Winter's Whispers (The wisdom of the long nights)

Join us round the stove tonight as we celebrate the joys and reflect on the lessons of living on a boat when winter approaches in the good company of Tom Rolt and Christine Rigden.

This episode is dedicated to Dad, who would have been 96 today.  

Journal entry:

28th November, Thursday.

“Old moon
 Curls with his back
 To the dawn.
 A slivered, sickled
 Crescent of cold silver
 That bathes the ivy
 In frost.

My feet slide
 On beauty.”

Episode Information:

In this episode I read an extract from Tom Rolt’s (1944) Narrow Boat and ‘Winter Boating’ and ‘Gone Aground’ by Christine Rigden from her volume (2015) Metamorphosis.

With special thanks to our lock-wheelersfor supporting this podcast.

Lois Raphael
 Sami Walbury
 Tania Yorgey
 Andrea Hansen
 Chris Hinds
 David Dirom
 Chris and Alan on NB Land of Green Ginger
Captain Arlo
Rebecca Russell
Allison on the narrowboat Mukka
Derek and Pauline Watts
Anna V.
Orange Cookie
Donna Kelly
Mary Keane.
Tony Rutherford.
Arabella Holzapfel.
Rory with MJ and Kayla.
Narrowboat Precious Jet.
Linda Reynolds Burkins.
Richard Noble.
Carol Ferguson.
Tracie Thomas
Mark and Tricia Stowe
Madeleine Smith

General Details

In the intro and the outro, Saint-Saen's The Swan is performed by Karr and Bernstein (1961) and available on CC at archive.org.

Two-stroke narrowboat engine recorded by 'James2nd' on the River Weaver, Cheshire. Uploaded to Freesound.org on 23rd June 2018. Creative Commons Licence. 

Piano and keyboard interludes composed and performed by Helen Ingram.

All other audio recorded on site. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:45 Journal entry
• 1:08 Welcome to NB Erica
• 2:26 News from the moorings
• 9:28 Cabin chat
• 20:40 Winter's Whispers (The wisdom of the long nights)
• 20:45 'Winter Boating' by Christine Rigden
• 24:08 Excerpt from 'Narrow Boat' by Tom Rolt
• 33:40 'Gone Aground' by Christine Rigden
• 35:27 Signing off
• 35:53 Weather Log

Transcript

JOURNAL ENTRY

28th November, Thursday

“Old moon
 Curls with his back
 To the dawn.
 A slivered, sickled
 Crescent of cold silver
 That bathes the ivy
 In frost.

My feet slide
 On beauty.”

[MUSIC]

WELCOME

A soft southerly wind blows straight down the canal, sighing through the branches of the water-side alders. The air is mild and the darkness thick. It's a new-born night tonight. A night from which a new month and a new moon will rise from the gentle darkness flecked by the shifting patterns of stars. 

This is the narrowboat Erica narrowcasting into the darkness of a late November night to you wherever you are. 

You've made it! I'm so glad that you could make it tonight. The forecasts say that there is rain on the way, so quickly come inside. The kettle is on, the stove is gently glowing in the corner. Take your time, there's a seat awaiting you. Let's kick back, relax into the night and watch the flicker of firelight trace patterns on the ceiling. Welcome aboard. 

[MUSIC]

NEWS FROM THE MOORINGS  

All along the towpath there are the signs that we are now slipping into winter. For the last couple of weeks, its whispers have become increasingly audible. The unmistakeable signs that the slow wheel of autumn is dipping out of sight. You can smell the winter in the air and sense it in the dance of light and the wheeling clamour of rook and jackdaw, magpie and raven. Busy skies of half-light and tangled tree limbs.

