Alney Island at midday on 9 November. Looking up, I encountered a bleak majesty of now skeletal trees. Muted sunlight found its way through the grey clouds. In contrast, the river at my side retained a full, lush beauty.
As I walked, the tranquility of the scene was compromised at times by anxiety. The island is a wetland. It had been raining. More rain was due. The paths were puddled and muddy. The grass was soft and wet, half hiding twigs, leaves and slippery earth. I am still not fully recovered from my fall and this walk was a deliberate escalation in challenge. When I reached Richard’s Wood I stumbled over a tree root and nearly fell. At the same time I was able to enjoy a rich carpet of leaves at this late period in the leaf fall.
Among the trees I contemplated branches as living sculpture. It was as if I had reached a destination. Generally the branches were still holding on to at least some leaves. There were even new ones, in this fecund space. Eventually, my encounter with the wood completed, I turned round and made my cautious way home.
Recent days have been rich in numinous images. Images that for me mark the divinity within our material reality. Above, the recent full moon: clear light at the centre and a blood moon halo suggesting a link with the earth, later to manifest in an eclipse. The sky is deep violet leaning into indigo. The shaded trees absorb the energy of the sky as well as of the earth. The whole image feels moving and inspiring – an image for contemplation which doesn’t need esoteric analysis. Its simple presence is enough.
The same is true for the images that follow. Immediately below is a day time sky image. The day was frequently stormy, with high winds and hard rain. Dark clouds testify to moments of lightning, loud thunder and tumultuous rain. But the image itself records a period of respite. In a gap between the clouds, blue sky can be seen and the light pours strongly in.
Rain on a window pane is central to the next image. The rain drops are the primary subject. What’s on the other side (a balcony garden) isn’t entirely clear in the picture and doesn’t need to be. I experience a great sense of cleansing and refreshment here – the water of life as it falls from the sky, each drop itself an ocean. I look out from my interior space, two stories above the ground floor, and connect with this bounty.
The two remaining images come from a recent walk on Alney Island – outdoors and on normally marshy ground. The first is a woodland space with its fresh entangled green. The ground still looks drier than it sometimes does, yet I sense health and recovery here. In the second image, I see a re-greened path with benignly rioting verges. Seeing what I see, I follow the green path.
Richard’s Wood, Alney Island, was planted in 1983. It commemorates the 500th anniversary of the Charter given to the people of Gloucester by King Richard III. He was their Duke before he became King. People here have never quite seen him as the stage villain portrayed by William Shakespeare. Or, if so, as only one Royal stage villain among others.
Three years ago I wrote an Alney Island post where I ended by criticising how Richard’s Wood has been developed and managed (1). I don’t think I was wrong, but this time I felt very different, less willing to judge.
It was a hot day. I wanted to be outside. Being under cover in a wood not hard to negotiate was ideal. I strolled into enchantment. I surrendered to the trees and the way in which, together, they covered and held me.
In this state of attention, I don’t think much about botanical facts or lore. I respond to shape, texture, smell, subtle sounds, colour, light, light, shade and wonder at Nature’s variety.
I spent longer in the wood than I expected. I relished every moment I was there. I am now a friend of this space and expect to visit more often.
Thursday 24 April was a landmark afternoon for my wife Elaine and me. We were able to walk, sit and have coffee in Gloucester Docks. Such ordinary and taken for granted pleasures – until April last year, when Elaine broke her hip. Later, as her bones slowly recovered, her underlying heart problems were triggered at the turn of the year, setting back her overall recovery.
We are in a different place now. Elaine’s physical recovery, and her recovery of agency, are creating a new reality. The picture above is generally tranquil, yet includes the energy of a seagull in flight. The sun is getting warmer. We can relax a little, and celebrate, enjoying the promise of a new season, in the run-up to Beltane 2025.
Now, contemplating the image of a still boat against the background of Alney Island in its spring abundance, I feel grateful for the moment and grateful for our lives.
I took these pictures one recent evening in the wetlands of Alney Island, on the River Severn at Gloucester. It felt dark and broody most of the time. There was a threat of rain and storm though not the actuality. The feeling-tone suggested raw nature and remoteness: a place where I as a human didn’t exactly belong. Boggy land and turbulent sky were elementally indifferent to me and my concerns. I was simultaneously inspired and edgy.
Then the sky changed and I changed with it. I noticed the sun. It was declining but that didn’t matter. It was signalling its presence to me from a suitably safe distance. Comfort and familiarity returned. I was on a small reserve in the middle of a city. I had lost a moment of wildness and gained a perceived security. Being human, I both took the deal and wondered about the possibilities I may have abandoned..
On 12 May I wrote: “I hope soon to get some sense of how soon Elaine will come home, and what resources we will need for our lives going forward. It’s my 75th birthday on 25 May, and my best present would be to have Elaine home by then.” (1) Today is 25 May, and my wife Elaine is indeed coming home from the Gloucester Royal hospital. It has felt like a long absence for both of us and we are glad to move into a new chapter of our lives.
Yesterday evening I went Alney Island, a Gloucester wetland, for a brief contemplative walk. The footbridge near Gloucester docks has been repaired and after many months the island is easy to reach again. Back on the island, I loved its sense of growth and abundance in the summer evening light. I felt care-free. I had almost forgotten how much experiences like this nourish me.
