'I am haunted by waters'

Whether it is gazing at a river, listening to the rain staring at the sea or taking water from holy wells I have always been enthralled by the charm of water. I was lucky enough to have a garden with the river at the far end. There is clarity and brightness that the chalk gives to the water and the river held an endless fascination for me, not least because beyond it lay another world; a water meadow in which Frisian cows would feast on the sweet grass. For what seemed like many years, the other side of the river remained a mystery. A mystery until my father took us for a walk. We crossed the river on a wooden bridge about a half-mile west of our back garden. What I had never realised, and was therefore a revelation to me, was that on the other side of the meadow, at the foot of an escarpment, was another, smaller, chalk stream. It was in essence a diverted channel that would rejoin the main stream some two miles later. One of the great things about this smaller stream was that it was shallow enough to wade in with Wellingtons on, and not get your feet wet. Not that our feet remained dry, because the stream had deeper pools, and the temptation to explore overcame the reluctance to get wet. It was in this stream, beyond the meadow beyond the river, that we would construct dams of small boulders and drift wood.

There is in the field beyond the field beyond our own garden today, a line of trees which again have always seemed to beckon me. It was quite a joy to discover beneath this line of trees another stream, a tributary of the Wye. I was walking with my son and we just stopped to paddle in the stream. Finding small rocks and enough drift wood, we constructed dams. Wonderful sound, that of the wind in the trees and water tricking over the mini water-falls our little dams had made. “Why do we do this?” asked my son. “No reason, it’s just fun.” Perhaps it’s because I grew up near a river that springs, wells, rivers and streams hold an endless fascination for me. All rivers flow to the ocean or a sea, a larger body of water into which they are absorbed. It seems to me that such a thing has always been a metaphor for the creature’s journey to and yearning for the creator, the human desire for divinity. In mythology, rivers are thresholds, sometimes a threshold between life and death. One might think of the river Styx in Greek mythology. In the bible, the river Jordan is also a point of crossing from the wilderness into the promised land. It is the place of baptism where Christians symbolically join themselves to the death of Jesus, are buried with him and therefore join themselves to his risen life. In November leaves are being stripped from the trees, and many fall into rivers and are taken on their own journey. That too can be a metaphor for the soul’s journey to God. At the beginning of November we remember the saints and pray for those who have died. At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of that eleventh month we remember those who have died, and are still dying in wars. But it is never the end. The waters that run into the seas and oceans will be taken into the heavens again and return to water the earth. There is a cycle, or should I say a circle, which itself can represent eternity. Rivers are places of play, of refreshment for land and animals, liminal spaces, boundaries between here and beyond. “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters.” Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories.