“Knowing where and who are intimately linked.”
Gary Snyder
My favourite spot to sit is on my garden bench at my allotment, shrouded by creepers and thorn bushes and sheltered above year round by a big evergreen bay tree. Behind me, through the thick undergrowth, are the fields of the urban farm where the allotment is sited, which lends a curiously rural feel to a very inner city location.
Here I come and sit, winter and summer, amidst the local more-than-human life, having made the transition over time from being a guest or traveller into becoming an inhabitant. I don’t see myself as being an observer but more an integral part of this little scene, absorbed into the undergrowth, my feet rooted to the earth below. The world of the clock doesn’t hold sway here; time is the arc of the sun, and the flow of the seasons. The past is under my feet and the future is the horizon beyond the poplar trees opposite. I have a couple of beautiful silver birch rounds next to me which serve as tables and I watch them elegantly decaying over the years as the wood softens and rots and fungi and woodlife proliferate. And I love the rich evergreen-ness of the ivy which clothes the ground and coils up the branches; it’s almost as if you can see it growing out of your peripheral vision.
In the summer sun I get baked sitting on my bench, while in the depths of winter I get frozen, yet it never seems to matter; it’s just how it is, and I love the moods and sensations of the changing seasons. It’s a small spot, a tiny nook with a limited view ahead: just of my allotment plot and a patch of sky, all bounded by the big poplar trees, which are forever sensitive to each breath of wind. So it’s nothing special, it could be anywhere. Yet in simply being present here regularly through the seasons, it becomes everywhere. You have to become known to the local landscape for it to gradually accept you and thereby allow the resumption of a long lost conversation enjoyed in bygone times when we humans had not yet turned away.
For me it’s a portal into communion with the whole more-than-human world; I find it a wondrous phenomenon how being simply present with the seemingly mundane particulars, gives rise to an opening out into something much more universal. The quite ordinary becomes extraordinary. Of course it’s possible to feel at home anywhere but I’m writing about a particular sense of at homeness in an extremely local area that one has known intimately over years; it’s particular, and I think deeper and more layered. It’s the power of place.
My local robins approach fearlessly to say hello and to check if I’m disturbing any worms or other interesting insects for them to pounce on – lumbering herbivore that I am to the robin. The robins often perch on small branches close to me at about eye height, which doesn’t seem coincidental since they do engage me by direct eye contact. From above my head in the tangle of branches comes the high pitched twittering of the charm of goldfinches, who invariably hang out there chattering amongst themselves. And there are always great and blue tits darting about around me. I put out bird feeders with sunflower seeds all winter for the birds. Sitting quietly and regularly, fellow beings come to regard me as part of the landscape. I sink into the surroundings silently though I talk gently to the birds and animals that notice me, which seems to put them at ease; speaking in my natural language, English, conveys by tone and feeling that I am friendly and mean no harm. A beautiful little mouse often busies himself in the ivy at my feet, quite unconcerned.
The allotment plots in front of my bench are designated for growing produce and I interpret that through a sense of responsibility for my local community, though one not limited to fellow two-leggeds. Hence growing for all beings: veggies for humans; a succession of nectar rich flowers for pollinators throughout the year; a pond to drink and bathe from and provide aquatic habitat; a careful untidiness and mess to support more life; nesting boxes, bird feeders; no pesticides or fertilisers and no digging of the soil to disturb the soil ecosystem.
My regular foxes often come and visit as they pass through the convenient hole in the boundary fence on my plot. I sometimes put out food for them dosed with medicine to treat the mange that is so common in urban foxes. The foxes keep a respectful short distance away but they are not scared unless I inadvertently surprise them. One day I came upon a fox curled up just like a cat next to my shed right by my bench. I was quiet, not wanting to surprise the fox from her sleep. Only after a little did I realise that the fox was dead and must have come to my plot to curl up and go to sleep, not awakening. There was no obvious injury and so I respectfully buried the fox, greatly moved that she chose my little spot for her final resting place; and this was in the early days of my time in this place, before I thought I’d established a relationship with the foxes.
Right in front of my sitting bench is the small pond I dug, which serves as the local watering hole as well as for bathing. Throughout the year, a procession of birds come to drink and to bathe, sometimes queueing up, and I provide a shallow end with rocks to perch on for this purpose. The foxes trample down the marsh plants next to the pond from repeated visits to drink but this doesn’t deter the newts and frogs who miraculously appear in the pond in Spring, having obviously somehow found their own way to this little speck of water. In the Spring, a blackcap sings sweetly from his territorial perch in the thorn tree above my head, and he and his mate are often to be found having an afternoon bath in the pond. In winter, always sometime in January, I look out for the flocks of redwings that begin to appear on the allotment and surrounding fields and they stay with us until the end of winter before returning to Russia or Scandinavia.
Although I can usually hear the sound of construction work and passing trains and traffic in the background, the greenery and life here makes this into a health giving refuge. When I leave for the nearby busy street, my steps are firmly planted on the ground, a part of the landscape, and I am regenerated. It’s a journey of reinhabitation, through the entryway of a loved particular place, allowing oneself very gradually over time to begin to converse again with the wider cosmos.
