Reflections from the River: a 100 mile pilgrimage from Source(s) to Sea (Chapter 1: Gratitude and Grief)

 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 (this chapter)

Part 2: Living Hope

Part 3: Action

Last week a group of pilgrims embarked on a 100 mile journey from Joyce’s pool (one source of the great River Avon) to the mouth where she meets the sea. Over 100 pilgrims joined me on route for different stretches, carrying the spring water in a beautiful glass vessel all the way, honouring the river and retracing these ancestral steps.

A personal and political pilgrimage (inner and outer dance)   

This was a deeply personal pilgrimage, beginning with the simple intention to get to know my river. I’ve lived on a boat in the meandering Avon valley for over 10 years and have felt an ever-deepening connection to place, water and community here through land work, year-round wild swimming, ecological farming and activism. Despite knowing this stretch of the rivers journey well and understanding intellectually the problems and solutions facing our waterways, I had a real lack of grounded experience and understanding of the rivers whole journey from source to sea. With the launch of the We Are Avon project and crowdfunder, it felt necessary to root this bioregional movement in the river’s voice, lessons and lived struggles. To start from real relationship and deeper understanding before imposing human solutions from the same separation mindset that caused the problems. Reconnecting to the deep cyclical time of the river on sacred pilgrimage felt like a remembering, re-walking ancestral paths, rooting in place, understanding the whole watershed from a new animistic and interconnected lens. I went on an inner journey from ‘me to we’ and similarly beyond my individual self and into the ecological self, feeling ever more connected to the river not as observer, tourist or activist but as part of river. These two insights revealed the importance of our movements name, ‘We Are Avon;’ we are all the river. Every night spent sleeping by her banks and every daily dip in her healing waters reinforced the interconnected journeys we are all on. Experiencing the very real human impacts on the river both destructive and regenerative along the river was a whirlwind of hope and joy, dancing together like the damsel-flies through the reeds. It was deeply humbling to learn first hand how the river has inspired, created and sustained communities for millenia through its deep time history. The towns we walked through were all located there because of the river, from the Water city of Bath to the industrial mills of Wiltshire.

Practical insights into the problems and solutions experiencing in real time

Throughout the pilgrimage I felt immersed in the lived experience of the river; and it was a whirlwhind journey of grief and hope, a continual pendulum swing from destruction to regeneration every day witnessing first hand the issues and solutions along the journey. The river heals and forgives with such incredible capacity and unconditional love. We pump waste, sewage and agroechemicals into her daily, and she still gives life abundantly and provides for all. Up to a point,and we are soon reaching that dangerous tipping point where the river cannot recover. One night on pilgrimage after a particularly heavy day of pollution, industrial farms and the resultant murky waters, I had a nightmare as I slept in a bivvy bag by the river avons banks under clear sky. I dreamt of a dead river. Imagine what this feels, looks and smells like. With no wildlife, people life or greenery. Is this the image we want to leave our children and future generations with? If there can be a dead river, there can be an alive river – it may seem obvious that the river is alive as it brings so much life, and can clearly become dead if not cared for. But we do not recognise her legal rights or our responsibilities in our modern conceptions of nature and river, we miss the language of animacy and the vocabulary of aliveness that permeates the river in reality.

I experienced so many river issues on each day of the walk, and it feels so much worse than just seeing pollution stats in the news which do not connect or motivate me beyond rational disapproval. Living and walking and swimming the river is different, feeling her pain, bearing witness and being directly affected is a different sort of entanglement and a deeper relationship. From unregistered sewage outflow pipes to giant chemical spray booms flanking the floodplain of river Avon, the issues seem vast and systemic, linked to our privatisation of water, extractive food systems and non-sustainable land use.

Day 1: Joyce’s pool to Malmesbury

We gathered around Joyce’s pool, in turn the tree grove gathered around us under the darkening night sky. A beautiful opening ceremony greeted the waters, asked for their blessing on this journey, and set our intentions for this walk and the wider movement for river healing. The opening day of a great journey from spring water drops to endless ocean, carried by 12 pilgrims on a drizzly bank holiday Monday. Despite the reverence of Joyce’s pool and high-spirited start to our path, the first miles began in underwhelming fashion, with the great Avon starting its journey as a series of dry ditches (canalised for farm drainage), a road drain spewing petrol leaks and a sewage outlet pipe just 200m from the source. A saddening start to the Avon’s journey, and a stark reminder of how the water that sustains us has been so dishonoured and disrespected by human intervention. We began on unsure territory, with the Avons beginnings completely inaccessible to the public, navigating bramble, barbed wire, hostile signs, gameskeepers and main roads. Realising the devastating reality of how far we’ve become fragmented in landscape and mind, lost as a species, our purpose as murky green as the algal blooms that permeated the river’s beginnings.

