoes will be dry in next to no time.

The mother duck with her seven ducklings glides slowly up stream. The soft little clucks of her contact call, morse-code like signals of assurance and direction to her young. The ducklings buzz and fizz between the undergrowth that overhangs the bank. I try to count them, but can only see three. The others are too close to the bank on which I stand. I don’t want to disturb them or distress the wary mother who keeps me in her sight at all times. One disappears and two more appear, circle up to their mother and then scoot back to the bank. The bank flashes damsel fly blue and hums with hoverflies. A lot of the early cow-parsley growth is over, so too the hogweed. Sticky with aphid and spiders’ web. This gives space for the next growth. Loosestrife rockets as rich as foxgloves. More knapweed.

On some hidden command, all seven ducklings head out to Mum in the centre of the canal and then they all strike off to the other side. They paddle, treading water, in dappled patches of sunlight that dance with midge and gnat. The ducklings swimming between roots and disappearing into a little cove made by one of the oaks. The mother keeps up her call and continues watching in my direction.

I say goodbye and leave.   

[MUSIC]

CABIN CHAT

[MUSIC]

FIVE FINGER WIDTHS (ABOVE THE HORIZON)

The sun is five fingers above the western horizon and there’s a tree full of goldfinch chatter.

The lowering light, silver – touched with a hint of gold, turns the bankside leaves translucent with shimmering greens. The westering sun is magic – a conjuror that invests you with superpowers. See how easily you can see through each leaf. The little roadmaps of ribs and veins. The network of chlorophyl factories. Who knew you had such powers?

But then, turn round, look behind you. See how everything glows with such an amazing solidity of colour. Each leaf solid. The leaves on the alder, deep rich glossy greens. They look as if they are made of plastic. But plastic could never look so full of life as these as they tremble in the evening breeze.    

Such power that the sun has, bringing colour making visible the hidden.

Four fingers above the horizon.

Each finger width is roughly fifteen minutes. It’s about an hour until sun set. Of course, it's not really as simple as that. It depends on latitude, arm length, thickness of fingers, but it's good enough. It’s something I learnt years ago and I can’t remember precisely where, but I do have memories of sitting among the dunes and marram grass on Holkham beach waiting for the sun to set, bathed in the warm resiny scent of Corsican pines and the tang of salty air. The great biscuit-brown spread of sands and shallow outflows stretching out to the west. Periodically, I called out the count as the sun descended seawards, as the pigeons murmured in the amber light. Once I had heard or read about it, it stuck. Fifteen minutes per finger width. I didn’t need to be told again. It is rare that that happens. It has stuck with me ever since.

Stretches of the canal are already slipping into a dusky shade. Just above the water, the air dances with silvered sparks of gnat wing fire. Bats’ playground and feast. There are clouds beginning to pile up to the west. To the south they blush orange and grey. A pillowy feather bed to catch the falling sun. That is fine, it must be tired. The sun has been up for nearly seventeen hours. Climbing high towards the north so that our shadows have shrunk to almost nothing and even the horses gather under the trees. If ever there was a time in the year when the sun deserved a soft downy bed to fall into, it is right now.

Two cats chase each other, pawing the air and rolling over. A dog barks.

A splashing behind me. One of the swans appears, struggling up the bank out of the water. His neck outstretched with the effort of it all. large black webbed feet ponderously pulling him up. There is nothing elegant about the way a swan climbs out of the water. He gives himself a shake, wags his tail, there’s a soft snortle as he pads across the grass and begins to forage. It is not long before his mate appears. She too shakes her head, brushing her beak over her chest, and joins him. The only sound they make is the pull of grass.

Three finger widths above the horizon.

