Living Hope

Reflections from the River: a 100 mile pilgrimage from Source(s) to Sea (Chapter 2: Living Hope)

The personal and political reflections from this epic journey with the River Avon are summarised in 3 parts/themes, with different contributions weaving into each step of the journey.

Part 1: Gratitude & Grief

Part 2: Living Hope (this post)

Part 3: Action

Part 2 of the Avon pilgrimage had a completely different feel, landscape and flow to it. The river noticeably changing and shifting as it gathered ever more momentum through the watershed, being joined by major tributaries and springs in this movement of movements. A key realisation during this stretch of river was just how many beings are touched by the river in this valley. The Avon is the beating heart and lifeforce of the region, whether we are aware of it or not. All of our initial settlement as humans, our early industry, floodplain farming and culture was based upon the waterways. We still rely on them at least as much, but have been distanced from this daily connection, and thus taken it for granted. We’ve been on a separation journey as a species, forgetting who we are and we must embark on the greatest pilgrimage of all, a return movement back to source, homecoming back to the same place with new eyes.  

Days 3 (Chippenham to Melksham), 4 (to Bradford on Avon) and 5 (to Bath)

This stretch of the river was completely unknown to me before day 3, and seemingly sparsely traversed by others as we came across only a handful of people between the two river towns of Chippenham and Melksham. This day felt like a day of flow, ease and belonging. After a heavy and hard first 2 days, I suddenly felt more lightness on my blistered feet, with generally easier paths on grassy fields, shorter mileage and a newfound gentle rhythm to my walking, one step in front of the other – I felt like I could walk every day for years, and how simple and grounding this would be. We can all be daily earth pilgrims and integrate this walking philosophy into daily life, taking steps each day, taking pauses to observe and interact, relate authentically on route, and go about our simple daily steps with great love. On day 3 I had the joy to walk with my own source, my mother, mother my other, my otter. For many years she had the quote below on the wall of her narrowboat home which I would read every time I passed it. Mum (Julia) and her friend Sally have also traversed this river Avon path many times and written a chapter on each stage of the journey, looking at the natural sources, flows and histories of each place, and this was great inspiration for my own journey of homecoming and belonging.

Hamish and his mum Julia with the source water, carrying it on day 3 from Chippenham to Melksham

This chapter of Avon was full of thresholds, transformations and paradoxes, underpinned by the theme of re-birth. Like the caterpillars journey towards a butterfly this necessitates a breaking down to breakthrough. We must embark on this both personally and collectively, to realise the state of todays world, feel into the grief and truth of today, of the state of our rivers, our human disconnect and our damaged ecologies. And we must breakthrough this, on a homecoming journey back to our roots, stepping back to our sources whilst stepping forwards into living hope and radical trust in life’s regeneration story that we are part of. There’s a great alchemy and rebirth process in pilgrimage, and this was symbolised through the route by magical Ash tree portals, Willow mazes (the Celtic symbols of rebirth) and giant hollow Oaks (from which pilgrim Dan disappeared into and was rebirthed from! Video on We Are Avon instagram). The river is continually rebirthing, holding incredible power to heal and transform with such ease and flow; it strikes me how she helps us to do the same through various forms of environmental arts therapy, and the physical/spiritual power of cold water immersion. On the rebirth theme we also had our youngest pilgrim join for this stretch, baby Rowan at 5 weeks old joined us on this intergenerational pilgrimage alongside human elders of 80+ years and Oak elders of 800+ years. Thinking like an Oak, we marvelled at the ancientness of this ancestral path we walked along Avon’s banks, and wondered how Rowan might interact with the river when he is 80.

5 week old pilgrim Rowan in Mother Hannah's arms under the 800+ year old Oak

Pilgrims exploring Oak portals and doorways

Day 4 followed a similarly flowing and enchanting day, heading from Melksham to Bradford on Avon after a beautiful night asleep by Avon’s banks. Walking with new friend and fellow pilgrim Mark we wondered and marvelled at the magnificence of this hidden stretch of Avon. Surprisingly large and abundant stretches of the Avon were being restored and reforested, by a combination of farmers, conservationists and beavers! Signs of living hope breathed new life into Avon and the effects were visible in her flow and clarity. We crossed (through leaping, wading and tumbling) so many tributaries and streams feeding into Avon, realising the watershed of voices that feed into this river - this flowing movement has so many sources beyond our understanding. A lifetime could be spent discovering and mapping; we spent a day simply marvelling and enjoying these expressions of life.

