Liturgy of the familiar

I had the good fortune to have most of a weekend free and to myself.  I toyed with the idea of live music, real ale, or a long jaunt south to try for the beautiful Marsh Sandpiper, but exhaustion from work caught up with me.  This meant that instead of heavy metal tinnitus and a hangover, or admiring the elegance of a southern wader, 6am on Saturday found me up on the moors, hoping for Cuckoo (but with no real expectation - I almost always hear my first in the first week of May) and Tree Pipit.  I found neither, but in the cold of early morning I decided I would check the four compass points of my 10km circle and walk in my own company.

I have become, in my middle age, something of a loner.  Not that I dislike people, I have written before about friendship framing the experience of birding as a microcosm of life, and the company of others is always a balm that makes Churchill’s black dog walk some distance behind me - but that I find that I like time to reflect on the nature of life in silent natural solace.  My job and family life is busy, often chaotic, and loud.  I work long hours and the time for thought is often squeezed out, especially when it rains heavily and time outside is limited.  Making a conscious choice to walk with myself, to observe and let my thoughts settle where they will is some kind of zen, some sort of existing in the moment that I find increasingly necessary and decreasingly available.

So I walked.  I watched Green Woodpecker chasing up a valley, and over the coughs of Red Grouse.  I saw deer and brown hares race through the long grass where warblers reeled and sang.  I thought about the things I recognised and lamented my limited understanding of the things I didn’t.  I hoped for Hobby in the first day of sun and one materialised; so I hoped to be a millionaire or at least see an Osprey, though there seems to have been a delay on those.  I walked into the evening and saw bats and a fox, and I walked in the dark and saw and heard owls. I slept like a man with 14 miles of sun and fresh air in his skin, and I woke and walked to see Avocet and a Caspian Gull.  

In the end, after 21 miles, I learned something that I’m sure wiser people (you, of course) have known of themselves for years.  That though I love to see the new, the novel, the exciting birds that I chase for lists and experiences, I have to balance that out with the liturgy of the familiar, the sounds and scents and the rooted-ness of the known.  The ritual of the patch is as important to me, the knowledge of just which tree the Blackcap sings from, the reassurance of the path we walk through the places we remain.  New experiences are light and air, but the old and familiar are rich loam in which to sink deep roots.