After an unusually mild spell, we had our first taste this winter of snow. It came during the night, and we woke to a darkness flecked white, large snowy moths of flakes slanting diagonal. It was Maggie’s first proper encounter with snow. Unfortunately, I missed the entire thing, as I was at work in Birmingham. By the time I returned that night, just a few patches remained in the fields’ tussocks and hollows, crisp with a sharp frost. However, Donna managed to take some videos so I was able to, at least, share her excitement from afar. Apparently, she was, initially, very unsure and took quite a lot of coaxing to get off the boat However, once she had investigated it properly, she loved it. Racing through the heavy flakes and burrowing her nose into the places where it lay deep.

The next day, when I got home from work, it was still light enough for me to take her into one of the fields. However, she still appeared to have difficulty knowing what we had done with all the fabulous, white, wet, floofy, stuff. She found a small dip that had lain in shadow all day and where a scab of snow still lay and she sat on it looking all dejected!

We’ve already had a couple of hard frosts here too, recently. Although, because everything is so wet, it has made things a bit icy and slippery, but it is good to have some temperatures that are more close to normal. When the canal gets to around -2 to -3 degrees Centigrade (roughly 24-27 F), the boat begins to make clanging sounds when you move around inside. It is as if someone is opening and close heavy metal hatches. I am not sure what actually causes it. The water appears far from freezing -  but it is something that I have noticed over the years, so that when I hear it, I no longer even have to look at the outside temperature to know that it is below zero.

I am relieved, so far, that the canal hasn’t frozen over completely. A kingfisher (or possible a pair – though I have only seen it singularly) has become a regular visitor and I see it most mornings I am around in daylight. A pair of cormorants have also moved in. After their fishing expeditions, they perch in the nearby ash and spread out their wings to dry them. The other day, I watched one do this in the pouring rain. To, us humans, it seems a futile and pointless endeavour, but it got me thinking about how a cormorant might view actions like these. Our understanding of lives other than human tends to be purely functional. It is not particularly surprising, as this is generally how we learn about them – through the language of science based upon rationalist assumptions. An animal or a bird will do something for a particular (often clearly defined) reason. In this case, the cormorant holds out its vulture-like wings, in what for us is the most painful stance, in order for them to be dried. And perhaps, that IS the initial reason behind it. However, a lot of our own behaviour, if you take a functionalist position, has very good reasons behind it. We eat to avoid starvation, drink to avoid dehydration, settle down beside a fire when it is cold to avoid dying of hypothermia. However, unless we are really hungry, thirsty or cold, we rarely think of those reasons when we sit down to eat, or put on the kettle for a drink. We do it, because it feels right. It feels good. It’s nice. We generally seem to live not by reason, but by how something makes us feel. Perhaps, for the cormorant, the rain and the rationality of its actions was completely irrelevant. Standing there, wings outstretched, just felt good; felt right; felt natural. It was not the consequence of the action that mattered, it was how, at that time, it experienced those moments, with a full belly, high in a tree, looking down at a creature looking back up at him. The emotion, the release of dopamine. That silhouetted cormorant high among the fretwork mesh of winter branches and twigs as the rain swept in on a northly wind, was not a symbol of crass futility and pointlessness, but maybe after all living, totally and utterly fully, embracing the breath of life within its body and all the wonderful feelings it brought.

Maybe, just maybe, on that morning of thin needling rain, that cormorant was far more alive and in touch with its existence than I ever was. Actually, I have no shadow of a doubt. It was.  

[MUSIC]

CABIN CHAT

[MUSIC]

WINTER’S WISDOM (THE WISDOM OF THE LONG NIGHTS)

‘Winter Boating’ by Christine Rigden

[READING] 

I have to say that, in my opinion, we have entered the season where living on a boat is at its very best. Yes, of course, spring is wonderful and summer too – especially the long days that stretch out into the nights and you can sit outside and watch and listen to the world quietening down, unwinding, slowing with the rose and orange washes of light along the western horizon. I love them and certainly wouldn’t change them for anything. However, now is the time when I think that being on a boat really comes into its own. The times when darkness, with its night-time chills, folds itself around the boat in late afternoon and creates misty wreathes that dance and hang above the waters. To sit inside a snug cabin and watch the coals glow ruby red as outside hoar-frost rimes the cabin roof, and decorates the ropes with glistening crystalline fur.   

