As far as I can see in all directions, there stretches an endless expanse of marsh and  lagoons. I’m completely alone in the conventional sense that there are no other people around, though I feel enveloped in the myriad rich life of the marshes. There is the vast curve of the horizon forming a perfect 360 degree circle. It’s unusually still with no breeze and reflections are mirror perfect. I’m initially disoriented by what appears to be the branching roots of a tree on display as if uprooted and brushed free from soil. But then I realise I’m looking at its reflection in the water, which is far clearer than the actual tree branches which are backdropped by the rough grassland.

An urge for wildness and space builds up in me when I’ve been too long without respite in the city and I have to get out. Winter is turning into spring and convalescence from illness has kept me from the wilds for much of this winter. I’m keen to visit these marshes before many of the winter inhabitants leave to migrate back to arctic climes with the advent of spring. 

Right away I come face to face with a beautiful short eared owl perched on a low bush. Unusually among owls, who are generally  nocturnal, these are day time hunters of voles. She turns her head with that extraordinary owl swivel of her full moon face and we are held in each other’s gaze for quite a while. We are both subjects, each with our own desire for life and point of view; she has her own subjective appraisal of me, as I do of her. I don’t want to disturb her and I remain statue still, projecting friendly intentions. Huge attentive eyes, with large pupils; binocular vision like us, with eyes facing forward. She is the spirit of the winter marshes; the marshes wouldn’t fully be the marshes without this expression of life fulfilling the cold expanses. Short eared owls are emblematic beings who I always love to meet again before they wing their way north across the North Sea to Scandinavia as we move into Spring.

Short Eared Owl

Flocks of Brent geese are continually winging overhead, conversing in soft honks as they look for ponds to land in, and somehow the collective will of the flock decides exactly where everyone lands. Nothing stirs the soul like wild geese. These small geese, scarcely bigger than a Mallard, are feeding and resting all over the marshes, many hundreds of them. They too will soon be taking to the air for their long migration back to the arctic tundra of Siberia and Russia, where they spend the summer.

Then I become aware of an almost constant ethereal sound all around, the ambience emanating from the sky. It takes me a while of squinting up into the heavens to see the Skylarks singing their hearts out in spring ecstasy. Now I can follow their fluttering ascent and the crescendo of song filling the air, before they glide back down to terra firma. I am transfixed and enter into the ecstasy of these ‘ethereal minstrels, pilgrims of the sky,’ as Wordsworth termed them.

I’m wandering on this bare island in the Thames estuary which used to be farmland before the sea started to break through the sea walls and reclaim it back to its ancestral realm. These lands were originally marshland with all the fecundity that such interstitial zones between water and land are blessed with. Rather than fight a losing battle with rising sea levels, a conservation charity (RSPB) bought the land and arranged for all the soil dug out from boring tunnels for London’s new Crossrail transport system, to be ferried by barge down the Thames and spread out over this land. A few years later, you wouldn’t realise this at all, since the marsh, islands and rough grassland are now returned to much like they would have been for thousands of years in the past. This project demonstrates how rewilding and regeneration can really work: from a large area of soggy farmland fighting a losing battle with the rising sea, to a living tapestry which this last December, according to a bird count, held 38,000 wildfowl. 

I watch two hares on their hind legs boxing: the classic Mad March Hares. It’s striking how large they are compared to rabbits, and with their powerful long back legs, their gait is more akin to a kangaroo than their cousins. 

The sky is moody and unlimited: one moment brooding clouds threaten a downpour in the distance, while the next moment, thin sunshine breaks through to illuminate a precise area like a spotlight. My mood tends to follow and change with the weather. I walk for miles with distance being deceptive, there being no landmarks, and it’s bliss being lost.

Here I am out in the elements though I think it may be more accurate to say, being out in the changing phases of existence. The ancient Chinese placed great significance on the 5 Elements and interestingly, it is acknowledged now that ‘phases’ is a more accurate translation of ‘elements’ from the Chinese. Out here it seems to make sense: sky, air, clouds, water, earth, are all interrelated and interchangeable phases; part of a living process rather than discrete objects or elements.

I’m reminded of Rilke’s poem:

Ah, not to be cut off,
not through the slightest partition
shut out from the law of the stars.
The inner—what is it?
if not intensified sky,
hurled through with birds and deep
with the winds of homecoming.
I wend my way out of the marshes after some hours of existential freedom from any limitation on the horizon of my vision; my spirit replenished and reconnected with the greater life. The inner is the outer and the outer the inner.