It feels like it’s been a while since my last “Local” walk…but when I check back, maybe not quite so long. It isn’t that I stopped walking, only that I was elsewhere for a while, and then when I had a miraculously appointment-free week, it rained and I accepted the invitation to stay home-alone, retreat for a while, rest…and, ok, yes, make the annual start on the spring-cleaning which I virtually never finish.
Today we were promised warm weather and dry and it didn’t disappoint. The first day of shirt-sleeves weather of the year.
I’m still on the first circuit of my outward spiral from home and so today’s walk is in very familiar territory. This is a space that I walk often. I have been exploring this square of my map for over forty years.
On some of these very-close-to-home walks I have asked myself how I didn’t find them during the lock-down years; today I was back into part of my lockdown sanctuary. I am dismayed to see that some of my favoured parts of those routes are fenced off. One of my river walks has been closed for a couple of years now. I doubt it will ever re-open. Another part of it is newly shut out because of “condition issues” with the boardwalk. I fear that it too will be allowed to rot down into non-existence and that the hideous metal gates will only be removed when the path has become again impassable. I know that as a human, I have no intrinsic right to be able to walk in these spaces, but at the same time, I remember how necessary they have been to me at different times in my life, how overjoyed I was to find them, by accident, and how close they brought me to starting to understand the river, and the joy of damsels and dragons, and the impressionist nature of green shadows on water. I wonder whether I would be who I am now, without having had those close-to-home, close-to-semi-wild experiences. I know I would be the poorer for it, the less curious, the more cynical. And I know that my lockdown experience would have been much harsher. I am not alone in any of this. This is a quiet call for my favoured paths to be allowed a little rest and recovery, but also to be given a little TLC, and to be re-opened as soon as practicable.
All of which is by-the-by. I wasn’t heading in either of those directions today. Today was a well-walked route of suburban throughway, back-of-the-Broad mudpath, woodland wander, over the field and back down what would pass for my commuter route if I worked for a living. It wasn’t a long walk. It was a slow one.
I’m an absolute believer that there are times when a walk should just be a walk. No purpose. I’ve written elsewhere about “mindless walking” as an antidote to the injunction to be “mindful”. Quite often I walk ‘as a writer’ seeking inspiration. Not as often as I used to, but still sometimes, I walk as a troubled soul seeking solace. Sometimes I walk for exercise because my body is crying out to be moved and to be allowed greener air, because I have been stagnating. A lot of the time I walk just because it is the simplest way of getting where I’m going – or because it is a necessary integral part of that. Not having a car, not being able to drive even, does have its advantages.
But I also love the idea of a walk, any walk, as an adventure. When Alistair Humphreys* talks about living adventurously, it still comes from his mindset of having been a full-on global-scale, do-or-die adventurer. Even when he talks about micro-adventures (and good on him for that) it still comes from this need for total disconnect from the everyday. That’s not where I am, not where I’ve ever been if I’m honest. I like to think of myself as a traveller rather than a tourist, but I’d never claim to be an adventurer – and yet, when I talk about my life (in the confines of my journal and drunken
conversations with close friends) I call it ‘the adventure’. Adventuring to me isn’t just the out-of-the-comfort-zone experiences, the scary stuff. Adventuring is anything which is open, either unplanned, or only partly planned, or accepting of the fact that the very detailed plan will collapse at the first fence. Beyond the idea of the micro-adventure is the notion of a quiet adventure. Something even smaller. Something not remotely dangerous, or even remotely remote.
Something, maybe, like a stroll in the park.
Which, this day’s walk pretty much is. Not in the actual park, but along the busy road between the council estate and the campus, round the broad, through the woods…etc. Why not? Adventure, I contend, is simply about unexpectedness. Adventurus = about to happen, from the verb advenire (to arrive). Adventuring, it follows, is simply having that mindset of letting things arrive, letting them happen, going out to see whatever it is you see.
In business circles these days there is the concept of having ‘white space’ in the diary – boundaried time where nothing can intrude – well, maybe we should introduce the concept of ‘green space’ as an ‘unboundaried time’ where we will go outside (the nearest available outside) and let everything intrude. As it is. No promises, no expectations, just a noticing of what is there.