This wonder and re-enchantment with life was of course interspersed with the regular sewage outflows, industrial agricultural run-off and a giant Nestle factory. The huge factory built on top of and all around the Avon was a symbol of the domination, extraction and control that the industrial era imposed on our river and on the colonised peoples (of both this place and across the globe). The dark histories of colonisation, industry and wartime has shaped these riverside towns and our whole catchment area; the rivers journey is intertwined with global trade, politics and economics. The Nestle / General Mills factory was initially built to mass produce condensed milk in wartime England, and this had a dramatic impact on the landscape both directly and indirectly. Directly, through the vast levels of pollution, infrastructure, emissions and extraction. Indirectly through the impact on the region’s farms and farmers.

CPW , a joint venture of Nestle and General Mills, dominates the Avon the the wider landscape/food system (Staverton, day 4)

Through market forces large swathes of the countryside became industrial production units for the nestle factory and wartime demand, leading to a shift away from traditional mixed farming (mostly organic, smaller scale and for local consumption), towards factory farm models of exploitative land and animal practices. When nestle flipped their factory from milk to cereals, the regions farmers, out of need to survive also shifted towards industrial arable farming, leaving a mixed legacy today in Wiltshire area of large arable and dairy units that had to ‘get big or get out’, and many of these farms I walked through had a sense of abandonment, forced into a production model by the days economics of extraction, and now left behind by society and blamed for the problems. Meanwhile agrochemical companies and supposedly ‘regenerative’ businesses such as Nestle made record profits through times of crisis, and land became ever more specialised as a production line, with its output waste often ending up in our River Avon. This is a rather simplified and brief history of landscape change, but demonstrates the importance of our food and economic system design for its reflection in our overall health (of people, river and land). We can reverse this trend through an agroecological transformation of our farms, economies and cultures.

Despite the overall story of decline for our rivers and ecosystems over recent decades, there are fertile grounds for hope, and many stretches of the river, as noted by locals along the journey, are in an improving state, recovering and healing from post-industrialism, but facing significant new challenges today. Many stretches we walked had healthy beaver populations for the first time in hundreds of years; we saw and experienced their impact with a sense of wonder and living hope. Likewise we marvelled at the miles of restoration and replanting that had occurred in recent years as we meandered towards Bradford on Avon, into the most wooded and diverse section of the river so far. The valley shifts shape and tonality here, with steeper valley sides, old forests carpeted with bluebells and ancient Oaks galore.

Knowing the river from birth/source is like knowing a person from birth, the way we perceive and interact with them changes fundamentally. This section of the journey as I got closer to my own place of birth and belonging, was a deeply personal homecoming to a renewed perspective of place, self and life. A rebirth into a new phase of living and way of being, as part of river and part of life. This pilgrimage guides us back to the gift we began life with, the gift of birthing and becoming. This is ultimately a journey back to innocence, back to love. When we look at a 5 week old pilgrim marvelling at the great riverside Oak we cannot possibly think that humans are an inevitable parasite on Earth. We realise the importance of how we initiate into culture and place, and for many of us this rite of passage is at best non-existent or materialistic, at worst traumatic. We are encultured to become humans as consumers and units of production in a system of extraction, and many of us do not have a clear opportunity to embark on a journey back to soul, to purpose and belonging. So without realising that life is a sacred gift to be honoured and cared for, we often don’t find our own gifts, or we hold back our gifts, or use them for private gain. This ends the reciprocity circle that keeps life going, so the rivers run dry and murky as last reed warbler calls from its polluted banks. Creating new/ancient rites of passage and deepening relationships to place, we cultivate a new story and birth a collective imagination of possibility and regeneration.

Coming next: Part 3 of the Avon Pilgrimage – Action