Water

After a few sunny and warm days, it started to rain the other day as I was walking home. Having been dry, the smell of the rain was suddenly in sharp contrast. Of course, often when a rain storm is coming in from the west we can see the dark clouds rising. We may not be able to predict the exact arrival of the incoming showers but we know that sometime in the near future there is going to be a shower or two. I recently discovered that this smell of the rain and soil mixture is known as the ‘petrichor’ which means the pleasant smell that is released from the ground when the rains come. “Petros’ is the Greek word for ‘rock’ and ‘ichor’ is the fluid that flows through the veins of the gods. So, I suppose, Dear Reader, that this proves yet again that there is nothing new under the sun. If the Ancient Greeks were pondering this aroma a couple of thousand years ago then we cannot claim a new discovery. This early morning experience caused me to think about my relationship with water over the years.

Like so many of us, I have a tendency to seek out water in my leisure hours. I was lucky enough to grow up in a country which is never too far away from the sea. Indeed seaside holidays in the UK were frequent and often. Blackpool and Skegness are but two seaside towns which made their names when working people from the industrial heartlands made their annual escape from the mines and smoke stacks for a chance to breathe a fresher air; an opportunity to have the bracing winds, the invigorating odours of the tangle and brine which we all associate with the sea. I suppose that like so many Brits who grew up on the coast I took the sea for granted. There was, however, one seminal moment in the 1980s when I was at a child’s camp on the Gower Coast on the south coast of Wales.

There I stood as a group of children, few of whom had ever seen the sea, looked out on the vast acreage of sand and surf with wonder and enchantment.  One child stood out. He was a teenager who had had a very tough beginning in life. So much was this so, that his emotions were always in a state of flux, varying between high anxiety and violent anger, possibly one and the same emotion.  A Housemother was also stood watching with me. Eventually she said,

“I think that I am going to buy Eric (name changed) a bucket and spade.”

Eric was given his gift with no instruction as to what to do with it.  He wandered closer to the sea’s edge and started to dig, to build, to explore the texture of the sand, to note the difference between wet and dry. He started to create. He, who was renowned for a lack of attention, a frailty of focus, was rapt. His mates were running about kicking a soccer ball or playing with a Frisbee but Eric was absorbed in his solitary pursuit.

Weekends back at our inland boarding school, Eric was introduced to fishing in the local streams and rivulets. It looked very unlikely that he would ever catch a fish but the absorption for him was complete. He could spend hours casting his line, he could sit and watch the water and never be distracted or bored. He had discovered something that he had really never known before. He had found a missed childhood, he had discovered calm in the trickle of a stream, and a crashing wave on a beach.

Water can do that for people can it not, Dear Friends? We all know of people who sail, people who water ski, people who cruise. People can recreate on the water with vigour and energy, sometimes in a lively group of boisterous bonhomie, often with alcohol imbued frolicking. But there is also the solitary walk to a stream, around a lake, on a seashore, looking up at a waterfall or down at a tidal flat. There too is a peaceful balm for the soul, moments amongst the elements which take us back to an atavistic age that soothed and shaped and eased. Nature can, I believe, wash over us. It can make us feel insignificant, but it can also make us feel part of a bigger picture. It can reduce us to a microcosm but can also make us part of a panoramic beauty.

Children giggling while dodging waves; children skipping flat stones across a still lake; children overturning rocks looking for crabs on a littoral; children dipping their nets into a stream, these are scenes which our ancestors may well have witnessed a millennium ago. Maybe that is where we as adults need to be, elders seeking our better selves by learning from our young. ‘The more things change, the more they stay the same.’

I remember the story of the Greek soldier who had been away for many years fighting in the Persian Wars. He had grown up amongst the islands of Greece. On his journey home from many years away he reached a corner in the road, on coming round the bend he looked down on a sight that was so familiar yet had been absent for so long.

“Thalassa! Thalassa!” He exclaimed with unmitigated joy, “The Sea! The Sea!”

Which of us can really say that water is not the gift of the gods? We are beholden to it as the giver of life itself. It is a gift for our bodies, it is a gift for our soul, it is a gift of sumptuous beauty.

“And you, vast sea, sleepless mother, who alone are peace and freedom to the river and the stream,

Only another winding will this stream make, only another murmur in this glade,

And then shall I come to you, a boundless drop to a boundless ocean.”

                                      Khalil Gibran

Of such simple things, has this pandemic made me think, Dear Reader.