Regenerative River Activism

Reflections from the River: a 100 mile pilgrimage from Source(s) to Sea: chapter 3

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 Part 3: Action

Homecoming is not necessarily the act of returning to a familiar physical home, but speaks to the return to a deeper sense of soul, belonging and rooting. As I walked with fellow pilgrims into more familiar territory where I was born and raised, I felt like coming into a memory much deeper than my lifetime. After day 5 nearly covering 20 miles with heavy pack I reached an exhausted and almost psychedelic stupor for the last 2 miles returning to my boat on the river Avon in Newbridge. In this dreamlike state with blistered feet I felt the dual homecoming back to place, but also back to myself – not the same individual self that set off on this journey but a deeper ancestral and collective self, an ecological self entwined with the rivers deep time journey, and interwoven with so many generations before that had walked these banks. I felt elated and in a dreamlike new world of belonging, perhaps from the purposeful exhaustion coupled with the overwhelming gratitude for all the river and fellow pilgrims. Noticing a similar feeling of contentedness and tiredness that I finish a week of farming with. Noticing that this is a totally different to the exhaustive burnout that comes from more typical forms of activism, or from social media franticness, or oppositional action fighting against, without a rooting in the vision we are fighting for and the battles that have come before us. In this way the prefigurative (future) and ancestral (paths) are like anchors to our activism and without them we burn out, the action is not part of regenerative cycles of nature and continual rebirth.

beautiful bluebell forests amidst beaver activity and a restored section of Avon

This final stretch of river, from Bath to Bristol then Avonmouth, was a testament to regenerative activism, and a culmination of the learnings along the rivers route from source to sea. Through walking these more familiar stretches of river, but with new eyes, I allowed myself to feel into both the grief and hope with less policing of my emotions, knowing that both are necessary for action to take root. And these last days of pilgrimage were incredibly healing and motivating, dancing between the personal and political twin paths of this walk.

Setting off from Newbridge, Bath, on day 6 with fellow pilgrims, we carried the source water towards Bristol - now mixed with spring water from along the journey and thermae bath spa waters after our bath day of action and protest. The river is wide, abundant and flowing for this section of the journey. Entering into greater population densities through Bath, Keynsham and Bristol, the river experiences so many thousands of human relationships and participation in its final stretch to the ocean. This increased flow of river and people comes with greater consequence, both with many more hearts to care for the river but also greater potential stresses on her systems, with each sewerage infrastructure becoming ever more gigantic and overbearing, and the run-off from farms, roads and industry becoming too much to comprehend. I began from the source noting each sewage outlet, waste pipe and pollution source on the maps app on my phone, noting various registered and unregistered outlets along sections very rarely traversed. But as we entered these denser human populations, the map becomes one great blurring of pins, with too many for mind to count, too many for the heart to bear.

But these stories, when lived in real life rather than through polarised media are rarely a story of either gloom or glamour. As the pollution evidence mounted, so too did the groundswell of action and regeneration along these sections of a much loved river. Its true our human presence here has overall, especially in recent times, been an overall parasite on the rivers, using them for our needs without recognising our responsibilities. And the impact has been mixed but overall detrimental to river and water health, through our systems of extraction, economics and linear waste. But there is so much hope for healing, and so many signs of this already happening. As many communities across the globe and across time have demonstrated, it is possible, beautiful and pragmatic to live in harmony with our waterways, and we can coexist for millenia as part of these ecosystems. Even in high population densities, towns and cities across the world have demonstrated clean swimming water and abundant wildlife, such as in Copenhagen, the Seine in Paris (going from toxic polluted to swimmable in just 3 years), the River Rhine in Switzerland (where hundreds swim and even commute through the clear waters amidst a busy city) and the Tara river in Montenegro. Its possible to clean our rivers up in rapid time if we all take collective, political and personal action.

