Minties + fairy fungi
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A bit more of my Lockdown One sort-of-memoir!
Content note: This chapter briefly mentions sexual assault and family violence.
Day 23 – 7961 steps
Newspaper. Fallen birds nest. Newspaper. Dog bowl.
As I walked the back way to the park I kept my head down, trying to focus on breathing deeply as I took things slowly for the sake of my knee.
I approached the gap between the scrubby natives and once there the field stretched out glowing particularly green on this particularly sunny morning.
I’d fallen asleep last night watching Becoming, the documentary about Michelle Obama. This was not a comment on the quality of the program (what I watched was brilliant!), but more an indication of my exhaustion after the two walk day. As I drifted off I heard seagulls calling in the night and I was taken back again to those days on the rocks pulling fish from the water, eating Minties between baiting hooks.
I’d woken at 6 as planned, snuggled in bed for 15 minutes enjoying the early morning silence and then crawled out from under the blankets to start my usual morning tea-making, dog-loving and writing routine.
The pandemic news was becoming a horrible blur of tragic deaths, numbers, curves and stupid Trump moves. The Obama documentary was such a contrast to what was happening in the world right now.
I’d put Simon Armitage’s book on hold, it’s funny, gentle, lyrical nature drew me too far into myself as I walked. Instead I began to listen to a new book as I walked. The book was by The Well Gardened Mind by psychiatrist and psychotherapist Sue Stuart-Smithand had been recommended on Twitter as part of a group of three favourites by the chef and writer Nigel Slater. I’d read two of his three faves, so I was keen to read Sue’s book too, figuring that Nigel’s cup of tea was probably mine.
I could not have been more correct, and I made voice notes furiously as I walked towards the wetlands. The subject matter was everything I was interested in. How nature helps us to heal, how melding with the natural world give us the time and space to look at ourselves.
It is when the world within us is destroyed, when it is dead and loveless. When our loved ones are in fragments and we ourselves in helpless despair. It is then that we must recreate our world anew, reassemble the pieces, infuse life into dead fragments. Recreate life. - Hanna Segal
I had been thinking a lot about this writing as I walked. Why I was writing this walking book. To begin with it was about dragging myself away from a looming pit of depression and creating a positive routine to frame my days around. But now, as I trod these thousands of steps and took in the world around me, I realised that I was doing much, much more than avoiding that dark place. I was slowly excavating the parts of myself that I had kept hidden for so long.
The hard things that had happened and the way they had created the layers of who I am were edging their way into the light. I was walking to find the light place.
I am not alone in the trauma and suffering that I have endured in my life. So very many others have lived similar stories. (Maybe you, even?)
A particularly naïve and lonely sort of human, I was often in harm’s way. And I was harmed. Sexual assault, abuse and family violence punctuated my life until I eventually could not keep myself together anymore. Secrets and shame quietly simmer under the surface doing you harm, no matter how hard you try to suppress them and soldier on.
As I walked the suburban parklands, staring into the water, I found things bubbling up. But the more I walked the less distressing this felt. The trees and dogs and birds and frogs and kind faces of the other walkers reassured me that there was goodness and growth in the world and that I was good and growing too.
I became to understand that grief can go underground and that feelings could hide other feelings – Sue Stuart-Smith
I headed to the wetlands passing the little wooden jetty that juts out over one part of the water. It had been fenced off overnight and a giant trench dug along its bank. As I made for the bridge a black and white dog came running across it, stopping to examine the fence in confusion, trying to find a way in. The dog’s owner, sporting neatly styled hair and a lovely pink cardigan followed and she looked pretty bewildered too.
Good morning I called as we passed each other and she she smiled and shook her head at the fence.
I crossed to the middle of the bridge, stopping to talk to one of the purple breasted birds and noticed the cormorant was back in the very same tree. I loved the steadiness of nature. I loved that it was all here for me each morning if I wanted it. That it was here for us all, despite the damage we wreaked.
I decided to bust out the controversial move of circumnavigating the wetlands TWICE. I was inspired by a man I’d seen lapping the park with a twin stroller. On one day he passed me 3 times coming from different directions, running his small children about in the early morning.
If he could do it, I could do it! I thought.
It was honestly such a good idea because I had more of a chance to notice the interesting things that had been going on. The water level had receded in one part of the wetlands, for instance. I knew there was 95 percent chance of rain the next day, so I figured it would all look completely different in 24 hours. The vegetation was floating back to settle in the centre of the water after a few days with no rain. The red fairy fungi were almost gone now, a couple of windy and very sunny days taking a toll. As I walked I noticed some fungus growing in the trees though. It was a particularly beautiful morning and the light was streaming through the bushland.
I teared up, wishing for a time when I could walk on a bushy track far from home and wishing the world were not quite so sad and chaotic.
I found myself back on the bridge and spotted something weird in the distance. A formerly fluffy black and white bottom was slipping out of the water. It was the fence-hating dog emerging from his morning dip, sliding through the reeds and onto the bank.
He cheered me up instantly and I made my way along the path, around the corner to a little clearing where the very same dog was happily shaking himself dry. He picked up stick that lay in front of me and trotted off with his owner in casual pursuit.
I trotted off the other way, walking the gravel paths and then the full length of the giant green field through the squishy grass. I decided not to bother with the usual café pop-in, proudly flexing my routine-changing muscles and walking home a different way, ready to face the day.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
William Wordsworth
Day 24
It’s raining, it’s pouring, it’s hailing and also there’s thunder.
A good day for a sleep in. A good day to stay in all day. Perhaps tomorrow will be walking weather but today was dressing gown weather.
I lay cosied up in bed on the night of Day 24 thinking about the day and how I’d totally flouted my routine and had felt absolutely FINE.
I’d worked on my poetry homework, read some Wordsworth, knitted some of my simple pet blanket, written a piece for my blog and watched the Michelle Obama documentary and the Brene Brown one, too.
I did some laundry but left the dishes in the sink until before dinner time, snuggled with the dogs and then made steak and chips.
I watched Japanese cooking drama videos on YouTube, called my mum and ordered an instant camera to celebrate signing my book contract and securing my finances for the next few months.
Outside the rain kept falling and I was glad I’d remembered to dig up the borage and plant it in the least loved corner of the garden yesterday. It was taking over the flower beds, so perhaps it could take over the neglected corner and make it into a special haven for the bees.
Rinn messaged me to say that the hail had all but destroyed the seedlings she’d just planted out in the garden, grown in peat pellets on her windowsill for a month.
It’s a special kind of grief, plant grief, and I empathised with her disappointment, my own experiences of plant loss were fresh in my mind (even the time that rain washed my entire suburban garden away when she was three!)
Tomorrow’s outlook appeared less rainy, and I was keen to see what changes had happened in the park and whether the low water level had been replenished. Perhaps the Cormorant would be back tomorrow, I thought. Perhaps the frogs would be doing their noisy thing?
Hopefully the other park, where the dogs and I had seen the robins playing, would not be too busy and I could have some restorative and tiring (for all of us) walking time with them in the late afternoon.
This post brought me a lot of peace. Thanks so much.