Stephan Harding’s passing has felt quite a body-blow this week.
Our paths have only crossed rarely, but profoundly for me - something about his singular, extraordinary way of taking what could, in different hands, be dry and inscrutable material scientific facts, and flooding them with irresistible, playful, reverent, poetic wonder as he spoke of a world alive with sentience.
It feels the only thing to do to honour Stephan, by coming to River.
He calls this a ‘Gaia place’ - a place that we choose, and/or chooses us, that we develop an intimacy with over time, a window into the heart of Gaia. There are no special requirements of these places, only that they offer connection with the living world, and that we offer them our attention. There was such a lovely gentleness in the way he spoke of these places, and his own specific place.
I have a short window of time today - pressing work commitments thatmake my time here feel, to begin with at least, a little pinched. When I arrive through the overgrown path, the weld that I met here a few weeks earlier has been chopped down, and himalayan balsam is in full orchidlike bloom. Someone is readying to swim at the spot. It’s too awkward to try and explain to them - my hanging around not swimming and muttering quietly and offering the sea stone I’ve brought to Water - so instead I walk to Stroudwater, the canal that is fed by Frome, just twenty metres away. Water is much stiller here, held in a human-excavated channel that has lain largely untouched and without traffic for a long time, slowly becoming wilder.
I begin to walk, but it doesn’t feel still enough. There is a bench, and I sit. I speak quietly words of gratitude and intention, to Life, to Stephan. I notice that when I begin to speak to Kin as Kin, addressing bramble and hemp agrimony and meadowsweet and duck, that my feeling of connection shifts markedly, immediately. I feel a returning to the fold, amongst family, witnessed.
As I quietly talk, holding the stone, my eyes scan what’s before me. The light, water, the opposite bank. My gaze drops gently towards the nearside, just a metre or two from my feet, and I notice that Stroudwater’s edge is ahum with bees, disappearing into flowerheads, reversing back out, lifting off in a whirr of wings. It feels - after a reported summer of national decline in insect presence, and a pervasive grief - full of joy and abundance, suffused with fullness as summer and autumn blur - the mutual thriving of life. In contemplating Stephan, there’s a sense of rightness - his approach to life has a bee-ness to it. Precision in his language, in the landing and pollinating, musicality in the journey between; yielding honeyed richness, sweetness, insight.
It is a joyful thing to watch this small patch of flowers danced over by this humming knot of beings.
I turn. At my back is a huge tangled arm of brambles, dripping fruit. I eat one - just one is enough - it’s not to satisfy hunger, but to gentle welcome wildness in the body, a sacrament.
Fruit, bees, water, fish, light, shadow, quiet, activity.
A life predisposed to Thriving, Pat McCabe says.
The thing we need to do is to fall in love with the Earth, Stephan Harding says.
There is a feeling of thriving here. And love.
I have given enough time that my spot by River is probably empty of humans now, so I walk there. Water is talkative - I feel a tingle of elation hearing the sounds after the relative stillness of Stroudwater. I take some time to witness Water, both of us breathing, murmuring. A little restless twitch surfaces, my brain straining for an encounter, perhaps one of the standout species that move through here, rarely seen; otter, kingfisher, dipper. I smile at the folly of reducing encounter to such limited possibilities, give myself a little mental shake, come back to breathing.
I turn my head from River, and I’m suddenly aware of a presence in trees - there is a dark shape of a bird, a blackbird, on a branch, very clearly watching me. Stock still. We hold each other’s gaze for a few moments. And then with a hop she flies off, making a wide arc around me to the other side of River. I greet her. And then, unexpectedly, another blackbird rises in a flurry of whistling, and then two more, arcing over Water.
I am left in the wake of their wings. My brain roots around for specific meaning, but inside my chest is just a sense of intimacy, of the miracle of being amongst Kin.
I give the stone to Water with gratitude.
There is a hole in the canopy above my Gaia Place, in the shape of a heart.
In gratitude to Stephan Harding.