Rivers

On entering the sea of unknowns and going with the flow.

Jan 01, 2025

Hello everyone,

Happy New Year!

I've been a bit quiet online over the past couple of months. I've stopped sharing almost completely and to be honest, it's felt a much needed time of retreat inwards.

This year, I will miss all of the UK Winter (and although I know I'm so lucky on so many levels to able to do this, to spend some months living and learning in South East Asia), I am missing it. I think in part this is because I've felt a great affinity to winter this year. A sense of paring back, returning to the bones and the homes of things. Delving inwards instead of always searching outwards for answers, much as I imagine the trees do every year in their own way.

I've been continuing my morning practice of yoga and writing in the dark as often as possible, using a bottle of water balanced over my phone torch instead of a candle to move and write by in what I like to call “water light” - if you like journalling, I recommend you try it one day; there is something magical about writing by light that scatters with every mark you make, refracting the light in shimmering waves across the page. Combined with my wave themed notepads I've found myself being drawn to water more and more.

As we collectively move through this threshold moment of one year flowing into the next, I have found myself thinking, not of doors, but of rivers.

Unlike doors, that seem to be a finite image constrained by frames and a sense of here and there, now and then, I like the image of a river flowing subtly and steadily from one place to the next. There are of course a myriad of ways that rivers can represent and teach us about our lives, but the one I keep settling on is that of the estuary, where rivers meet sea.

Drawn neatly onto a map this mingling of one into the other can appear deceptively straightforward, a simple release into the ocean. And yet this is not the case at all, at least not in those rivers that I have grown with. Tides rise twice a day to meet the river and force it, for a while at least, to flow backwards. When the tide recedes the river flows downwards once more, but the water remains brackish, a delightfully harsh word to describe the swirling water that is neither salty nor fresh, but somewhere in between. Sometimes, times of transition can feel brackish too.

Rivers have been a part of our history for as long as humanity's existence. They have drawn otherwise invisible lines on the land to etch out borders from one country to another. For a long stretch of time they were the main routes on which goods could travel from faraway lands. For an even longer time, rivers have been the place we collected water from, bathed in, washed our clothes in.

I still love bathing in rivers.

Unlike other bodies of water, rivers are so changeable. On any given day their character can change - sometimes in minutes. They can be wild and rushing, swollen and powerful, steady, even gone for a while.

Greek philosopher Herclitus says:

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”

Perhaps this is why I love wild swimming so much, particularly in the places pierced by thin threads of water. They remind me of the changeable nature of life, with all it's various weatherings.

I particularly love cold water (not that there is much of that where I currently am). It blurs the edges of my being until I am part of the water, and the water is a part of me. On a quantum level, where particles are unbound by what we would normally consider the “laws” of physics, particles can move spontaneously between disconnected places and objects. In a very real way, this dissolving of self into river and river into self is entirely possible. Like a glass holding water droplets, I am a container for some of those wild places I have swum in where their precious particles have melted into me, and I have scattered some of my soul's pieces in each body of water I have been in.

Here there is a beach known as “Black sands beach”. The sand is, mostly, sand coloured, except for sweeping arcs of blackened streaks, almost as if singed by fire. This comes from the water that gathers in the river and spills into the sea in a tiny estuary, having first run through natural petroleum reserves hidden deep in the ground.

What is even more fascinating is that I've seen this reflected in the shells I have seen, black oyster and scallop shells, snails studded with black polka dots. They are all the more beautiful for their unusual dark markings.

I am guilty of tarnishing so many things to do with crude oil as “bad” - yet here is an example of oil influencing the landscape in a way that is wholly and naturally occurring, with no human influence. It reminds me to step back, enjoy the nuances of life, the subtleties and puzzles, knowing that we still have much to learn, and we are not expected to have all the answers.

Most years I choose a word that I want to hold myself accountable to throughout the decisions I make. Last year I chose two. This year I have been gifted a word, not once, but twice, from two different sources. The word is Surrender. I am not sure what it will mean, or if I will listen well, but I'm open to seeing where it might lead.

Do you have a word for your upcoming year?

W i l d B i r d s

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