New Eyes, Old River

The sense of contrast and what it means to be home.

It's interesting to see the things that you notice when you return to where you grew up. Aspects of place that were for some reason obscured in the past, but in the present reveal themselves as if viewed through new eyes entirely.

I ran this morning along the Loddon River, a place that became a sanctuary of sorts in my teenage years, growing up in the Thames Valley. This waterway was a place I could retreat to, to hide from the synthetic aspects of the human world and find solace in the natural, where the whirring of air traffic and the rumble of the motorway felt further away.

My use of the bioregional definition in describing where I come from is deliberate — it is the more permanent definition in my mind, informed by a deeper sense of time, beyond the abstract concepts of town, city, and village, which we normally attribute to physical locations.

After years spent living in southern Europe, the perception of wildness shifts. Down here, trees become stubbier, forests more scarce, and fields are more often brown instead of green. I never thought I would say it, but it's refreshing to be back in Britain for a few days. To run through the tunnelled hedgerows surrounded by an understory of wild cherry, dog rose, and hawthorn, overlooked by towering centennial trees —sycamore, oak, and ash, larger than any I've seen elsewhere — or perhaps I was less attuned to it, at least.

Contrast is a funny thing. It feels more abrupt because of the ease of travel nowadays; to catch a plane from a faraway place means that the sensory transition is a sharp one. It cuts through the fog of familiarity, that feeling of being used to somewhere. And somehow, due to the fact that the duration of this visit is temporary and fleeting, it is a relief.

Integral to this felt experience of contrast is the sense of time. I always joke that if I spend more than two weeks in England, I start to grow irritated and remember why I left. But somehow, because I feel removed from that sensation of being embedded here, it feels like it is possible to transcend the conditions that once felt constricting and even suffocating at times.

I think back to when I was last here. Feeling defeated from not being able to make it work in the long term living in Portugal. Working a low paying gardening job to get by, a situation that felt like a last resort — that there was no way forward. I couldn't wait to leave.

And now, strangely, as I've spent so much time living in the countryside of Portugal that the struggles of rural living in an impoverished place have become a resonant part of my experience, I have a similar feeling, only inverted. Is it escapism? Is it a sense of flight? Or is it the desire to find a way of living that doesn't compromise too heavily on the basis of what it means (for myself, at least) to be alive?

The sunlight filters through the trees, casting a warm bokeh pattern on the soft, muddy trail. I pause for a moment at the old war bunker near the Berkshire Aviation Museum, a relic from the past that most passers-by most likely won't notice — covered in vines, being consumed by the deciduous forest that continues to flourish despite the urban transformations that surround it. Each time I come, more meadows are transformed into housing developments, and hedgerows and woodland are decimated and shrinking, all in the name of growth. Yet this old brick bunker and the oak trees that grow around it are completely indifferent to the follies of humanity.

My family was never from the Thames Valley. The history is vague and disjointed, some from the Welsh borders, some from Newcastle, Norfolk, or orphaned and placed elsewhere. So what does it mean to be home?

I suppose a sense of familiarity feels homely, but that isn't necessarily a good thing. I'm familiar with the noise pollution, but it certainly doesn't conjure up any positive sensations. When I stand in these small patches of woodland, though they are few and far between, something inside feels warm and welcoming. It’s similar to the sensation of entering the family home and feeling a sense of calm and relief — for a moment, I can relinquish some pressure that I didn’t realise I was carrying. I can drop the weight and take a breather.

Perhaps it was due to the sense of contrast that led to the expression of this state, because it was a feeling that I rarely had before. My focus was often blurred by the negative qualities, which are still present in this moment yet somehow less apparent, even irrelevant in some ways. I am absorbed, animated. Is it runner's high or something deeper? Perhaps a bit of both.

I watch as the river weeds sway elegantly in the swirling currents of the Loddon. A river that has no doubt seen untold abuses over the years — motorway runoff, agricultural leaching, sewage pollution, and who knows what else. Yet still it continues to flow as it did before, in times before human dominance, before we became so indoctrinated by the Anthropocene as we presently are — and I’m sure it will continue on its journey long after we are gone.

The piercing blue sky reflects in the ripples and contortions of the water, dancing between light and vegetation. I can smell the blossom from the hedgerows as the blackberries begin to form. It brings back that nostalgic sense of the river sanctuary with which I was once so familiar. And perhaps it is intensified due to this sense of contrast, which feels so prominent in this moment because of being away for years.

Perhaps home is not something fixed but rather a sensation that we associate with a place, a quality that can ebb and flow like the Loddon itself. Wherever we find ourselves, if it brings forth that sensation of warmth or that memory of better days, perhaps it is a good place to be — not necessarily forever, but for that brief moment in time.

Photo by S L on Unsplash