For my birthday, I was given a copy of Moving Mountains, ed. Louise Kenward. Here is a link to the publisher's web page about the book: Moving Mountains link. The book is an anthology of nature writing by chronically ill and physically disabled writers. The writers’ accounts of their encounters with nature prompted me to reflect on some of my own. Following those reflections, I wrote this:
I was feeling better when I moved to the farmhouse. I didn’t think I was cured but my pain had eased. I had longer periods of feeling more like my old self again, of my body responding how I expected it to when I moved it. The farmhouse was only accessible by a dirt lane off an A-road. Tall trees and hedges blurred together to obscure the gap from the view of motorists speeding by. The first time I visited, in June, the lane was yellow dust, the sky high and blue and the surrounding fields a faded light green. By the time I moved in, a couple of months later, the colours had deepened. When you reach the end of the lane, you approach the farmhouse over a small bridge, packed down with soil, trees arching above you. After the bridge, there is a clearing that doubles as a driveway. Then, once you cross that expanse of ground, there is a gap in an old wall and a paved path up to the door, home.
When I lived there, the farmhouse was surrounded on all sides by green. An orchard at its back, spilling over with greengages and plums and apples, the garden at its front with an unobstructed view out into the fields beyond preserved by a diving ha-ha and minimal wired fence. Each morning of the first month or so I lived there, I would make a cup of tea before my work for the day began—upstairs, at the desk in my bedroom—and walk out of the kitchen door round into the garden. I held my steaming cup with both hands, sat at the picnic table and looked out. I breathed deeply. I listened for rustles and tweets and the gurgle of the water feature. I chose to live in the farmhouse in part for its history, in part for the landlady and in part so I could be surrounded by green.
Because I was feeling better when I moved to the farmhouse, I gave my notice to my remote admin job. I wouldn’t renew my contract with them. Instead, I would look for work more in my field again—the arts, ideally, or education. From the farmhouse, I applied for a part-time job at a local theatre. I interviewed for that job from the kitchen table of a holiday home in Cornwall, my then-boyfriend waiting in the next room with my family. On that trip, it was clear that I wasn’t cured. My knees throbbed after an hour in the ocean on my bodyboard. At night, my body vibrated when I lay down to attempt to sleep. My then-boyfriend asked me what I was doing about it; I told him I had plans. And I did have plans but a big part of the plan was waiting for that next appointment, months away.
I got the job at the theatre and commuted there from the farmhouse. At first, I curled there and back. At first, I started to feel stronger and less breathless. Night expanded so I was often leaving work in the dark, even from the early shift that ended mid-afternoon. At some point, cycling got harder, particularly after work. I’d been on my feet for most of a seven or eight hour shift—I hadn’t quite appreciated how they would divide the weekly hours when I applied—and then I would unlock my bicycle in the light of my own bike light, hold my fob to the reader that opened the car park gates and push down on the pedals and my pain to get home. The lane is unlit so I would navigate by the cone of my bike light, swerving potholes and gravel until reached the cover of the trees, the expanse of the driveway, the old wall and the old shed where I could prop my bike. On the days I worked the late shift, I learned to make enough dinner the night before that I could reheat the leftovers at work and not have to wait until I got home. Then, when I arrived back, I could head straight to the shower. The farmhouse is cold in winter, the heating never straying too far from any given radiator or hot water pipe. I’d stand in the bath, goosebumps raising on my flesh, willing my skeleton to hold me up under the hot water of the shower just a little bit longer. I’d assure my abdominal muscles that they could hold out for the lather. From that vantage point, I could peer out of the bathroom, open and welcoming a biting draft, through the branches of a tree taller than the house and up at the moon.
As the year drew to an end, I was worse. At nights, I would sleep for at most an hour and a half at a time. I might manage two or three of these chunks but never more than an hour and a half together. I’d walk to cold and to pain and to the sound of a field mouse scurrying through the cupboard that served as my wardrobe. In the mornings, I’d wake wearing a hoodie over my pyjamas and pull dressing gown over it all to complete the ensemble. In the other bathroom, I’d toilet and wash my face and do my teeth. From there, I could look out at the orchard, covered in frost. Every morning, part of me forgave the bad sleep and the pull of gravity on my bones and the re-establishing throb at various joints for the chance to peer through condensation at the window and out at the orchard. It was on one of those mornings that I first saw the doe. She stood in the orchard, her head towards the house. It felt almost like she was looking at me and I wished her a good morning.
If I decided not to cycle to work because I felt too tired or because I was aware that I would then have to choose between cycling back or leaving my bike behind at work, the trouble was that I had to walk down the first lane to the A-road and then further on to the nearest bus stop. Once I was on the bike, it would share the load with my body to reach the end of the lane. The load share just felt different at the end of the day than it did in the morning. Alternatively, I had to will my body down the land, promising that it could make it to the bus stop, reassuring it that a seat awaited. When my bike got a puncture and I had no repair kit, the decision was made for me. I’d wake in my pyjamas and jumper, pull on my dressing gown and proceed to the bathroom. I’d look out at the frost and the orchard and remember why I’d chosen this home. Some mornings, I’d see the doe. Sometimes she was alone, sometimes with a stag.
Some mornings, when I made it out of the front door, the end of the lane would be obscured with mist. Woken anew by the cold, I’d begin the walk to the bus stop, leaning on the momentum of my awe. I knew I would make it to the bus stop. I knew it wasn’t as far as it felt. I knew the way, even if it was currently out of sight. One morning, I looked up from the path under my feet and into the mist. The gravel and frost crunched under my boots. Out of the mist, the shape of a doe. The same doe, between the path and the hedgerow. Her head was turned over her left haunch, back towards me. I slowed. I didn’t want to startle her. Shortly, she walked on along the side of the lane. She hadn’t started off at pace, as if afraid, so I continued after her, maintaining the gap between us. If I slowed again, aware that I might be gaining on her, I felt like she slowed too, her head turning slightly back towards me again. After this happened once or twice, I felt confident enough to hold my pace. We walked on in this way, holding the air between us. Eventually, we approached the end of the lane. She turned one way, through the hedgerow, into the fields. I don’t know if she turned back or if she held there for a whole, if that hedgerow held berries she sought. I overtook her, navigating the cattle grid to reach the pavement. Then, I turned towards the bus stop, now in sight, and pulled my legs along.