But the pilgrims journeyed on, buoyed by each others spirits and the intention of the walk; to understand the truth of the river’s journey, to give voice to this and to act upon this information in service to life. We held faith in one hand and grief in the other, helping each other over gates and telling stories and singing water songs along the route. Gatekeeper butterflies emerge from a slightly lusher landscape ahead of us, the signs nad smells of hope return. Then, through the doorway of Ash and the archway of blossoming hawthorn, we enter into a new realm – an oasis of green lush willow, abundant reeds, damselflies and birdsong, life returning. We find the source of this to be called Crowdown Springs; a magical, mnysterious, meandering place that opens out into a garden of Eden, created by clean water abundance. This felt like another main source of the Avon, one more respected, tended and loved, honoured as she should be. The Crowdown Springs oasis led to a wider, wiggly stream through reed and willow, which we followed delightedly marvelling to each other at the cleanliness of water resembling chalk streams and mountain lakes. After the devastating morning, we felt life breathe back into the river and into the pilgrims, and stopped for a reflective and celebratory lunch in Sherston – a quaint old village where many sources of the river greet and gather to form the Avon. An appropriate place to rehydrate, eat, reflect and bask in the sunshine as it dried out our boots.

Drier boots on, bodies and minds regenerated, we realised the only way to continue our joueny along the avon was to go through it, wading in our boots and carrying the smaller pilgrims to the safe shore. The rest of day 1 followed a similar journey of grief and hope, seeing large parts of the river polluted, straightened and inaccessible to communities. Within the shell of sadness there is a seed of possibility; the river teaches forgiveness and regeneration just as much as she teaches consequence and destruction. Human intervention has changed our river, our landscape on a drastic scale, and limited the abundance of life in this place. And yet, human action also holds the possibility and responsibility to regenerate rapidly, to help heal and rewiggle our rivers, to plant riparian forests, to reintroduce our long lost keystone species, to restore a relationship of care to our waters. Water forgives, up until point of no return. We must act before the last salmon breeds in the stream, before the last bullrush sets seed, before the last warbler calls.

Reflecting on how quickly the Avon responds to our actions, how she communicates feedback so swiftly and clearly, if only we are to listen. Day 1 saw such disrespect and pollution, followed by a lifeless, dark and murky river. And round the corner, new springs helped refresh and forgive, and good land stewardship resulted in an abundant paradise for all with clean waters and a different world. This principle of feedback applies in all places, ecosystems and communities; Gaia’s karmic law of consequence and legacy, co-created by all of her participants. The reality we live in is shaped by the reality we choose. The legacy we leave tomorrow is existent here today in the everyday shaping and intention behind our actions.

Day 2 : Malmesbury to Chippenham

The second day continued the theme of grief and confronting stark realities of our river’s health (and thus the health of society). We held a deeply moving grief ritual at Malmesbury Abbey, giving some spring water to the steps of this grand 12th century place of worship. King Athelstan is buried here and was known for his devotion to pilgrimage and water, so this felt an appropriate place to share our message of political pilgrimage, offer the river Avon charter to the abbey and hold grief space for the states of our waterways today. This grand place, which one had the tallest spire in England, sits at the confluence of the Sherston and Tetbury Avon’s, symbolising a new chapter of the river’s journey as it gathers momentum and life force.

Malmesbury abbey . Source: Cotswold Journeys

This was the longest and most challenging day of pilgrimage, I completed over 24 miles with heavy backpack and heavy heart, walking step by step in solitude and solidarity with the river; bearing witness to all the violence committed against her on route, from industrial farms with chemical sprays to enormous sewage pipes at every comer. I was partially glad for the quiet on this day as my mood matched the rivers glumness and murkiness, amplified by the physical challenge of the inaccessible paths, hostile landowners and seemingly impossible crossings. I cried into the river at times on this day and experienced a profound shift in my relation with the river, feeling her pain viscerally and wanting desperately to heal myself and the river together. Realising how interconnected all of our journeys are, and what a blessing and challenge this is. Through the grief of these initial days I felt a sense of shift in worldview, towards a more ecological self, an intrinsic part of the whole rather than a visitor, tourist or even activist. Beginning to realise myself instead as an active participant, an ecological being and a collective life-force. My actions, words and ideas are not from me but through me. And life force speaks through us all if we are willing to receive it. Receptors are the same as transmitters in our bodies, and we must enter into dialogue, active participation and reciprocity if we are to receive the power and flow of River.

The power of these insights came in the paradoxical moments of stillness that permeate pilgrimage. In swimming time, immersed in the river I felt the intuitive insights of the Avon and the spark of inspired flow that she gifts so abundantly if we enter with an open mind. In dreamtime too I felt all the wisdom and power of River, as I slept in my bivvy bag by the Avon’s banks under the night sky. Some nights were restless, damp, frosty, delirious with exhaustion but too cold to sleep. But nights were also the most magical time. Settling down to dusk with the river’s sunset. The day closed but a new phase of life began, the nighttime river activities of otter, heron, muntjac and beaver. Some nights I felt totally connected to it all, fearless and belonging, rooted in place and rooted in wonder looking up at a clear night sky and held by the powerful canopy of a grandfather Oak’s silhouette. My grandfather Tony, a kind Oak of a man, and other ancestors, also came to me in this dreamtime state, and gave their blessing along with the river. Walking these ancient steps rooting in the beginnings of river was really a parallel journey of realising my own roots and my true self, beyond self.

weareavon.com for more info on the wider movement !