Happy New Year
a short walk in a long week
Happy new year! It feels like it’s been a long month already, but we have at last reached the end of the first week to 2024. I hope it has started gently for you and that the year ahead treats you well.
The south coast, as elsewhere, has been battered again by storms and the winds of storm Henk have only furthered my hibernation. Yesterday, though, in a pocket of stillness, I ventured out.
As well as being windy, it feels like it hasn’t stopped raining in years. The ground is sodden and soft underfoot, making it harder to walk, immersing me in the field as I tread. While this was a solitary walk, the mud also shows me I am rarely alone here. Footsteps and animal tracks, of dogs, sheep, and deer, along with piles of rabbit droppings, and openings to badger setts tell me this is not the isolated place it might appear. I also saw several squirrels, the white rabbit that lives in the woods, the cows hunkered in their shelter for the winter, and the geese that live on the farm nearby. As I made my return journey, I spotted a solitary deer grazing.
In the woods more trees have fallen with the storm, and with them it’s possible to see how violently they are uprooted. I am again, reminded of the fall from health that chronic illness can bring. While it can be a gradual slide, almost unnoticeable, it can also be a sudden uprooting.
There is no softening the blow of this, it is destructive, but like the woods and the field and the mud, I need also to remember that I am not alone, even when it looks and feels entirely isolated.
And the white rabbit I mentioned? It is one I occasionally see. A reminder to hold on to the impossible.
The next Moving Mountains event will be hosted by the Institute of Continuing Education at Cambridge University. Facilitated by Joanne Limburg (The Autistic Alice & Letters To My Weird Sisters), I’ll be joined by Victoria Bennett (All My Wild Mothers) and Nic Wilson (Guardian Country Diarist) talking about memoir and illness/disability writing. It is free to attend and will run online on 16th January, you can book on the link here.