Notes from August.
There is a mixture of pleasant nostalgia tinged with a melancholy wistfulness in finding pockets or shoes full of sand, weeks after returning home. Especially to our home, almost as far away from any sea as it’s possible to get in the UK. Finding the little pebbles and shells I tucked away is a little solid reminder of a summer well spent. As well as a reminder that summer is now drawing to an end. (And we’re still waiting for that sunshine!)
The once lush undergrowth is beginning to die back and dry out, now tangled and matted like unkempt hair. The flowers of the creeping thistle all over the Peak have faded and exploded into puffs of seed, dragged through leaves and branches by the wind, reminiscent of candy floss.
All of these are hints and whispers of a new season breaking in. One morning late in August, I wake to a certain quality in the air, a cool edge with a fresh scent. It’s coming. And it’s hard not to feel the pressure I should be starting to think about changing gear.
But I don’t quite feel ready for that change of pace. I’m not quite in full grasp of equilibrium yet. Usually, walking is the place where I am soothed back from whichever corners I’ve let my mind get lost in. But there is a stiffness in my legs and a restlessness in my mind that resists settling to the rhythm of my feet on the earth. Processing change – past, present and future. The small griefs and new routines of the last eighteen months. Familiar, comforting places are starting to feel claustrophobic. Things have changed, and I have changed, and being there seems to drag me back to places I have moved on from.
When I have the time and energy (and inclination) I find new paths to walk, in an effort to break the lethargy that has crept into my legs and emotions, trying to coax my mind to move with my body. I tug at stubborn blackberries along the way, small and tart on my tongue. Too impatient to wait for them to ripen.
I make a mental treasure map of the hedgerows, noting where berries are so that I can return. They are heavy with fruit: blackberries, elderberries, hawthorn berries, sloes and rosehips. Within a week I can’t resist helping myself, stopping every few steps to pop another juicy blackberry into my mouth. Now sweet, and as if they have taken on the flavour of the forest itself.
But it’s the pockets full of sloes that are hardest won. They gather in little clusters, crouching underneath their leaves like umbrellas. I learn to train my eye to see the shape of the blackthorn leaves, instead of trying to seek out the almost invisible silvery flashes of purple. Suddenly they appear, one after the other, my eyes catching them faster than I pick.
Now, tucked away in my pantry is a kilner jar of sloe gin, waiting for when the nights have long drawn in and the hedgerows are bare. We’ll take a sip from between gloved hands and taste these late summer weeks. And I can’t help but feel a little excited.
