Be Longing
“The land is home, blooming, blossoming, lush and alive. ”
This is the time of year I long for; the weather cools, the fruits swell, mists begin to roll in and just before everything falls asleep there’s a boom of life. That feeling you can’t beat - picking apples straight from the tree, foraging chestnuts and hazelnuts, and this year, in the walled garden I even managed to grab some of the walnuts before they were sequestered by squirrels, (the mature walnut tree was loaded with fruits.)
There can be no better feeling than that sense that the land around you is looking out for you. And there’s a feeling of silence too; the birds have moved on, all around they are swooping and diving on the wing as they head off over the horizon.
From within the walls of the garden you can see the river. It’s slightly mysterious, the grassy banks concealing it in parts from your eyes. As autumn begins so too does the bird migration. Just a few weeks ago swallows, sand martins and house martins practically swarmed over the river and water meadows. This year, partly by accident, the grasses have not been cut for hay. Instead the sedges, rush and desiccating sward clog the meadows and make it look ‘untidy’. This untidiness wriggles with life; crickets, moths, butterflies, crane flies and more rising up as you wade through the jungle-like thickets.
The land feels alive in every sense and the river flows through its heart, bubbling and broiling as the heavy rains reinvigorate it; a cold steely grey to the water as the temperature falls.
The river’s name is the Piddle and my childish sense of humour means I still often let out a little chuckle when I tell people. The power of a name and all that. Up the road is Tincleton, even further up the road you end up in Puddletown, and if you take a wrong turn, Shitterton is not far away.
These names make me feel like the people who came before had a sense of humour at least. But it gets me thinking too, about how names begin to tie you to a place.
Knowing the nooks and crannies of a place, eating the fruits, giggling at the names – it layers up inside of you and when you’re not there, you can find yourself longing for it, and before you know it you belong to it.
This week, I was lucky enough to attend the first conference of the CommonEarth programme - an initiative launched by the Commonwealth to explore how we can use regeneration to stave off the worst impacts of Climate Change. Delegates were from the full span of the Commonwealth and in particular those most affected by a climate in crisis. Dominica, Phoenix Islands, New Zealand and Belize were just some of those represented.
As delegates spoke the feeling in the room began to change. Sitting in what was once the centre of the British Empire - Malborough house in Westminster - the brass bands rehearsal echoing across the pristine lawns, the sense of irony wasn’t lost on anyone. However, underneath it all, there was also a palpable sense that the Indigenous people who had been invited echoed time and again and that was that they belong to where they come from.
They loved their lands which fed them, clothed them and nurtured them for many generations; land that wove its way through every aspect of their lives. And that belonging, that feeling of longing they felt to sustain their land and their communities, that indelible mark it has left on their souls meant they were ready to fight for it at any cost, even when the threats facing that land now are (most often) not as a result of their actions.
It occurred to me then (as it has many times before) that the next reasonable step that I can take as I transit through this reinvention of myself is to view the world in the same way. If each of us begins to fall back in love with the world around us, in small ways at first, growing an apple tree, tasting blackberries fresh from the bush, stopping and catching the song of a thrush on the wind; then we would be truly making our way back to a way of life that belongs on the earth. We used to belong - and we can again.
In my experience, the more connected to the land you become the further that belonging spreads. At first it may feel like your home is your castle but, as you settle in, as you learn the language of nature, you realize that little distinguishes you from it or anyone else and in small but powerful ways you can see that everything is tied together. When those things appear to you as a whole then it becomes painful to watch the Amazon burn or storms hit Dominica or drought ravage Somalia. It hurts because it is hurting you.
Right now, we in the West harbour a feeling of deep unsettling. The fact these conversations have ricocheted back to its original centre is no accident.
As Maori leader Johnny Freeland put it: “In our culture when you want to heal you go back to where it was that hurt you..
That feeling of unsettling is correct. The lives we live don’t belong. The way we have constructed our world doesn’t belong. Instead we must adapt and to do that we need to first look within ourselves and then soon after look outside. Then you can see that there are apples on the tree and that the birds flying into the distance will soon fill someone else’s heart with joy. You should let that joy fill yours and then long for others to feel the same.
You should long. You should Belong.