Bath day of action and water ceremony

Day 7 began with an inspiring display of community action and learning – with over 20 river guardians from around Bristol meeting early Monday morning by the Avon at Conham River Park to learn how to test our river water. This volunteer group is monitoring the river health every week through the year with citizens science, and simultaneously building relationship with their river through observation, interaction and care. A core inspiration for our River Guardians scheme which has now launched and has 10 groups already signed up to adopt and acare for sections of the river. After some water testing and learning together, we embarked on this final day of pilgrimage, a good 16 miles meandering through Bristol, leigh woods, Pill and Avonmouth then out to the mouth of the huge estuary. Slightly baffled by the rivers contorted and controlled flows through Bristol, where the Avon has been diverted and rerouted so many times, tampered with in so many concrete ways. But we felt her presence, through the whole city, a whole new way to arrive into a place, not by motorway or train track but by water, walking one foot in front of other. Noticing how central this water body is to the city, the Avon is simultaneously everywhere and hidden from our daily lives.  

Becca from Conham Bathing , after a water testing demo to Monday morning river activists

I walked these cherished days with many inspiring river activists, musicians, environmental protectors, eco-therapists, doctors, mothers, dogs, foresters and farmers. And we gathered in the towns with dozens more inspiring everyday activists, committing their work, hands, minds and energy to making a more beautiful world for all. Following on form the realisation earlier in the pilgrimage of the collective ecological self, and reminding ourselves that “I cannot, we can”, many of us discovered a curious confidence and hope for this bioregional movement. Various threads of the We Are Avon mission came to life during the pilgrimage - seeing and experiencing the issues we are aiming to address, gaining a deeper nuanced understanding to hear the river’s needs, to experience her/our potential for healing and to co-develop the project aims with the Avon. This third chapter of the Avon pilgrimage has taken months to write, as there has been a whirlwind of action and emergence since reaching the mouth. Our crowdfunder successfully raised over £23,000 for the Avon through 300 supporters. 75 river guardians have pledged to start or join a localised guardianship circle to care for a stretch of river, now covering the majority of the Avon. We’ve hired job roles, secured some future funding, registered as a ‘Community Benefit Society,’ and co-developed this movement’s vision, aims and values with large thanks to the pilgrimage and over 100 pilgrims insights. The pilgrimage sparked new forms of regenerative activism and relationship for me and for many river guardians, and this love and celebration of the river is just a starting point for lifetimes of joyful service and belonging.

The pilgrimage sparked some reflections on purpose. The external outcomes and achievements of the pilgrimage just flowed in a way, without them being the primary purpose. A stark reminder that we can often achieve more by doing simple things with great integrity, intention and love. The simple daily purpose of ‘just walking’ was profound, and something I initially struggled with but eventually surrendered to and bathed in. Having identified so much with outer purpose and life work, I noticed the irony that walking over 100 miles was a more restful week for me, a slowing down and a confronting of what is left of myself when simply walking and with my mind. There are many forms of radical rest. I find deep rest and peace when I am in the flow of my passions, my energy, body and mind can feel more renewed and balanced because of this work. This approach can be taken too far and lead to burnout, if it is not balanced with other forms of radical rest, and I find walking to be a new found modality for this. I also need to honour more the other forms of radical rest, the sweet days of nothingness; I need more boredom and spaciousness amidst the franticness of todays world, and I generally need more sleep and mental switch-off time.

The pilgrimage purpose had inner and outer dimensions, and it took me some time to bring these threads together, but this became the most impactful and simple insight of the journey. Our purpose is to simply be here, to honour life, to give thanks, to be present to the wonders of each day and moment. Our outer purpose can become easily complicated in today’s world. Our fundamental needs are food, shelter and community. Meeting these together, into the long term and intergenerationally, is our outer purpose. This has an element of complexity, as these needs are dependent on healthy rivers, soils, ecosystems, social systems, relationships and regenerative cultures of place. But when we realise “I cannot, we can”, these seemingly big tasks can become simple, joyful, one step in front of the other. Just as the river does not get overwhelmed or exhausted from its flowing, but it simply gives, lives and shares, we can also meander lovingly to the ocean and come back to the source again and again in this journey that more resembles a cycle than a linear pilgrimage. This sentiment was felt most strongly at the mouth of the river, which felt simultaneosuly like a funeral and a re-birth. Seeing the final stage of the Avons wild journey from source to mouth, and saying a temporary goodbye to her here at the sea after such a complex relationship deepening, was difficult and also renewing. A rebirth into the next phase of regenerative river activism, now stronger and more rooted than before with the lessons and power of the Avon and all her beloved guardians to guide us forward.

closing ceremony with fellow pilgrims at the rivers mouth