The allotment April 2023
This piece provides a contrast to an article I was invited to write for MONO literary journal on how walking informs my nature writing (Words Made by Walking, https://www.monofiction.org/post/words-made-by-walking-an-article-by-debra-williams), as I am ‘fixed’ in one place – although still thinking! I wrote it in response to a prompt to ‘put yourself in a domestic outdoor space, think about something wilder and worry/ask questions about it’ during an eco-writing workshop earlier in the year.
Movement on the allotment seems to prevent thought. But weeding – kneeling in one place, searching the soil for plants that are not required in my veg beds, thank you very much – weeding enables the mind to wander. Mine turns to worries, as is its wont, hard-wired from childhood; as one ends, another begins. Today, it is the Celtic rainforest as I kneel at the bed below the dying cherry tree, throwing its broken-off twigs into my bucket. Their gnarled, grey forms remind me of the lichen-covered twig I brought back from holiday in North Wales, where I roamed amidst a pocket of old woodland – trees dripping with strange mosses and lichens; ferns rising prehistorically from the undergrowth; remnants of stone walls and dwellings now also swathed in green.
What happened to this landscape that it is so diminished? Humans hacked down the wildwood.
Why would they do such a thing? For easier hunting; for timber to build ships and homes; for land to graze domesticated animals; to provide more space for more houses for more people; because they could – and still can; because those who own the land are not often those who care about it and see its true value to human and non-human alike.
As I weed, I worry about this temperate rainforest, which should be treasured and protected; my hand-fork and fingers working to remove the rich, fertilised soil of its pesky interlopers. And then I stop, as a horrible thought strikes me: in my task am I not imposing my own wants onto a piece of land, echoing what others do, even if on a far smaller scale? How to square that circle? Need, want, desire, order? All the old arguments. Is what I do in this small place really so much different than ‘developers’ reforming wilder stretches of land to their desires? I stop for a moment, consider. The robin flies down and snatches up a small worm I’ve unearthed with my weeding. He cocks his head and his bright beady eye gives me his answer: “Yes, yes it is!” Vindication! Although I’m not sure if the worm would agree.
The allotment robin April 2023