Samhain Walk

Samhain marks the end of the old Celtic year. For me it’s a time of remembrance and reflection. Leaves are falling and being received by the earth, and the energy within them is being transferred back into the soil. What was once fluttering aloft now lies quietly below, decaying; so goes the alchemy of autumn. Samhain marks my New Year’s Eve. I adjusted my year several years back when the current pattern of celebrating just wasn't right for me anymore. I still join with friends at the end of December, but it’s not my new year. So I start my year when the darkness is growing, folding me into the winter dreamtime. Reflections and experiences from the previous year begin settling into my body and mind. Ideally that’s what I would be doing anyway but life is mutable and unpredictable and this year I am caught up in a two-hour traffic jam instead. There is never a time when I feel the ridiculousness of my human condition more than when I am sat in a queue of metal boxes all trying to travel forward but being stopped by someone else’s metal box that has slightly blocked the road. Total insanity. However it means that I get to spin around, with dreams of visits to long barrows shelved, and sit around a few logs on the outdoor fire at my sister’s which is a much better idea than inching along the Bath road at sunset.

Once again due to life commitments, my walk is slightly delayed until past Samhain. The River Parrett in Somerset is my destination and I have only one free day. The whole length would take four days to walk so I choose one tasty part and head down to explore. As it turns out it’s a beautiful day, sunny with clear blue skies and unusually warm for November. I am pondering the nature of all that is unseen and how trust can be nurtured in the invisible world as I motor along. In the next instant I realise that I have left my phone at home. This means no photos, which is ironic. The words will have to paint a picture instead and your imagination can take over……

Once I see Burrow Mump I am actually kind of glad. Its way better as a surprise and I don’t want to spoil it for anyone. Autumn is probably a perfect time to see it, as there are a few trees dotted over its sides. A beautiful ruined church sits atop the mump with autumn colours scattering the lower slopes, like a low-key version of Glastonbury Tor. Yet its prettier, really lovely and I am charmed by this dinky hill. I climb up, which takes only a couple of minutes and sit drinking cinnamon coffee admiring the view. Only the repetitive sound of a car horn carries on the wind. Eventually I figure out it’s a farmer in his jeep, herding his sheep the lazy way!

I meet and chat to an older couple from Bridgewater, only 5 miles away. It turns out his father and grandfather before him owned a farm at the foot of the mump and this is the first time he has ever come to see it, demonstrating we sometimes overlook what’s right on our doorstep. I soak up the view and wintery sun and get pretty comfortable, nearly forgetting I am here to walk. So I rouse myself and trot off downhill before I lose momentum and head for the river. With such an easy marker point as the water itself, navigation for this one should be simple…..

The name “Parrett” could have several meanings with its origins lying possibly in Welsh, Cornish, Old English or a mixture of all three. One interpretation of Parrett is “partition” or “divide” as the river once separated the old Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Wessex and Dumnonia. Another translation is “sweet or delicious” river, perhaps it provided good fishing or maybe it was because it was a valuable highway for trade. Who knows what sweet treats may have sailed down the waterways in the times before tarmac? Maybe it was considered sacred to our ancestors. Yet another possible meaning of the name could be the “meeting of four ways”; that of the rivers Tone, Isle, Yeo and Parrett. I love the contradiction that it could mean partition or coming together, seeming somehow apt for these times.

The river rail begins down a country lane alongside the water with a high bank in between. I get frustrated that I can’t see the river as the official track is down on the lane below so I scramble up the bank and walk along the top of the man made wall holding the bank up. Or maybe the bank is holding the wall up. Now I can see the Parrett and she’s flowing surprisingly fast for a small river. This river is tidal and even has its own little bore! Undoubtedly it’s way more modest than the Severn but I’d like to see it one day either way. The banks of the river are replete with lots of sedge, the rustling of these elegant water plants is the background sound to my walk. Forming part of the Somerset Levels the area is good for bird life too, and I see herons, kestrels, egrets and many little hedgerow birds en route. As I walk the wall (another partition) I notice animal scat on top in several places. Somehow its funny that the animals have worked out it’s easier trotting along up here than hacking through the long grass on the river bank. A fox super highway! I follow the wall and soon I can hop off and follow on the actual river bank watching the swirls and eddies of the water below.

