For the first of our autumn pilgrimages on Sunday September 5th, we were delighted to be guided by Isabel Carlisle who is co-founder of the Bioregional Learning Centre, which is working for climate resilience in South Devon. She initiated the Charter for the River Dart that gives the river moral rights and which we are carrying with us on this Sacred Waters Way pilgrimage. Following last month’s canoe pilgrimage, this month we were ‘filling in the gaps’ by foot, as we walked from St David’s Church at Ashprington, past our canoe pilgrimage home base at Tuckenhay and then on along Bow Creek to St Peter’s at Cornworthy. As we gathered in the churchyard at Ashprington, Isabel got us off to a thoughtful start with her opening words about water:
We are going on a peregrination with water….. a wandering flow. Water is never lost, it is always on a journey to join up with other water. Water is in relationship with everything. It teaches us to think like a system…
The Social Life of Water by Tony Hoagland
All water is a part of other water.
Cloud talks to lake; mist
speaks quietly to creek.
Lake says something back to cloud,
and cloud listens.
No water is lonely water.
All water is a part of other water.
River rushes to reunite with ocean;
Tree drinks rain and sweats out dew;
Dew takes elevator into cloud;
Cloud marries puddle;
Puddle has long conversation with lake about fiord;
Fog sneaks up and murmurs insinuations to swamp;
Swamp makes needs known to marshland;
Thunderstorm throws itself on estuary;
Waterspout laughs at joke of frog pond.
All water understands.
All water understands.
Reservoir gathers information
for database of watershed;
Brook translates lake to waterfall;
Tide wrinkles its green forehead and then breaks through.
All water understands.
But you, you stand on the shore
of blue Lake Kieve in the evening
and listen, grieving
as something stirs and turns within you.
Not knowing why you linger in the dark.
Not able even to guess
from what you are excluded.
As we wandered downhill through the village, we were following the flow of water, met in many forms… from a roadside well and old pump, to more recent drain covers and the water treatment plant. So by the time we paused in the community meadow & woodland beside Bow Creek, we had already begun to reflect in an embodied way about the water systems that we so often take for granted. Isabel welcomed us into the second stage of our pilgrimage with these words:
We have been in a state of flow. Now we are going to consider containers. Water is always in some way bounded: the meniscus on the surface of water, the banks of a river, the form of a snowflake, the edge of a droplet, the wall of a cell in a living body.
Humans and human actions need containers too. The River Charter is a container for ideas and actions. I have some copies here for you to look at. My organisation, the Bioregional Learning Centre, made the charter for the stretch of the Dart around the Dartington Estate and now we are carrying it to other communities, other parishes upstream and downstream.
The Charter is a response to the harm we do to water when we simply take water for granted and pay our water companies to deliver fresh drinking water on tap or wash away our waste. The reality is that our drinking water comes out of the river (and out of reservoirs or aquifers) and after being treated is released back into the river. The Charter invites us to flip our relationship with water from one of consuming to one of stewarding. It gives moral rights to the river and gives communities the role of upholding those rights.
We then walked on again in silence until we came down to the shore just below Cornworthy and gathered around a fire-pit in the field there. Close to the centre sat an old, iron pot from Isabel’s travels with the Bedouin people of the Sinai Desert… who probably have a much greater and more conscious appreciation of water than most of us do. Today the pot was filled with water from the river to witness our shared reflections on the journey so far…
Then for the final stage of our pilgrimage, we said farewell to the river and walked up the green lane with the church visible at its top. What a wonderful welcome we received at St Peter’s… the church wardens were smiling warmly at the gate and, after celebrating an inclusive language Vespers together, a most magnificent tea awaited us within!