Day thirty-three

2nd June 2009 ENGLAND

The untangling of rainbows

I again wake up in a warm bed, under the covers of that impossible script… a script where a raggedy guy can turn up someplace and be given a place to stay the night, a hot meal, a chance of a shower… a script where cafes (as well as pubs) welcome penniless strangers with tea and cake. I don’t know if this walk was ever meant to be that easy. When I left my home and family, I was no more than a redundant truck driver, in the company of strangers or not, kicking stones along quiet mountains tracks, woodland trails and country lanes. Heading south. I do declare, there were times when the legs were all but done, the blisters rubbing and the belly empty. I took comfort in those I had met, the generosity of strangers…

…yeah that was me, a truck driver that had climbed out the cab of his truck and picked up a bag… a trucker becomes a walker… I guess, I figured it was time to take a walk… be it in the rain or sunshine it didn’t really matter… it felt like I needed to take a closer look at what it’s all for… yeah, I’m walking, but the truck driver still remains. …’Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie’.

Downstairs Janice has breakfast on the go, the table laid out real nice, I am greeted with a “Help yourself to coffee, did you sleep ok”. “Yes, thank you… really thank you, it was incredibly kind of you to have taken me in”. Bill walks in “not at all”. I felt every bit at home… over breakfast we talk about this and that and about what it is to have a faith. It was kinda nice to talk freely about stuff that many times we stay away from. After a second coffee, boots are back on. At the front door I am given a packed lunch to take with me. “Wow, thank you so much”. I tell them both that this adventure may be mine, but the story of this adventure is not… that belongs to the many incredible people that I have met on this journey… they are the guys that are responsible for putting together this impossible script… for sure it wasn’t me.

A handful of miles out from the small village of Cookhill I am back on smaller roads, in a wide-open landscape, fields as far as the eye can see… the sky above is a little overcast, but I think no rain… the air is still, the land is quiet apart from the occasional bird calling out “look at me look at me”… and I do. I feel at ease with the world… a sense of peace… one of those moments when you lock your fingers behind your head, close your eyes, turn full circle and breath in deeply the miracle of life.

When behind the wheel of a truck or rumbling along in a train through the British countryside, your head half listening to some debate on the radio and half looking from behind glass at the fields that pass by, it becomes easy to think one part of this island is very much like another… not at all. The topography of these islands is incredibly diverse… beyond the patchwork of fields there are rugged mountains, rolling hills, heathland, remote moorlands, and marshes, wide river valleys, glacial lakes, bubbling streams, woodlands and ancient forests, a huge variety of different coastlines. I’m pretty sure there are people out there… clever people, that could tell you where it is they are on this island not by looking at a map or sitting behind glass but by standing on the edge of a field, picking up a handful of soil… observing at what is, and what is not growing on the side of a lane, looking at both the stones and style used in the making of a drystone wall… and then lifting their eyes beyond that wall at the wider landscape… what kind of crops are being grown in the fields around them, do they see any sheep or cattle and if so, what breeds are they… the architecture of a church in the near distance, is it Anglo-Saxon or Norman… high up in the sky hundreds of geese in ‘V’ shaped formations fly on migration routes that are older than the trees below them… younger than the mountains, and what of those mountains on the horizon… are they rugged or gentle… maybe there are no hills at all to be seen. 

I kid myself, that after this walk is done and then after three years at Oatridge College studying ‘Countryside Management’, that I to would be among those ‘clever people’ … I laugh at myself… I’m thinking after three years at college, I will probably be just as daft as I am now… yeah ok, hopefully I will have a slightly better insight into this island that I am walking through… but also clever enough to know that it would take the experience of half a lifetime to be able to read the land as those that have worked that land or the scholars and professors that have devoted their lives in the many different academic fields (pun intended) in order to understand better what makes this island the island that it is today…

… I wonder if I would know where it is I am if I didn’t have a map in my side pocket... I kick a stone (some kind of limestone I think)… the force of the kick lifts the stone up and into a forward motion, as the initial force of that kick begins to fade, gravitational forces start to take over and the stone falls back to the ground… hmm, the only place that I know where limestone exists and the gravity is of that measure (not to strong and not to weak) is on the third rock from the sun… I’d have it guess, I’m on planet Earth… clever me aye… and still the truck driver is a truck drive, for a’ that…

A couple of hours into the walk I stumble across Ellenden Farm Shop, I am given a mug of tea. “Thank you”. I sit outside… that Earth spins and the sun shifts a little, there’s a tiny bit of rainbow stuck in a cloud, it looks like a shard of broken stained glass that had fallen from heaven and got tangled up before hitting the ground… yeah I know, I know I’m a truck driver, not a poet (best stick to what I know)… besides science untangled the mystery of rainbows many many years ago… explaining how it is sunlight reflects off the inside of a rain drop and how the different wavelengths of colour get separate. I think to describing a rainbow poetically or scientifically, takes nothing away from its wonder. That I think can be said for the wider creation… the more we understand how this world (and the universe beyond) works the more incredible, mystical and beautiful it becomes. There is something to be said of that Biblical verse in the book of Romans ‘For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – His eternal power and divine nature have clearly been seen…’

… That verse finishes telling us ‘… that men are without excuse’. I take my now empty cup back into the farm shop and again say thank you and in return a big smile and a “You take care”… “Will do”. Bag over one shoulder and collar turned up (not against the cold and damp… just me kidding myself that I look cool). I turn to the road that leads into Evesham and in my head that verse from Romans still knocking around… I want to somehow stand it up against that pencil I keep letting gravity get a hold of.

