On a hot summer morning during a recent heatwave, I embarked on  a quest to find the source of the River Itchen, since I happened to be in the general area. The River Itchen is a well-known chalk stream in the downlands of Hampshire. I’ve spent many hours and days wandering along the banks over the years enjoying the clear pure water and lush greenness of this fast flowing river. I have an enduring relationship with this beautiful being.

 I thought I would finally seek out  the source of my old friend. For me, I think the original genesis of searching for the source of a river goes back to my youth when I heard of a place nicknamed ‘the blue lagoon’ and then I trespassed to find this fabled site somewhere in rural Berkshire. It turned out to be the source of another chalk stream and was a deep pool – blue from its considerable clear depth of several meters – and  the sandy bottom danced from water bubbling up through it from beneath.

I was amazed and awed by this sight though I could never find it again in adulthood when I searched. So it became a kind of mythical place for me and I’ve even wondered if maybe I dreamed the whole thing.

So here I’ve ended up on this hot day, searching and climbing the rolling chalk hills of Hampshire, and it’s very dry up here in high summer. There’s a dusty path, studded with nuggets of flint; when whole and embedded in the chalk, they’re smooth, but when cracked open, they are sharp and quite beautiful like geodes.

As  I crunch along the path, by the verge there’s voluminous  ladies’ bedstraw, the frothy yellow flowers scenting the path with their fragrance.

Passing a hilltop copse of beech trees, there’s a piercing cry from the copse that at first I don’t recognize, then I see it’s a red kite calling from its high nest, probably a little alarmed at my presence down below.

There hasn’t been much rain this summer, and so the grass is straw-like and dry on the open hills. Enormous wheat fields stretch across the landscape, not yet golden, more a washed out yellow.

 I’m navigating by my traditional Ordinance  Survey map which marks the source of the River Itchen, though there are no signposts on the ground to show the springs from where it emerges. It’s actually not easy to find and it doesn’t appear like many people search for the source.

But for me I would say this is a kind of spiritual quest, a personal journey akin to finding my source, the river source, the Source. 

Chalk streams are quite a rare global phenomenon. They are very pure water, because they result from rain falling on chalk land and sinking down through the naturally very porous chalk and being cleansed over long periods of time. 

Chalk aquifers form underground, acting like sponges and the pristine water then emerges down in the valleys as springs. So the water is very clean and unusually the flow and temperature remain fairly constant throughout the seasons, and mildly alkaline with rich biodiversity.

After quite a trek, I trudge down the hillside, seeing rich greenness in the valley below, so there’s definitely moisture there, indicating  where the source might be. But I can’t actually see any water. I come to the site of a pond in a little wood, marked on my map, which is apparently one of the triple spring sources of the river.  There’s no visible water, just a lush green abundance of water cress and water mint growing profusely and covering up the source. It’s  the same in the nearby field where there are two very green circular patches of lush summer vegetation covering where the two other springs well up.

Just a very short way downstream, a hundred  meters or so, the waters emerge as a small lively brook, gin clear with a stream bed of stones and gravel, with those fragments of flint and crystalline water; only a small rippling stream at this point with glancing sunlight rippling on the surface.

Finding the source is in a certain way finding myself;  I’ve always felt somehow entwined with rivers and particularly this river.  It’s as if the spring welling up out of the ground is the fountainhead, the source of creativity; clear water and clear mind feel akin; water is life, and we humans are largely water too.

I’m reminded of an ancient Chinese poem about this very subject:

Clear Creek Chant

It renders the mind clear – Clear Creek,

its water unrivalled for such pure colour.

I can gaze into the bottom of its always

 fresh repose. Is there anything like this

 brilliant mirror in which people walk?……

Li Po 701 – 762

 Li Po, a Chinese poet, was renowned for his felt sense of belonging to the wild processes of earth. What particularly inspires me from these ancient poets is their deliberate merging of the self and ‘the ten thousand things’ (meaning all phenomena). They saw that the self too is another part of nature, also selfless. This weaving of the movements of self into the fabric of the ten thousand things to become the ‘interiorisation of wilderness’ was to  become a distinctive theme of later Sung dynasty poetry.

 This resonates deeply in my being and river and self and source are intertwined. Relaxing my sense of identity into the whole lifeworld, I’m flowing as the stream. As I’ve said before, I’m most definitely rivered.

My quest fulfilled, and with gratitude to the river, I ascend the dry hills again, returning home, yet feeling I have found home here too.

Downstream, the Itchen becomes swollen by various springs and tributaries, and it is quite a largish river by the time it reaches the ocean.

The river Itchen I’m most  familiar with is wide and full, crystal clear with impossibly lime green, luxurious water crowfoot weeds swaying in the current; the  long weedy tresses looking  like some Pre-Raphaelite painting. Here mayflies dance and trout and grayling hang in the flow waiting for passing food to be brought to them by the current.

The River Itchen