The Elusive Source

Finding the source, where streams come from
that's a thing to be sought. So I went up on the path
through the wood, following the tumble of water
down the furrow it had ploughed for itself through trees
and paused on the narrow footbridge where one stream
falls steeply into another. Two sources then?

But I followed the main stream up to the top of the wood
where again two streams joined and fell together
into the ravine between the trees. One ran from beneath
a hedge out of a rushy field; the main flow from under the lane
by the edge of the wood. I crossed the tarmac, stared through a drain
listening to the roar of water into a pipe under the lane rushing

through to the woodland stream. There was a stream by the lane once
in a deep trough over the grass verge so cars passing on the narrow road
would sometimes go in, tyres stuck in the stream's ditch. So they filled it
with hardcore to flatten the verge and the stream now runs even deeper
below the old ditch bottom. Nothing stops its flow. But above, where
meadowsweet grew in the damp edges of the ditch, only grass grows.

True, soon other hedgebank herbs will come creeping in, like dandelion
and celandine. But meadowsweet is lost to this quiet lane above the wood.
And the streams? Their sources remain mysterious, each one fed
by streamlets trickling out of wet ground in field and wood, too many
to say which is the source, too various to trace the intermittent pulses,
evasive as the absent scent of meadowsweet in the summer lane.

RIVERS

Wye and Tarrenig - Confluence

I once knew someone whose mental map of the town he lived in was punctuated by pubs. Giving directions, he'd say something like 'Turn left at the King's Arms and carry on till you get to the Ship and Castle ….' That's certainly one way of visualising a territory. Travelling over longer distances most people rely on a representation of the road system to guide them, either as a printed road atlas (my preference) or increasingly now, such a road system contained digitally in a SatNav. But roads are superimposed on landscapes. What about the mental experience of moving across the contours of the land? I suppose this varies; some might notice the view, others listen to the radio or talk to a passenger while just concentrating on the road ahead and direction signs. I do these things, but part of me is also conscious of the rise and fall of the ground and of watersheds.


So for me journeys are also an experience of traversing river systems. In unfamiliar areas I watch for rivers, trying to notice their names and the areas of high ground around them bringing down streams to join the rivers. On familiar journeys I'm already acutely aware of where the rivers are. One journey I often make follows the upper course of the River Wye after it runs off the mountain of Pumlummon in Mid Wales. Initially I travel along the valley of the River Rheidol which has its source on the same mountain. Crossing a tributary of the Rheidol - the River Melindwr - the road begins to climb to high ground initially away from the river itself, but still within its catchment. Eventually the road crosses the Rheidol where it comes down off the mountain and runs along by the side of the River Castell as it flows towards the Rheidol.


Eventually the Rheidol catchment is left behind at the highest point of the road and almost immediately the road crosses one of the upper arms of the River Wye - the Tarrenig - which then runs alongside the road flowing away from the Rheidol catchment. A different watershed. Soon the other upper arm, the Wye itself, also runs under the road and the two streams become one. Sometimes I get out of the car here and walk the short distance to the confluence. One stream, which has been running more or less level for a while, is placid with a smooth surface, while the other still ripples after its downward rush.

The Wye then winds down its upper valley with the road running just above it. Another place I often stop is a convenient lay-by from which a path leads down into a gorge with a footbridge across the river and a mossy oakwood covering the far slope. It's an atmospheric spot, spoilt only by an over-large blue sign which designates an allowed launching place for kayaks onto the river, though I've never seen any. Downstream the River Marteg can be seen from the footbridge rushing into the Wye from the Gilfach nature reserve.

From here the river continues alongside the road to Rhaeadr Gwy - or simply 'Rhayader' in English, the Welsh name indicating that here a waterfall brings the river out of its series of gorges to a wider, shallower flow across a broader valley. Soon the River Elan joins it, a confluence beneath ancient woodland some way from the road. But soon the road meets the river again and then crosses it in the town of Builth Wells (Llanfair ym Muallt) and then runs along the other side of the wide stony flow for a further stretch until there is a parting of the ways. One road continues to follow the Wye to the book town of Hay from where it flows out of Wales towards Hereford. The other turns towards the town of Brecon (Aberhonddu) where the River Honddu flows into the River Usk and the streams are now running off a different watershed heading south.

The Dancing Pilgrimage of Water

" ...........                       The speech
of the shaman is locked in the water web
where rivers meet."

So writes Glenda Beagan in her poem 'Shaman' included in The Dancing Pilgrimage of Water, a book of photographs by Phil Cope and writings selected by Dewi Roberts. In a previous book Holy Wells: Wales, Phil Cope had included some poetry alongside his commentaries on the wells. Here the idea is that the creative writing and the photography are in balance and complement each other. The selection of writings ranges from the seventeenth century to the present, but with a strong representation from modern works.

When I received my copy of the book I soon realised that something had gone horribly wrong with the typesetting or the editing as my poem 'Trawsgoed' ends suddenly in mid sentence five lines from the end, but with a neat full stop seemingly indicating the end of the poem. I have since learned that I am not the only contributor to suffer in this way.

Be that as it may, the photographs are stunning and the texts accompanying them, including some translated from Welsh, all engage deeply with the flow of waters through, across, over and under the earth. There is much more that I could quote, but having started with Glenda Beagan's reflections on the confluence of the Elwy and the Clwyd, I'll end by following with her the flow of waters back through time:

" ...........                            Hear heavy wains,
the whining of horses, the voices in the dusk -
chill calls, that Norman French nasality,

Tegeingl mingling Mercian : vowels broadening,
lengthening, but never merging with the plaited water
nor interweaving on a loom of moisture.

The threads remain: sharp, several, sure."