Journal
09 Feb 2024 — Despite the weather
In the quiet between late December and early January, we go for a walk.
Last winter, that looked like leaving from the flat on foot and walking to Epping Forest. Through Leyton Flats, along suburban roads, across fields, and into the forest. My desired destination was an oyster shack in the middle of Epping Forest — I was seeking connections to the sea. The pub it’s attached to was cosy and warm and rowdy. But we were outside, where, perhaps surprisingly, there was a long line for the shack. We waited in the wind for a table and our turn to order. The oyster order went missing and we ate our meal in reverse — cold rollmops, hot scallops with black pudding, smoked trout, and Scottish oysters to finish. It was very cold sitting still. Björn sought mulled wine from the pub to warm us slightly — it cooled rapidly. I had calculated it would take roughly 2.5 hours for us to reach the shack and anticipated we’d walk there, eat, and return on foot. In the end, the mud slowed us down. And we took a very winding, spontaneous route, so that the walk there alone totalled 20 kilometres. We took the central line back.
This winter, we went walking on new year’s eve in Oxfordshire. Sun and rain, mud and moss, sheep grazing, sheep on the plate, venison too. Despite the weather, we walked. There was a wind storm overnight that had kept me awake. The sound, yes, but also worry for the garden in the extreme gusts. There was rain overnight too. When we arrived in Henley — 2.5 hours and four trains after stepping out the door — the bulging, fast-moving Thames had swallowed its jetties. Days later, here and other parts of the country were flooding. The planned 1.5 hour walks either side of the pub lunch swelled too. Only a little en route. Longer on the return, with a few unplanned detours when we found what should be public footpaths since closed off as private property.
If we had not walked, that would have been okay too. I’ve been working my way through my long, aspirational and quite tedious admin list — sort inbox, tidy computer files, do tax, write end-of-year reflections, update website — in these quiet weeks. But also hoping to do them as the mood for a particular task strikes, with long slow days of reading in bed in-between. ‘Not working is so nice,’ I say to Gemma as we walk in the sunshine and the wind post-sauna towards lunch on one particularly leisurely day. It’s February now and the list is not complete. But like with many things, it likely never will be.
The repetition of the walk is about building rituals and rhythms in this place, in which it’s taken (taking) a long time to feel any connection or rootedness. Summer solstice has become a moment to sit with the season and find something to celebrate in a world where many celebrations are tied to capitalism and religions that I’m not tied to. Moments that add joy and stillness, peace and pleasure to the everyday in London, which frankly is mostly not joyful, still, peaceful or pleasurable. So there’s picnicking at sunset in summer, and walking (possibly in the rain) in winter. The foods in the festive season are ritualistic too — a bulk order of lebküchen from Germany; mackerel, sardines, cockels and other tins that I’ve saved from travels during the year; local cheeses from Funk and Neal’s Yard Dairy; bread, stollen and marzipan-filled speculaas from E5 Bakehouse; and making a veggie shepherd’s pie in our casserole dish from the pottery co-op in Cley, Norfolk — for a hearty meal that lasts days and days. End-of-year food, and the shape of a day, so different to closing and beginning the year amid summer.
uitwaaien
to go out in windy weather, particularly into nature or a park, as a means of refreshing oneself and clearing one’s mind
The past few years, I’ve felt that there could be more time dedicated to walking. Perhaps swapping Saturday exhibitions with Saturday walking — specifically outside of the city, getting to know this landscape. Sometimes I yearn for harsh coastlines and lumpy inland-scapes, where the intense wind can wash away the tiredness and the fog, pummel the system. It’s not often sunny in these imaginings, but cold, wet, boggy, grey, dark green, and brown. A mirror to mood. A mirror to most months of the year here.
I often think about really heavy wind storms, as a way for nature to disperse seeds over a long distance. And to just shake the system up a little bit. To move seeds around and twigs around and to bring kind of fresh flows through everything.
— Marte Mei van Haaster
Last August, we went walking the South Downs Way, coastal and inland. On the first day, there was wind, clouds, rain, and then big blue blue sky. The trees here grow at an angle, leaning, a permanent lean dictated by the wind. I welcomed the wind, to clear out the system and bring fresh flows. By day two, even though my lips were chapped and my left side sunburnt, my face had softened so much, frown and jaw tension undone by the elements and perhaps the ability to see far into the distance, quietening the self.
Further reading
The Old Ways by Robert McFarlane
If Women Rose Rooted by Sharon Blackie
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