On Wild Water – by Myrtle Cooper
I had the privilege of leading the first of this season’s Wild Church pilgrimages, the River Dart Wild Water Pilgrimage. We gathered high on the Dartington estate to begin our journey, meandering through path and field as we passed tree, flower, bird, punctuated by breath and silent whisper and excitement as we padded to a standstill to meet and nibble many a wild plant along the weft and weave of our adventure.
Our inquiry as Wild River Pilgrims was to find our own rhythm within the wild orchestra, to be contemplative, and to simply be present. Have you heard the music of the Oak or the Beech at this time of year? Stand silently underneath and open your ears and heart.
Pausing at Stillpool, a delightfully and mythically rich wild swimming spot on the Dart at Staverton (as shown above) I was moved to share a much loved poem by Agrarian and Philosopher Wendell Berry:
‘The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be.
I go and lie down where the Wood Drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great Heron feeds.
I come in the peace of wild things
Who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
and I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free’
Padding silently downstream, abreast with the flow of the river I’d wager anyone would sense even a little of the rhythm of this powerful place. They say that myth is the power of a place speaking, and this undulating patchwork of land brims with energy, with story and with possibility, its ancient oak beginnings still standing as silent sentinels along its banks.
‘Otter – Robert Macfarlane’
Otter enters river without falter – what a
supple slider out of holt and into water!
This shape-shifter’s a sheer breath-taker, a
sure-heart –stopper – but you’ll only ever spot
a shadow-flutter, bubble skein, and never
(almost never) actually otter.
This swift swimmer’s a silver-miner – with
trout its ore it bores each black pool deep
and deeper, delves up-current steep and
steeper, turns the water inside-out, then
inside-outer.
Ever dreamed of being otter? That
Utter underwater thunderbolter, that
shimmering twister?
Run to the riverbank, otter-dreamer,
slip your skin and change your matter, pour
your outer being into otter – and enter
now as otter without falter into water.
To feel the energy contained in the land requires us to step outside the skin of our everyday encounters, frenzied thought processes and never-ending ‘to-do’s’, and to cultivate the wildful capacity ‘to-be’ we all hold at least a small secret ember for.
This is the work of the Wild Water Pilgrim; this is the gift offered by land and water when we begin to open ourselves to it.
With wildful wishes
x
With deep thanks To Myrtle for her collaboration with River Dart Wild Church – for her gentle guiding and beautiful words. You can find out more about Myrtle’s work with wild foraging through Wild and Curious Foraging