I am trying to work out what it means to live here, in this village in Devon; to plant my feet rather than wander, to arrive where I am. It’s a way of being that author-farmer-poet Wendell Berry talks about:
And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home.
The word ‘arrive’ has its etymological roots in the idea of reaching land at the end of a long voyage. I want to reach this land, where we are, after my own voyage of sorts. Berry goes on:
“…as [the land’s] sounds come into his hearing, and its lights and colors come into his vision, and its odors come into his nostrils, then he may come into its presence as he never has before, and he will arrive in his place and will want to remain. His life will grow out of the ground like the other lives of the place, and take its place among them.”
Lately though, it has felt hard to arrive, to come into the presence of the other lives of this place. First, the rain here in this hilly green patch of land has been so relentless, the grey gloom so totally engulfing, that I have felt unable to take my place among the other lives here because I have felt so completely cut off from them. I look up through the skylights and a heavy grey blanket presses down, I look across to the fields and a wall of rain pushes in, I look out to our small garden and the mud and puddles rise up. This, coupled with the often-aloneness of being a new mum, has worked to make me feel suspended in a soggy blob of existence. The village baby group was mothballed for lack of numbers, so I bundle baby into the car and drive to our nearest town, or beyond to the city, to get out of the house, out of the rain, and to connect with other mums. But in doing so, I feel as if our village loses a bit of me, and a bit of the future.
Second, I am not like the people here. They farm, I don’t. They have an accent, I never did. They read the landscape using names and history, I use an OS map and walking. I had no ties to this village before we moved here, no generations of hands and roots and stories to be held by. My maternal family is from Devon, going back at least hundreds of years, but my husband and I are transplants to this particular village. I enjoy these differences, I need them and grow with them, but it can sometimes feel like being the newbie in a group of already-friends, the late arrival to a meeting that’s already started — like everyone else has the intimacy of time and shared experience and we need to play catch up.
And so I have been thinking about how to arrive, about how to root into and grow out of this ground, to take my place among the lives here. Here’s a few of my notes to self, a sort of diary entry of arrival:
Parish magazines can be dusty, and bursting with bad Clipart, but in my experience they are also brimming with people and passion, with oddness and opportunities. They connect people, they are hyper-local slow journalism. I write, so I will write something for our Parish magazine — perhaps about who I am, about what I might contribute to this place.
Local civic engagement has always been important, but I think it will become increasingly so. As the climate rapidly worsens, and as faceless corporations try to convince us we need what they sell more than we need each other, I think it’ll be important to reclaim local economies, local governance, and local decision-making. I’ve been a District Councillor, I’ve seen the ways that language and process and tradition can be used to bring people together or shut them out. I will share what I know, and try in some small way to help with community-building and placemaking at a time when these things feel threatened.
There are mums here. We need that mothballed baby group to be brought back to life. This is something I can help to do.
Though I grew up in Devon, I never had the local accent. But I love the softness of it, the way ‘r’ rolls like the local hills, the way inanimate objects are referred to as ‘him’ or ‘her’, as if local people know something others don’t about what animacy really means. I can’t use my accent to cry belonging, but I can use my listening. Listening to the ache and hope of generations of ancestors who have lived here; listening to local stories and strengths and challenges, offering mine in return, weaving our stories together. I will hold up what I hear so that it sings. I will try, as the late poet Mary Oliver instructs, to ‘pay attention, be astonished, tell about it.’
When my husband and I have lived in cities, it’s been easy to find likeminded people. We all hung out in predictable places, we spoke a similar cultural language, our senses of humour matched. We generally shared a particular view on the world. Our neighbours here are not likeminded, but they are likelocated, and we are learning how to be amongst them. The root of the word ‘neighbour’ speaks of dwelling, of being, of growing. My friends help me to grow, but my neighbours do to — the ones I get on with, and the ones I don’t. Author Alistair McIntosh once told my husband that his father would say “I don’t like that person, I must get to know him better”. Being here, I find out more about who I am by encountering who I am not. Being here, I miss my scattered old friends but I am deepening into new local relationships. I will try to know, and to allow myself to be known. It is hard, but I am finding out much about myself too.
Our village has its own rhythms and rituals. I am tired of living to the rhythms of fast capitalist time; I want to send roots and connections down into the soil, and across to others, to steady myself in this shaking and speeding world. I want to see whether more consciously turning to these rhythms and rituals — traditions, seasonal soil practices, calendars of land and liturgy — will help me to do so.
I sometimes think about the bit in Genesis where God, looking for Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden*, asks them “where are you?”. I think it’s a question many of us are being asked today.
“Where are you?”
I want to be able to answer, here, fully, in this imperfect place where I stand. I’ll share how I get on in the coming months.
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With love,
Elizabeth
*an image of God walking around a garden, looking for companions with which to bask in the improbable wonder of the created world, is how I often think of God.
You’ve stumbled on that elemental other sense of being which exists in the quiet rural backwaters - like hidden connective tissue linking inhabitants with their shared past, with the elderly still quietly grieving over the loss of its surety and constancy while the next generation have only an echo of that to understand and express; but it’s there.
Animacy (Yes, thank you) that has gone but has been witnessed in and around the parish - very strong. To the outsider the long term inhabitant seems sometimes strange and reluctant to talk / semi unintelligible but it’s just that they give a weight to other ways of being alive In the countryside as imprinted from their early years and probably think that that would not be understood.
The village’s hinterland which was once a playground in the natural world is now all but segregated because of modern farming and the moats the land now stands behind.
“Where are you?” like Delia Smith’s exhortation to a Norwich City FC crowd.
How do we animate ourselves to express the losses.
Village life for a newcomer - tricky so tricky but you no doubt have just the qualities needed to become much more than just accepted!
Excellent piece, Elizabeth. Positive and practical, too. Often ‘outsiders’ make things happen - at least, that’s been my experience of the two smaller villages I’ve lived in. We live in a village of 300 souls with no pub (closed) and no playing field (now grazed). The children do not know each other because they all go to different schools by bus or car, and speak to their friends online. I was going to do a monthly family pub games night in the village hall but then the pandemic came and Ive not got round to it since. I think (but am unsure) there are two mums with children under 2. What I do know is that there is one older lady, nearly 80, but with the energy of a 25-year-old, who has lived here more than 40 years. Her unhappy experience of being an outsider arriving here has made her the most brilliant connector of people. She welcomes all new arrivals and connects / matches them to relevant residents. She’s like the village fairy godmother - and the glue that cements the community.