The Seeds of Spring ('Somewhere, right now')

JOURNAL ENTRY

19th March, Thursday

“On Horse Hill
 The light scrubbed clean
 By the sharpness of frost
 Two rooks harry a buzzard pair
 Who fly on wings
 Of feathered nonchalance.”

[MUSIC]

WELCOME

It's a still night. The canal is silent, waiting for the morning's frost to come. A thin haze softens the stars caught in the tangled web of alder and oak branches. The thin sickle of a youthful moon is dipping low into the west. Breath billows in clouds of steam.

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

You've managed to come. I am so pleased, it's really good to see you. It's a lovely night, but come inside where the stove is hot and the company is warm. The kettle is singing on the hob, the biscuit barrel is full, and there is a seat waiting especially for you. Come inside and welcome aboard. 

[MUSIC]

NEWS FROM THE MOORINGS

March, strong in song and gaining strength in light, too. The vernal equilux occurred a few days ago and then on Friday it was the equinox. They’re pretty much about the same thing. Equinox is the approximate – the global marker if you like – noting the passage of our path around the sun. Equilux is the exact date for a specific location. Because of the earth tilt, it’ll vary with latitude. In fact, if by chance you are living on the Equator, you will never experience equilux – when the length of daytime and length of night-time are exactly the same! For you, there will always be a little more daylight than darkness – but that is due to atmospheric refraction. But, nevertheless, the significance of it all is the same. That moment of consequence when light and dark are perfectly balanced. I suppose in a world desperately in need of balance and where identifying winners (and losers) are counted of more importance – it is good to have a chance celebrate balance. I’ll happily take both days this year – vernal equilux and equinox.

The local fields, close cropped by sheep and now increasingly populated by the day with new born lambs, are swelling with spreading constellations of pastels – the mauvy-pinks of red dead-nettle, the baby blue of birdseye speedwell and even some early showing of forget-me-nots. The piling wedding-gown lace of bullace and blackthorn foam along the canal-sides smothering the remnant whorls of last year’s old man’s beard. The plum blossom is almost over, although, on windy days, the faint scent of honey and summer wine perfumes the air. Bees now collect and bustle around the newer blossoms. Butterflies too. Peacocks and commas flit warm and dusty in the afternoon sunshine. Frequently landing on the dried-earthen patches of the towpath to sun themselves, their wings spread open, basking in the heat. 

Last week, a small Goosander family moved through our stretch. They’re not uncommon, but I’ve not seen any in this area before and they made quite an impression. Mum, dad, and two juveniles. They paddled through with an air of casual deliberation, heading south, to Odd Lock and beyond. The two juveniles in front and dad close behind. Mum followed a little further to the rear. One of our local mallard drakes (I guess a juvenile and out to make a name for himself) flew in low to intercept them. However, the mother, shooed him off in no uncertain manner. Paddling off in speed with much Del-boy style neck rolling and shoulder shrugging, the mallard yielded them passage through – as if that was always his plan. The mother, carried on and then dived below the surface, resurfacing close to dad, and their journey continued unabated. Wherever you are going, little family, I wish you well.  

I must read you this. It’s John Clare again, with his wonderfully precise knack of observation and turn of phrase describing a 19th century world that, in some ways is still so reassuringly familiar.

‘Crows in Spring’ by John Clare

[READING]

[MUSIC]

CABIN CHAT

[MUSIC]              

THE SEEDS OF SPRING (‘SOMEWHERE, RIGHT NOW’)

The seeds of spring are beginning to show and in them the promise of the coming year. The welcome breaking of the thick cloud cover that we have had almost continually since December, has brought a lighter feel to the world here. Consecutive days of sun and blue skies – flecked with storybook clouds has lifted spirits as much as temperatures. It is amazing what effect the sun can have. Even if the joy of sunny warmth on your back and the jewelled scatter of butterflies sunning themselves along the towpath means colder nights and the return of frost – or the threat of it – we’ll take that and be glad of the bargain anyway.

With it all comes the feeling of a loosening. Not so much a bursting or erupting that signals change along the hedgerows and towpath, but gentle and slow unfurling, a relaxing into – in the way your body slips into the embrace of warm bathwater. These are the days of the unfastening, the untightening and untying of all those small things that have helped bar against the dark cold of winter. With the reminder of sunshine and warmth, the body becomes a little less tense, the muscles unknot. So too with the boats. Bow doors, stern and duck hatches swing open and stay open to welcome the fresh clean air of spring. The canal paints the cabin ceiling with rippled sunlight, dust motes dance in shekinah like pillars. Maggie stretches out on the bed, bathed in warm sunlight, her face relaxed in cat-like contentment. Conversations along the bank are a little longer, a little less hurried. Why waste this chance of golden light, by scuttling back inside? It’s not that no one has been around or that we haven’t seen anybody for a long time, it is just that now it’s more about the enjoyment of meeting – the sharing of words – the being, than just about a quick hello and a rush of information. Knots form beside some of the boats, little hubbubs, relaxed, informal. With spring it is not just blossom and flower that emerges.