That’s a thought to come back to…because I went out today with a clear intention. In my journal I had been talking about things that uplift my spirits and among them are flowers… Walking the parts of this square that I do several times a week I have been noticing the wild flowers. I have also been catching up on my reading of Resurgence magazine which, as always, has me pondering notions of ‘nature’ and ‘wildness’ and how we continue to politicise them and, yes, “boundary” them. This is ‘nature’, that is not. This is ‘native’ and therefore good, that is not (and therefore not). Any human intervention is (or is not)…basically, if I understand the arguments, it’s bad until it’s necessary and
then its good…only we’re so bad at this stuff that the well-intentioned fails and so is also bad and so we should just leave well alone, except it’s too late to do that… and so I gave up and circled back to flowers.
I just wanted to enjoy the flowers. So I decided that this walk, over familiar ground as it was, would be a hunt for flowers. Things currently blooming on this particular day at the beginning of April 2024. Wildflowers. Weeds. Garden escapees. Things planted and then left to do their own thing. On the basis of the above diatribe and my own lack of figuring it all out, I have come up with my own personal definition of wild: anything that’s just doing its own thing. Wild has nothing to do with good or bad, it just is.
I didn’t pick any, I merely looked and tried to remember which ones I could name, and which not…and that led me into other avenues of wanting to know how they might have been used. What they might be used for now, should I find populations large enough not to suffer from a spot of gentle foraging.
What I found…
White Comfrey – known as Knitbone - best not eaten because its alkaloids can cause liver damage, it is recognised in both folk and modern medicine as an effective poultice for the healing of skin wounds and deeper damage due to its concentration of allantoin, which supports the healing of
connective tissue.
Green Alkanet, which I also have in my garden, and which I love for its small blue flowers. I have an affinity with the colour blue. It’s name means ‘little henna’ and its thought it was introduced into this country for the much cheaper red dye that can be extracted from its roots. They loved it for the red of the root; I for the blue of the flower. Each to their own.
Hawthorn, the May blossom, which gives rise to the folk saying ‘cast ne’er a clout till May be out’ regarding the discarding of winter clothing for the summer variety. Even when my edition of the Flora Britannica was published, in 1996, Richard Mabey was wondering about the association of this plant with May Day when it “seems to bloom most typically in middle and late May”. Although the sources he goes on to cite talk about altitude and provenance having an impact, they seem to suggest later rather than earlier flowering. Thirty years later, I have to assume that it is another impact of our warming climate that the ribbons of white hedges (and the occasional suburban tree in bloom) are a common April sight, at least in East Anglia. Although much used for maypoles and outdoor garlands, the sickly sweet scent of the May adds to its prohibition about being brought
indoors. Although other roots of that tradition lie in its association with the Virgin Mary – altars to her would often be decorated with the may blossom – and during anti-papist times just having it indoors might have been seen as a risk. I cannot equate that one with seasonality if I’m honest – Lady Day is in March – still (even now) too early for the Hawthorn.
Wood Spurge - I’ve been admiring this plant in atended corner of the campus for a while. It’s utter green-ness delights me. It has an official name I can’t even begin to pronounce Euphorbiacae amygdaliodes which seems to speak of both happiness and anxiety. I lean towards the former.
Thyme-leaved speedwell - paler that the Germander variety, more delicate a colour and with none of the attendant lore. The wetness of the recent seasons is probably serving it well this year.
Dandelion! Yes, I know – we all know – but really, aren’t they glorious, riotous outbursts of colour? Don’t the bees adore them? Is my soft-spot for them directly related to the fact that I wasn’t allowed to pick them as a child. I remember egg-cups full of daisies being placed on the kitchen window sill, but always being admonished for picking a single sap-juicy stem of the pis-en-lit. With all the incongruity of parental instructions though, we would, later in the season, be taught the blowing of the dandelion clock, counting the number of breaths it took to scatter all the seeds. I never fully understood the counting bit, it never seemed to work. Now I just don’t understand why gardeners who clearly despised this flower (as my parents seemed to do) would encourage me to scatter its seeds to the winds. Maybe it went back to my Dad’s words that it’s only a weed if its growing where you’d rather it didn’t. Not a prejudice against the plant itself then, more a spot of nimbyism.