Yes, the towpaths can be sticky and, in places treacherously slick with mud. Yes, it can be a pain to be continually peeling off wet clothing and finding places to hang them to drip, or constantly getting through muddy towels used to dry Maggie after even the shortest trip out. And yes, of course, doing the daily and weekly jobs like emptying the toilet, filling the water, taking up the waste, cleaning the solar panels, in cutting winds and icy rain is not much fun. But despite all of that – or perhaps, in some strange way, partly because of all that – there is something about being on a boat when the whisper of winter is in the air.

There is something about closing the doors and hatches and feeling in them the night-cold, while the rest of the cabin roasts with a warmth that hugs you close. Even the last walk of the day is made bearable by the knowledge that you will be guided home by the warm reflection of cabin lights shimmering on the water and soon after you will sink back down into a little cavern of warmth and soft light. The fact that coming aboard necessitates climbing down four step adds to that feeling of being enclosed in a safe, protected place.

Tom Rolt knew this well. I can’t remember if I have read this passage from his classic, Narrow Boat, out here before, but it bears reading again.

[READING]

There is something about winter that creates this urge to seek the shelter of a nest – whether, physical or symbolic. To feel protected, secure, from the elements outside. The world outside might rage, and it has been raging a fair bit recently, here we are, safe and snug. The snow may be piling on the gunnels, but here it is comfortably and home.

One of the reasons that I treasure these times is that it is a healthy reminder about what is really important. What few things I really only need in order to live, to survive, to flourish. A shelter that is warm. Water. Food. That is all. With just those things, I can survive whatever winter is coming. Everything else are incidental. If that makes my world shrink, I am happy with that. For I can live with few cares like this.

I recognised these feelings during our first winter on the boat. But I was also aware that it was not only the idea of a coming winter that drove these feelings. We were coming up to our first Christmas under Covid. The world still felt uncertain, shaky. There was a nervousness that exhibited itself socially in many number of different ways; from bluster and bravado, to anger, cynicism, to a sense of despair and paralysis. Looking into the dark uncertainties of that winter, I found a surprising liberation that I (we on the Erica), didn’t need a great deal to live. The tendrils that made us dependent on many external things, people, and organisations had been cut. Things were trimmed to the essentials (and, to be honest, quite a bit more than essentials), we could survive and lead the lives we wanted to live with or without them. It was liberating. It was also grounding.

Wherever you are in the world tonight, there is, again, so much uncertainty. The dark uncertainties of the whispers of winter can be heard once again. Perhaps that is why those feelings of nesting and acknowledging a life lived lightly upon the land have returned to me so strongly this year. It is good to be reminded that your needs are actually few and that you are not as dependent upon others as much as you thought. Warm shelter, water and food is enough. And in this world, to know that you have enough is your super power. It makes you untouchable. If you have those, you are fortunate. You need nothing more and what is even more, you are impervious to those who would try to offer you more (or define your life or success beyond your ability to enjoy the warmth of sun on your shoulders, the feel of rain on your skin, or the scent of honeysuckle on a late spring afternoon), you are beyond their power. To them, you are untouchable.

And so, I relish this turn of the season’s wheel. I need it. I need to be reminded what the priorities of my life really are, how important it is to let my mind and body fall into the pace and rhythm of the seasons. To heed the deeper call of the cycles within my body and let the patterns of the lengthening nights dictate their pace. Close the hatches and the door, sit in the firelight glow, listen the silence as rain or frost falls, read, think, dream. Wait for a while to let my soul catch up with me. We need these times, for this is the world for which our bodies were built.

‘Going Aground’ by Christine Rigden

[READING]

SIGNING OFF 

This is the narrowboat Erica signing off for the night and wishing you a very restful and peaceful night. Good night.

WEATHER LOG