The lie of the land is flat and the area around this part of the Parrett is strongly characterized by its arable farmland. It has that numbed feel that I always notice in areas of large monoculture. It is however peaceful on the riverbank and there are horses grazing in every available field. Farm buildings are  scattered about and I fall slightly for an old ruined cottage I find along the way. By turns the wind suddenly whooshes down the river, reminding me that I am not too far from the sea. At times I hear seagulls cawing overhead. I pass an old pumping station, still important in the management of water levels for the moors. I idly move leaves off of a signboard to see what wildlife is mentioned. It requests the public call if they see anyone causing pollution, fire lighting, dumping waste or more cryptically witnessing any “fish in distress”. I spend the next 5 minutes cackling to myself trying to picture how I would identify a distressed fish.

As I near the halfway point I see a large hand painted sign, Beware Farm Dogs. After meeting the dogs I wanted to add on in paint “You may want to steal them”. These two collies were so meek and friendly I turned to check there wasn’t an adjoining farm. I suddenly felt like I had turned into the dog whisperer and kept eyeing them up incase they suddenly turned round and bit my hand off. I left them eventually to their relaxed riverside existence.

Halfway I looped around to join the Somerset and Taunton canal. Apparently unattached to the rest of the network it is an unexpectedly beautiful bit of waterway. I trundle along, past my turn off back along the Parrett. I stop for late lunch in a dip facing the sun.

As I make my way back towards the river and later the mump, I eye up the tidal waters. I’ve been looking for a spot to get near enough to drop some flowers in as a gift to my ancestors. I like the idea that the flowers might make it all the way out to the sea. Nowhere is quite right, due to the wind, mud, too many rushes or the steepness of the riverbanks. I’m nearing my starting point again and get distracted by a beautiful sunset, with many vibrant colours of orange, red, deep blues and greys. I spot an old apple orchard and dive through a gate to scrump some apples. The smell of fallen apples is so beautiful and one of my favourites. I have a great affinity for apple trees. Two once grew in the garden I grew up in and saved me from the wrath of my mum a few times. I stand watching the sky, chomping an apple, enjoying my bit of trespass. The wide vista stretches before me and cows graze quietly in the distance.

I am nearly back when I figure out that the bridge over the river by the mump is the perfect place for the flowers to be dropped. I cast them out with some words into the fading light and watch them as far as I can in the growing darkness. I amble along a little more of the river and gather a few more apples. My eye catches what looks like a shaft of bright golden sunlight rising in the west. What, that’s the wrong direction? Then I realise what’s happening. IT’S THE SUPERMOON! It’s a bit hazy but I scramble up the tump to see her rising. I have the sun setting on one side, and the supermoon rising on the other. Its incredible especially since a heavy fog later envelops half the country and the sky disappears totally where I live for the next four days……I wait for a couple of photographers to leave, but realizing a few people may continue to come up to see the moon, I just get out my drum, light a candle and start to play. I play for the hill, for the moors, for the moon, for my ancestors, for being alive. I can really feel the energy of the time of the year. Although Samhain the date has passed some people prefer to mark the old festivals with the moon cycles and not by any precise dates. This is a more natural rhythm. I can feel the power of the interplay between the light and the dark, both present in the day and the night. This confusion and blurring of shades of light and dark holds great power and somehow represents something for me about this time in history. To be able to sit in the middle of chaos where boundaries blur and shift, to keep bravely surfing the ever rolling wave of existence, to move through the interchangeable powers of both light and darkness and create my own beauty and meaning from it all, for me that is the teaching of our times.