Lesser Celandine – “spring messenger” it used to be called, flowering early in the season, which makes its name, with its association with swallows a little perplexing. Two explanations Mabey offers in the Flora Britannica – one a confusion with the similar-looking Greater Celandine, which blooms much later and about the time our swallows return – or the more poetic version proposed by Wordsworth that it is to the spring, what the swallow is to summer….a herald. The latter would only work if the flower’s name didn’t pre-date the poet by several centuries.
Greater Celandine – to add confusion to mix, because let’s face it our natural neighbours are very confused right now, there are straggles of greater celandine already too.
Red Dead Nettle – like all the dead nettles, its leaves are more bark than bite…hairy and fierce looking, they do not sting. I’m developing a slow-growing affection for the red dead nettle. It is one of those common roadside plants, seemingly scruffy to the passing glance, whose beauty requires the time to ‘stand and stare’, to ‘look closely’, let the flower be your whole world for a moment. The shading of its leaves, emerging deep purple and only growing green as they become progressively lower down the stem (as the stem grows upwards), the pillowy softness of its rose-hued, hooded flowers, surely as delicate as any orchid.
Garlic mustard – apparently back in the 1990s Jack-by-the-hedge was being sold for a pound a bunch in a Covent Garden deli…if I can find a patch a bit further from the roadside, I may be tempted, but it’s getting late in the season now. I’m told its best harvested before the flowers appear.
Pink Wood-sorrel – something else I want to forage, by its descriptions. The pink variety would seem to be a relatively recent garden-escapee…I wish it well on its travels.
Eleven species found along a suburban roadside of maybe only half-a-mile’s meandering. My reflection was this paradox of looking at the world through a lens and just experiencing it, just being in it. So often we (I) want to tell people “stop living such an Instagrammed life” – by which we (I)
mean, stop looking at everything for its photographic potential. And I mean it, I really do. And then, I take my camera out and the decision to do so makes me look more closely. It was only when I came to digital photography and a lighter, more compact camera, that I started looking as closely as I do at the flowers at my feet.
Perhaps it comes back to intentionality, the deciding in advance the purpose of a walk. Am I hunting flowers, or insects, or trees, or birds…or am I just taking a mind-freeing walk among my nature-friends? Is this ‘adventure’ – the curiosity of what I might find – or is it restoration – the relaxation of not wanting to find anything at all? Or is it something else again?
From this abundance of a hedgerow, I dropped down to the lake. Some of my favourite local views, water, and trees, and the calligraphy of reeds. But little enough flowering at this time of year. And this was decidedly a day for flowers.
Ah but then into the wood…and its April…maybe a little early yet…but there is a pilgrimage to be made to find the first of the year...
Bluebells. First I came across the green carpet of their leaves, that speaks to the eye-feast being prepared if the weather is kind. Then the tentative spikes, with their clusters still mainly in the green, with only the very first tingeing of colour to come. And then my very first 2024 clump of actual bells – sadly paying for their early foray by being wind-swept and rain-bedraggled…I bid them welcome anyway, and told the whole patch I would be back again and again. I don’t know whether it is their shape or their colour, the silent ringing, the sky-echoing shades, but I am so very fond of bluebells.
Yellow archangel – remember what I said about ‘confused nature’? – according to the Wildlife Trusts, the yellow archangel comes into flower just as the bluebells are fading. This patch do not know that. Another of the dead nettle, it is reckoned to be a plant of ancient woods and ditches. The derivation of its name is unknown: some suggest the angel reference is to its non-stinging nature; I wonder if maybe it is to with the flower shape, with its golden hoods as haloes…but elsewhere it is known as Weasel-snout, so who knows?!
Apennine anemone – I nearly miss it, the patch of pale lavender-coloured daisy-like flowers. The rapid approach of a bunch of cross-country runners makes me retreat from the path, and turning round: there they are these smiling beauties. It is such a small and concentrated patch and, I’m sure, one I’ve never stumbled across in all my years of walking these trails, that I suspect they have been recently seeded – and why not. I’m sure there’ll be something of the buzzing species that will make use of them, although I suspect it’s pure coincidence that it is at that moment a catch sight of my first dragonfly of the year. We’re not far from the river here, and the woody creeks and pools are still deep in water.
