I’ve been thinking about this journey for a while now. The way home. That time spent between work and the home you live in.
When I was a kid, it was a walk from the bus stop back to the house that I grew up in with my family. I can remember it now…
I come out of the lane and cross the patch of grass on the edge of the pavement. In the summer I stop to pick a stem of wall barley growing out of a crack in the curb. I love those beautiful perfect darts.
I step onto the road, it curves around to the left and drops away. I used to ride my skateboard down its steep slope with my brother.
If I look straight ahead the landscape opens up in front of me.
Far off, past the salt marshes and the river, as the valley starts to slowly turn upwards there is a hill, topped with a spreading wood of oak and ash. I have watched those trees change colour each year as I’ve grown taller.
That hill is a sign. When I see it it tells me I’m almost home.
Just a little further and I’ll turn right, onto our road. When I walk through the back door, I know that my mum will be there waiting to see me and ask how my day was.
That hill and its oaks and ash are still there now. But my mum isn’t. She is half a mile up the road now. Her name is written on a piece of stone, one in a field of stones, each with their own name.
My way home is different now.
From the farm I walk up the hill and join the lane, with its high hedges and summer swallows. A little way along I turn off from the lane and through a gate into a field. The barley grows tall and green there, turning to yellow and gold in the sun.
As I walk along the edge of the field, the valley opens up before me. I can see right across to the other side and still, far off, past the salt marshes and the river is that same hill from my childhood, with its spreading wood of oak and ash.
My home is different today but that hill, that view, is still the same. It grounds me and gives me a sense of place.
Walking on, the field drops down and ends at another gate, leading into another field.
Standing at that gate I can see the town I live in now, sheltering beside the hills that surround it.
Through the next field and I’m on a gravel lane that will eventually end at the edge of the town.
Drop down the hill and I’m back at our front door.
I wonder how many others have walked the same path home. Tired legs carrying them. On their way home from work at the end of the day. A day spent working on the land. Step after step. Year upon year. I feel that I walk in their footsteps.
How many kids walk the same path I did? How many see that hill across the valley and know that they’re almost home?
There is a lot to think about in that journey home. Time passing, weather from season to season or from one stage of life to another.
A sense of history, of continuity, of being a part of a cycle.
The snowdrop leading into the bluebell, leading into the foxglove and the blackberry and the hawthorn and the brown and gold and red leaves.
And that hill…
As I say, there is a lot to think about on the way home. The knot in my chest can’t be ignored. I feel a need to express the emotion. I’m just not sure how at the moment.
But it’ll come to me.