The sun now is hidden behind an ash. Playing hide and seek. Although its light and warmth are still easy to spot. The duck with seven tiny ducklings pass, deep within the reed bed. Her constant clucking cheep is the only thing that gives her away. I am aware of her eye on me. The reeds quiver and one of the ducklings emerges and then scoots back under cover. The little woodland just below us, becomes dark. The individual trunks have lost their definition. The wash of night is flowing into the edges of the day. High in the west, the thin fingernail of a new born moon rises into a sky of fading blue.

A group of boy-racers on their motorcycles tear past on the high road in the distance. It’s a heady mix – this adrenaline and testosterone. Throw into the equation youth (or the remembrance of youth) and the results can be uncontainable. They remind me of the gaggles of young male ducks that gather in the autumn to fret and strut. The wide-boys of the canal. The original Peaky Blinders. The eruption of noise and ruffled water wherever they go. Adrenaline and testosterone and the touch of youth is always the same.    

An airliner, southbound, cuts a ribbon of pinky orange high overhead.

Below it, a gull, circles on wings as sharp as knife blades.

Two finger widths above the horizon and almost touching the clouds.

We’re losing our super-powers. We can no longer see through leaves with x-ray vision and the alder leaves have lost their shiny colourful intensity. Half an hour until sundown. Half an hour until the sacred barque of the falcon-headed Ra docks once more and the endless nightly battle with Apophis (the serpent of chaos, associated with darkness and night) begins once more.  

It's a powerful symbol – the traverse across the sky of life, the sinking down into darkness, and while we sleep, the battle and defeat of the dark.

 It is surprising that such narratives were also not embedded within the great ancient civilizations to the north of Egypt.

The first cultural expressions within the Ancient Near East can be found within the Sumerian civilisation in the cities of Sumer (in what is now Central Iraq). However, the sun, Utu, only appears as a minor deity. We need to be careful here not to confuse ancient concepts of deity with modern ones. But nevertheless, Utu, is subordinate to the moon-god, Nanna or Sin. Each night, Nanna journeys across the night sky in a quffa, a large circular coracle type of boat, that was used by the Sumerians for navigating the Euphrates. There is some discussion whether Nanna denotes the full moon and Su-en or Sin, the crescent. Whatever the case, it is the moon and not the sun that is the major astral deity.

It actually makes sense when you think about it. Agriculture tends largely to work to a lunar calendar. It was because of agriculture that the first city was established at Sumer. As important as the sun is for light and warmth, it is the influence of the moon on planting and harvesting that is most important. Most of the recorded ancient calendars follow the lunar year, as do those associated with emerging agrarian cultures.

Later, within the Mesopotamian timeline, Utu the sun-god becomes Shammash in the Akkadian pantheon and mythic tales. Here, Shammash begins to take a more dominant role being associated with justice. Such a change, almost certainly reflects a shift from agrarian culture to a more urban based ruling elite, in which agricultural concerns have given way to more civic and institutional religious ones. This same shift can be detected within the Hebrew biblical traditions. The re-writing of old lunar-based calendars with their festivals to be overlaid with a solar calendar. A shift that sees its completion within the later Roman period and Christian writings.

By this time, the sun was in the ascendant. Occupying more dominant and powerful roles within the human imagination of those cultures which will birth western thought.        

The goldfinches have fallen silent.  

The shadows grow.

A shiver of cool creeps along the land at ground level.            

One finger width above the horizon.

A cluster of ruffle-feather drakes, bother the fading day. The water’s surface is criss-crossed with the V-wakes they make. They’re on their supper patrol. Scruffy heads look in my direction. They gather in a loose group, feet hanging casually beneath them like children sitting in grown-up’s chairs. They make little soft chucking and snuffle noises. Feathers stick out from the backs of their heads as if they have just got out of bed. There is something unusually appealing about their tatty appearance. How can anyone refuse this row of little faces, bearing all the marks of a life fully lived and alive?

The sun has now sunk into the cloud bank. We are living in sun-glow. Colours continue to change. The glosses turn to matt. The vividness is giving way to softer palettes – drab, but that is not really the right word for it. Muted, gentler. The colours of whispers. The colours of a whispering world.