Across the mown field and back onto my commuter route from the Sportspark, along the Blackdale path. Here I take time to properly say hello to the companions of my everyday. But let’s not give them any less attention for all that. They include…
Alexanders – the parsley of Alexandria, a mediterranean plant, probably brought in by the Romans. It was an all-purpose vegetable, every part of it being usable. Again, I can hear the universe telling me toget out and forage! My writer friends have spent the last couple of years reminding me that it was brought in, by the aforesaid romans, as a replacement for celery, in which regard (they tell me)
it fails! In truth, it is more likely that the reverse was the case, that celery arrived here later as a more subtly-flavoured replacement for the Alexander. I was first introduced to them by those same writer buddies who take an absolute delight in the plant’s seed-heads later in the year, but it has been my regular trips along the coast road over the last few years – this is generally a coastal
species – that I have opened my eyes to their spring abundance and vibrancy. We keep using this word 'green' when surely there are so many shades we need to start to differentiate.
Buttercups – again, and again, and again, it feels too early in the year for these to be in flower. Buttercups are summer flowers in my head. Flowers of the school field so late in the summer term that we might be allowed the occasional lesson outdoors. Not to be found just after the Easter holiday, when there was still a chance of snow, and an expectation of wind and rain, at least as much as sunshine. But then, I begin to wonder…is my own memory of when things bloomed coloured by the sterility of the new town I grew up in, the generational love of order and ‘pretty’ gardens, that falling-out-of-love with wildness of my parents’ generation. Did I only see buttercups at the time of year when the council budget for mowing couldn’t keep up with the growth rate of the verges and open spaces? Or perhaps it is (again, again) the warmth and wet of this winter that has brought them forth.
Few-flowered garlic – a plant I had previously mis-identified as the three-cornered garlic. Both are listed as invasive (meaning it’s illegal to plant them) – my inner forager is being kicked to get out there and start picking. I could see it as a public service, removing an unwanted plant…except…well, they are pretty in their own way…and I’m not sure where I stand on incomers. With the climate changing, surely we’re onto a losing game if we insist on keeping only specific, “approved”, things growing in a land that might be increasingly unable to support them. If we can’t maintain the environment to keep what we lament the loss of, and seemingly we can’t, then shouldn’t we welcome the niche-fillers that follow along behind? (I can hear all the loud chorus against such a radical idea.)
Greater periwinkle – a definite escapee this one, and to be fair it hasn’t gone very far. I find it in the hedges surrounding the suburban houses, but its been here long enough to have acquired a vernacular name (Blue Betsy) so I’m allowing it into my category of wild-growing things… and I’m going to finish this unintended catalogue with the…
Common daisy – growing as they should be on the school field! White spots of starlight among the green. And I hope that young girls still make daisy chains idly forgetting what their fingers are doing while they’re sitting sharing their not-yet-grown-up secrets. Just as we did all those decades ago.
I did not intend this to be such a long piece. It has taken far longer to write than the square did to walk. But it matters in its way that I did not short-cut the writing. Nineteen different plants in flower in such a small area. I don’t think that should be overlooked. Not 19 flowering plants – there are others that will follow as the year progresses…and I didn’t count the forget-me-nots and grape hyacinth that have crossed beyond my own garden wall (and were never planted within it to begin with). So, let’s call it 21 – a more magical number.
I did not count any of the things within those suburban gardens, the tulips or the daffodils.
I think the point I’m trying to make is that we might see the world as more beautiful if we only went out and looked at it. And we might recognise that the most beautiful parts of it are where we allow things the time to grow into their beauty…and if we see their beauty, maybe we’ll be encouraged to re-learn their uses. I am not for a second that we all immediately go out and start pillaging the countryside, but a little gentle foraging might just put us (or me) back in touch with the land upon which we live, and the heritage we’re in danger of losing.
At least take an hour or two just walk around and look at the ground, see what's flowering, and then look and look again, pause to see the beauty of it at the very least. I've discovered that more I look, the more - infinitely more - I find.
~
*Humphreys will keep cropping up in my reflections of these home-map walks, because his book “Local” instituted the idea, and so he keeps popping into my head when I’m planning, walking or writing about it afterwards.
