Greeting Strangers

Place does affect the way I write—maybe the tone—but it always has an influence. Does place matter in your work? Poet Scot Young asked this question in his blog and I said yes.
When I go walking, thoughts come to me, and they seem to resonate with the sky, trees, roadside litter, sounds, everything. I thought it would take a series of essays to amplify my “yes”. Time comes into it too. My best is the early morning and ideally I’d be abroad on highways and byways as the sky lightened, ready to greet every dawn. One wants to squeeze everything into one’s time of greatest strength and alertness, so it’s not easy to get out the door, but last Friday I managed it by eight, with camera and voice recorder as surrogate friends to share the experience. This is the tale I bring back. —

There’s a fresh breeze and it’s damp rather than cold. A weak newborn sun lights the hurrying pedestrians on their way to work. I pretend the cars are not there and I’m in the nineteenth century. It works pretty well except when I have to cross a road, when self-preservation takes priority. K has lent me a pedometer which she got on loan for a week from her employers, the National Health Service, that symbol of socialistic kindness which blesses her Majesty’s subjects with its concern for their wellbeing. 10,000 steps per day is recommended. Let’s see what I do on this walk along the Wye Valley to Loudwater.

The ground is covered with fresh-fallen leaves. For a moment, I wonder why they appear so poignant, like fresh-fallen snow. I imagine a small child seeing them for the first time; and then a man in the autumn of his life remembering every Fall since he was old enough to walk, especially the first time he noticed the leaves stuck damply to the sidewalk; or dry crackling ones windblown into thick heaps that he shuffled noisily through, holding a parent’s hand. I call him Everyman, and know that I am he.

After the first mile, I leave those streets with their streams of workers, and go diagonally through the park, reaching the trail of public footpaths which penetrate every obstacle: woods, meadows, housing developments, factories. There used to be several papermills along this valley, powered by waterwheels, one of which has been reconstructed out of a respect for history. On special occasions they use it to grind a few sackfuls of wheat, but mostly it lies silent, desolate, the millrace diverted
by sluice-gates.
———
The word Freedom comes into my head. I suppose in the recent Presidential election it was a word of mystical power. I can understand how it would still be so—to one chafing in servitude. Why is Freedom still a slogan to those who see themselves as already free? They feel burdened with the duty to defend it. I had another “universal revelation” Everyone acts to protect what’s sacred in their society. Attack that and there will be a fierce response. “Submission to the will and laws of Allah is the source of all freedom”, says Islam, which means “submission”. Two definitions in collision.

For some reason I have always found it easy to identify with the downtrodden, and have little sympathy with the powerful. I don’t mean to attack freedom, or any other concept of the sacred: just to scrutinize it. I think of a peasant as freer than an ambitious office-worker, but that’s just my bias. I’m in a meadow, closely following the meandering river. On the other side are newish apartment blocks, with balconies and neat communal gardens. They need no fence because the water makes a natural boundary.

I think about Americans, in a week momentous in their history. They seem like an Old Testament people. We only hear the Israelite side of their story. The Philistines and followers of Ba’al would have had their story too: their own myths, their own heroes and tales of inspiration, but we don’t know them, only winners’ history, somehow pasted into the scriptures of two separate religions. The things that matter to a tribe are often encoded within a religious belief-structure, that may seem like superstition or
prejudice. It is not surprising that in a progressive society, the urge is to let rationality sweep those things away, ignorant of the precious secret: that the sacred is hidden, wrapped up in the mumbo-jumbo. What is the sacred? It’s something revered because it is necessary for the healthy existence—and coexistence—of mankind.
———
I move to another branch of the river which has squirrels dashing along the path to take the bread and seed which people had scattered to feed the ducks and swans. I encounter a rat near the place where the river disappears into a culvert. It regards me coolly with whiskers a-twitch before going about its business, in no particular hurry. Being classified as “vermin” and unworthy of humane treatment hasn’t made it hate or fear me. Its forebears spread bubonic plague throughout old Europe. In this moment, looking one another warily in the eye, we’re of equal stature. Sailors once spread syphilis; missionaries once spread the idea of sin and redemption to savages who
were fine without it. As species, neither of us lives on the moral high ground. Brother Rat, this is a live-and-let-live-moment. I wish you and your family well.

I pass through meadows, paths, the alleys between the backyards of suburban houses, and reach the embankment of a disused railway line. Nearby there’s a waste-water treatment plant which collects from a big pipe and pumps effluent into the river. It’s good to see the infrastructure of this town, and I pass all kinds on this walk: red Royal Mail vans, postmen on foot, electricity transformer substations, gas distribution, water, and now sewerage, which I feel moved to photograph. It works for us invisibly, we depend on it: like someone’s idea of God. The sewerage system and all who work on it deserve my gratitude.
———
I’m on a narrow footpath now, beside a bit of river straight like a canal. I’ve been here before, one steaming August day after rain. The wet undergrowth gave out aromatic exhalations, principally from the luxuriant Himalayan balsam, an invasive species which has escaped into the wild. “The aggressive seed dispersal, coupled with high nectar production which attracts pollinators, often allows the Himalayan Balsam to outcompete native plants.” Today it’s warm for mid-November, but riverside weeds are in decline, saving their strength to survive the coming winter.
———
Where was I? The sacred. Locked up like a seed within the pod of superstitions, posturing and corruption, there is something lively and noble in every culture. Never mind the axis of evil. Here, on this fresh morning, in this valley, it seems totally clear that our leaders should talk to Al-Qaeda and Taliban, face to face. Then we’ll discover we are exactly like them. We have our ideas of the sacred, which we feel to be threatened: so do they. Has war any other cause? Enemies should approach one another bearing gifts, ready to listen and be magnanimous. The conflicts would evaporate. That is exactly how the derided “savages” used to do business.
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The footpath takes a zig-zag route through meadows. Then there’s a recreation-ground where dogs take their owners for walks, and lift their legs against goalposts; and now an overgrown alley between backyards and warehouses. The alley debouches into a suburban development of modest houses. In the UK it seems you can’t build over public footpaths, even though you’ve bought the land. The law makes them immortal. There’s one called the Ridgway Path which dates back several thousand years. Only a terrible calamity would erase these footpaths. First to go would be motor-vehicles: supplies of refined oil would be cut.. Then the complex infrastructure: mail, electricity, gas, piped water, sewerage. The supermarkets, presently bursting with food like Christmas every day, would empty and become derelict, their perished remnants left to the
rats. Footpaths will stay, like King Arthur waiting dormant till they are needed to save Britain once more.

One day, clinging to my final breaths, I may wander these neglected paths one last time, bidding them farewell—of course only in memory, if that hasn’t been wiped already.
Whilst I’m getting carried away on this fantasy—footpath as symbol of eternal reality—a couple of elderly ladies approach from the opposite direction. It’s a narrow straight path passing between backyards on either side. There’s something unexpected about their greeting. It seems to carry joy. I am no more ready to commune with “Perfect Strangers” than I would be to meet a favourite great-aunt, long departed, whom one of these ladies fleetingly resembles. I find myself tongue-tied, only able to mumble something conventional; still, I can share their smile. It’s as if we are in church and it’s that point in the liturgy they call The Peace: “The people stand and greet one
another and exchange signs of God’s peace in the name of the Lord.”

It’s like meeting the stranger on the road to Emmaus.

I had no words for those ladies then, just these for you now.