In the early afternoon I walk into the medieval town of Evesham; this little market town makes you feel like you’re stepping back in time. A part of me is expecting to bump into my old pal Ebenezer… only I don’t. Apparently the place is named after a swine herder by the name of Eof who used to work for the bishop of Worcester back in the eighth century (Eof-ham)… the old word ‘homme’ or ‘ham’ can many times mean ‘home’, but in this part of England can also mean land that sits in the bend of a river… in this case the River Avon.

I stop at the marketplace find a bench and dig out the packed lunch that was given to me this morning by Janice. The sky is still a little overcast, sunlight is pushing through where it can… it’s not raining, which I guess is good. The ham sandwich is also good… I say a quiet thank you to both Janice and Bill, not sure why but also say thanks to Eof, the pig guy from a thousand plus years ago.

Today the plan is to finish in a town called Winchcombe… I forgot to mention, I have a place to stay tonight, I know the guy, but not very well, his name is Andrew, a film maker and musician (Wha… I wish I could pick up a guitar or sit down at a piano… I guess it was never meant to be, any road, that’s by and by). Andrew had picked up on the short blog I had been writing at the end of each day and had invited me to stay with his family. The day has a different feel to it when you know that you have a place to stay.

I’ve managed to stay away from the major roads pretty much all day. Three or four miles out of Eofham I walk into the small village of Sedgeberrow, on the corner of a crossroads there’s a Pub called ‘The Queens Head’, I step inside. The guy behind the bar adds a couple more lines to that impossible script… I am sat in the bar with a mug of tea and another sandwich (cheese and onion), Thank you. I don’t know why Ebenezer comes to mind… no not Ebenezer, more his creator, Charles Dickens. When picking up one of his many books, it’s not long before your lost in a Dickensian world, our imagination re-creating the cobbled streets of London, the stench and despair of a workhouse, the miserable life of a child lost to an orphanage, the putting faces to fictional characters… Fagin, Mr Bumble, Esther Summerson, Oliver Twist, Nancy, David Copperfield, Pip, Nicholas Nickleby, Jacob Marley not forgetting Scrooge. Do this and we create a world that can feel just as real to us as the world we live in today. Be it in this world or in the world of Dickens… we don’t get to see the author, the creator… Charles Dickens the person, cannot be found in his own novels…he is invisible, and yet he is responsible for every page, every chapter, every sentence, every word, every full stop and comma that exist in his books (his creation)… it is only through studying his body of work (his novels), that we come to know better the man himself. I believe the same can be said of this world, when somebody says, “Show me God”, it’s not possible to point a finger and say “There He is, over there”… It is in the hidden fingerprints behind all of creation that we find God… His invisible qualities, eternal power and divine nature… His full stops and comma’s…

I take my plate and mug back up to the bar and again say “thank you”. The barman (I’m annoyed I don’t have his name written down in my diary) reaches over the bar and shakes my hand, wishes me well. And that is me back on the road. I know that I have said before that I see myself as a bit of a mountain kinda guy… and I guess in part I am, and yet at the same time I feel very much that I belong in this landscape that I am walking through… there are no mountains here, I see a few hills in the distance… underfoot the lay of the land feels more like a ruffled tablecloth, very much an arable landscape, with small woodlands and farm steadings scattered all around.

On the outskirts of Winchcombe a lady in her garden says “Hello” and asks me where it is I have come from and where it is I am heading, I stop and we talk. Her name is Elaina, in the garden she has a small crowd of friends sat around a table, with drinks, snacks and sandwiches… I am invited to come in and share my story, to have a tea and a sandwich. It was a really nice and unexpected half an hour.

Half an hour later at around about six o’clock, I arrive at the home of Andrew and Ingrid. I am welcomed as if I was family… shown a bedroom, told dinner would be ready before seven and that I was to grab a shower and bring any washing down. And after a really nice family dinner… the food was good, proper good, but it was the family that made the dinner special. Andrew takes me to a Pub (The Mount Inn) in the small village of Stanton in the middle of the Cotswolds… both village and Pub were pretty special, from a by-gone time… if Charles Dickens had walked in, he would not have been out of place. It was Pip from behind the bar, that served us our coke and peanuts… not the Pip from the novel ‘Great Expectation’… but a local lass that just happened to be called Pip… how uncanny was that.

That night laying in bed, I think of the two authors that I had spoken of today… I wonder if Charles Dickens appreciated me taking Ebenezer away from the novel ‘Christmas Carol’ and sticking him alongside David Attenborough on stage at the Live Aid concert in Wembley… probably not…

… and what of God, I believe God created us to be co-authors (…co-creators, made in His image, that’s my understanding). We marvel at the wonders of this universe… the diversity of life found on that third rock from the sun… the miracle of truth, of beauty and the power of love… I wonder did God smile when we untangled the mystery of a rainbow…

… and what of our contribution to the story… did God look in wonder at the incredible cathedrals we had built from stone… was He moved by the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (or maybe the Rolling Stones)… did God ever untangle the offside rule in that beautiful game of football that we had created or bite his lip when he saw an impossible smile.