And it has been a long dark winter for most here. Not just, in terms of weather, but personally. I get that feeling too away from the canal, but it is more visible to me here. Wounds, griefs, hurts, the crush of anxieties, they all take their toll. It has not been an easy winter and it is not surprising that so many invest the coming of spring with such significance. But then, for us, Spring has always carried so much more with it than the turn of a season.

“Somewhere right now”, I read on one internet post, “a seed is splitting open underground. It looks like breaking. It’s actually pushing towards light.”

I read it when I had come in from Maggie and my first walk. The air had been heavy with damp which carried with it, the shrinking chill of late winter. I had been thinking of all the seeds that were hidden beneath our feet, beginning to grow, germinate, push upwards. But I had never quite thought about it in the way this little post did. The splitting and cracking of the seed does look like – and is indeed – a breaking. The protective case falling apart because it no longer can contain or hold the life it guards. Does it feel like a breaking to the seed?

It certainly does feel like a breaking to me, these times of difficult winters; weighed down with the press of life. The cracking of the old reassuring certainties and constants in our lives by which we navigate the chaos of life and chart our journeys. The adding of anxiety onto anxiety until even the most trivial and mundane becomes an unimaginable weight that crushes our spirits and threatens to buckle our knees. Sometimes, recently, it has felt unrelenting. Is that how the seed feels too? Crushed by the dark weight of soil (that once protected it) and the irresistible burst of life within?

“It looks like breaking. It’s actually pushing towards the light.”  

I am not sure if Jasmine Wilder from the Tiny Joy Project wrote it or is quoting it, but it struck a chord with me.

It’s actually okay. Things are working as they should be working. The breaking is not breaking, it is living, it is growing, it is being what it should be. The weight cannot crush the life – the two work together. If you don’t believe me – or need a little more reassurance – take a walk… anywhere.  In fact, the less prepossessing the better. Look between the asphalt cracks, the broken edges of concrete, the beaten, litter scarred scrub that many pass and few notice. And you will see them. Everywhere. Green shoots. Life. Living flames of emerald and jade. Oh, just look and right now, somewhere, beneath your feet, “a seed is splitting open underground. It looks like breaking. It’s actually pushing towards light.”

Last weekend, we took advantage of the sunshine and did a job that we had been looking forward to all winter long; we planted some seeds. We weren’t the only ones. A soft late-morning sun that chased away the last vestiges of a near-frost chill, and the relaxed, lazy feel that goes with it, the smell of toast and coffee in the air, and little groups of boaters, emerging, like Moley from The Wind in the Willows, blinking in the spring sunlight.

There’s a lot of research showing how working with soil offers significant mental and physical health benefits, including reduced stress, improved mood, and enhanced immune functions through exposure to certain bacteria which can act a natural antidepressant. But this moment was something much more than that. Something as philosophical as it was therapeutic. This small moment at the edge of Spring, halfway between heaven and hell, a time shared with neighbours, pottering around their boats, sifting soil, planting seeds, gently watering, potting and repotting, just standing, feeling the gentle massage of sun on your shoulders and back. Apricity it is called. According to Susie Dent’s ‘Word of the Day’ it is a 17th Century word that means the feeling of warmth on your back on the chilly winter’s day. It has the notable distinction of having only one record of its use in the English language in the Oxford English Dictionary. “Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy” sang John Denver. There’s apricity right there. And it was here too. Planting seeds among the happy chatter and silences beside the canal.

Gently midwifing seeds into their small pot-beds of soil. Covering them over. Donna planted herbs because she is practical and loves working with plants in plant pots and cooking pots. I planted a wild flower mix because, well because there’s something inspiring about the statements they make.

This being a small part in the creation of something, the joining in with the creative act of life. No matter what the future looks like, how dark and gloomy the portents suggest, it is good to sow something that will make it just a little bit brighter, a little bit more homely, a little bit more beautiful. Call it an act of faith, an act of optimism, even an act of denial, but it is also distinctly an act of humanity. It’s not for nothing, I think, that the most famous and well-loved foundation myths – in the western world, at least – when stripped of its theological layers and carapace, is about a man and a woman created to nurse and nourish, protect and care, for the world in which they find themselves.

Whatever the reason, the time spent planting those seeds in the spring morning sunshine felt special, significant somehow. Planting the seeds of our springs. A reminder that the experience the seed undergoes, is not so different from our own.   

“Somewhere right now, a seed is splitting open underground. It looks like breaking. It’s actually pushing towards light.”

I also came across this poem by the Irish poet David Mahon this week. It is called ‘Everything is Going to be All Right.’ It seems to fit perfectly.

[READING]      

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