The female swan, slips down the bank into the water. She’s now behind the reeds and I cannot see her. I can just hear the crystalline sound of disturbed water. There is no sound from the mother duck and her brood.

A dragon fly heads home – wherever that is.    

For all the grandeur and pomp of the Babylonian and Egyptian stories about the sun, I have to say that I prefer those of the American nations. The Navajo tell the story of Tsohanoai who is a sacred or revered being and is the bearer of the sun. Every day he walks across the sky carrying the sun on his back. At night, Tsohanoai returns to his house to rest and hangs the sun on a peg. There is something delightfully mundane about this story that exemplifies the way sacred and profane are seamlessly melded within a lot of indigenous thought.                 

There are other stories, though. Many associate the sun with the figure of the raven – often a complex trickster figure, difficult to pin down, certainly difficult to classify within modern moral categories.

One describes how the raven steals the sun (and stars) from an old man. The old man lives in a cabin beside the river and prefers to live in darkness and appears content that the rest of those living on the earth does likewise. The problem is that he has a daughter and he cannot bear to find out if she is ugly and so he makes a series of nest boxes, each one smaller than the one before and in the last, the smallest he hides the light of the universe.

After a series of shape-shifting tricks, the raven succeeds in securing the little nesting box, and holding the light of the universe in his beak, he flies up with it through the smoke hole of the old man’s cabin by the river. However, unknown to the raven, above him was circling eagle who swoops down on him. Startled he drops half the light. When it hits the earth, it shatters into thousands of pieces. From these fragmented shards form the moon and all the stars. Eagle continues to pursue raven to the edge of the world, where raven drops the other half of the light. This forms the sun.

The story continues. The next morning for the first time, the sun climbs the sky and rays of light fall through the smoke-hole of the old man’s cabin by the river. And he looks across the sparse little room and sees sitting there on the floor, the most beautiful daughter that he could have ever hoped for. He realised then that he had no need to hide the light and to live in the darkness for all those years. 

It’s a fascinating myth, and one that exemplifies much of indigenous thought (not just in the Americas but across the globe). Humans tend to be the last beings created, not because of their superiority or pre-eminence, but for their childishness and their childlikeness. The human children of the earth can only survive because of the wisdom and kindness of their non-human, feathered, legged, winged, finned, and plant kin. The myths repeatedly insist on the utter dependence of humans on the other non-human communities among whom they live.   

Like the majority of native indigenous myths, the more-than-human rescue or provide the means of restoration for the humans in need. This is made even clearer in a variation of this story. Here, the raven sees humans struggling to survive in a land of cold darkness, without any light, and he feels sorry for them. Knowing that in heaven there was light. Although risking the anger of the sky gods, the raven bravely and altruistically steals the light of heaven and brings it to earth for all to enjoy and relish.     

No finger widths to measure the hiding sun.

Behind the mauve-grey mountain-scape of cloud, it is almost impossible to tell that final closing dip below the horizon. Just that, experience has told me that the time has come.

Sunset.

Skyglow still illuminates the land. Playing with colour, shifting the shade. In the diminishing light, the knapweed and loosestrife flare more intensely between the darkening greens of the reeds and alder saplings.

Good night sun. Thank you for your light. Thank you (and raven) for showing us that our daughters are more beautiful than we could have ever believed.

Good night, Tsohanoai. It is time to slip off your burden of the sun from your back. Hang him on the peg by your bed, and lay your head down.

Good night, Ra. Dock you boat well on the wharves of night-time. Apophis will not defeat you tonight.

Good night, Utu. Good night Shammash. This is a very different world to the one you were born into. You have lived long and you must be tired. The time has come for you to let your older brother Nanna to board his coracle, rise and sail high and swiftly across the ancient skies.

Goodnight, brother sun.

Hello and welcome, sister moon.   

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