This is a festive moment in my life: a significant birthday, Elaine’s return, celebrating a moment in the year that makes me glad to be alive. I feel refreshed, heartened and re-energised.
Seasonal Blessings to all readers, and my best wishes for 2024! I took these photos between 2.20 and 2.50 pm on 21 December, the last day before the Solstice, and a little more than an hour before sunset in Southern England.
The location is Alney Island, Gloucester, which I had not been to for some time. I encountered a sun that was low in the sky, clearly sinking, but still having an obvious influence on the landscape. Above, you can see a powerful luminescence behind the starkness of the trees. Immediately below, you can see light effects on the river and the trees themselves.
In the picture below, the midwinter sunshine is clearer and stronger. I love the way in which the willows show their vitality and abundance even when they have lost their leaves. The path is relatively dry, yet surrounded by green grass. There is a play of light and shade. There is blue as well as cloud in the sky.
On the ground, in the afternoon, and now in the evening as I write, I am thinking of light and dark, and of waxing and waning, as natural phenomena. I am not thinking in moral or metaphysical terms. These are different considerations, with a tendency moreover towards abstraction and absolutism. In my experience, nature tends to be nuanced. Different things are going on at the same time. Certainly where I live, there is always some balance of light and dark. The balance shifts, but both are always in play.
We treat tomorrow’s sunrise as the beginning of a turn. Here, in 2023, the afternoon before the change seems like a friendly one for an annual nadir of the light. This is also a bit how I am thinking about myself. Towards the end of November, when I last wrote a post of this type, I was celebrating a recovery from illness, and the opportunity of a good day. A good day was about what it was. Many people have pointed out in the last year or so that Covid-19 seems to have a long tail. I have been physically restricted beyond what I think of as normal.
I’m aware of a 75th birthday coming up next year, at which time our government will no longer consider my death as premature. Yet I am in good heart and feeling resilient. Without being presumptuous, I’m leaning in to longevity. I’m checking my capabilities and energy levels, anticipating some adjustments, and noticing the many rays of light which present themselves in my world.
Alney Island is surrounded by the River Severn at Gloucester. It is mostly a water meadow and largely free of ‘development’. I have written about it before. I took the pictures on 15 January, greatly moved by this landscape, the water margin feel, and the energy of the river, whose ‘left channel’ flowed past me close by. I’m short on words, today. So I’m letting the pictures speak for me. In a certain light, they are a kind of visual hymn.
The place is called Lower Parting, though it is actually a joining. The parting is 3km (just under two miles) up river. There, the River Severn divides into two channels, east and west, to flow around Alney Island. When taking the picture above, I was standing near the point where the channels meet again. It was around 9 a.m. on 22 June. I had not been there before.
Although every time and place is ultimately sacred, some times and places are easier for me to honour. In my experience this is partly a property of the times and places, partly down to culture and tradition, and partly to do with my own inner and outer availability.
On this occasion, I was within a midsummer period which for me lasts from a day or so before the solstice until around 25 June. I like to acknowledge the stasis (standstill) element within the solstice experience. It is not just about a point of time. Like its midwinter opposite and twin, my midsummer allows an extended pause before the wheel of the year turns. My walk on 22 June was an intentional celebration of the midsummer stasis, something between an outdoor walking meditation and a miniature festival pilgrimage. It was built around my first encounter with an intuited special place, now that I am fit enough once more to walk the required distance.
I can easily understand why people in many parts of the world have seen water, especially flowing water, as sacred. I am on a quiet part of a quiet island in the middle of Gloucester city. The wetland here is blissfully unfit for development, and now a nature reserve. I was able to stand here and look out at the joining of the waters, under a blue sky, and surrender to a benign spirit of place. I didn’t have to attend to my attention. In this extended, flowing, moment, nature was doing that for me. I found, here, a generous horizon, and a living peace that invites participation. I am glad and grateful to have discovered this place on this day.
In my tradition, at every seasonal festival, we are asked to think not only of the time we are celebrating, but also of its opposite. Walking back from Lower Parting, I see features in the landscape that help me. My pictures below do not evoke winter, but they do show light and shade within a single image. On planet Earth, the time of my summer is the time of someone else’s winter. These are both ways in which opposites complement each other in an interconnected world.
Alney Island is now established as a place where I come up for air. Yesterday evening I went there with my wife Elaine, feeling on good form. It was a relatively cool evening, easy to walk in. This picture, which looks back from the island to Gloucester Docks, records the appearance of wild roses. I associate them with midsummer, but there they are, a little early this year. They may seem fragile, but they have established a position in this riot of green.
Two weeks ago I had a spirometry test which showed that my core health problem was asthma, not COPD, though I have a mild COPD as well. This has led to a change in medication as well as understanding, and thereby increased my confidence. This walk was freed to be all pleasure, companionship and celebration. Namaste to Elaine.
Wild roses have had a special meaning for me since an encounter with them on the banks of the Tweed near Melrose Abbey in the Scottish border country many years ago. In my Contemplative Druidry (1) I describe how I walked into “A wholly unexpected and not at all dramatic epiphany” triggered by simple observing a wild rose on the river bank. Subject/object distinctions dissolved, busting me out of the limited experience (prison?) of ‘self’, as that term is generally used and understood. The direct experience was brief. The after effects were longer lasting, and the consequence was a reframe of my Druidry.
Yesterday I was surprised by wild roses again, and I feel blessed.
Contemplative Inquiry 