I Know What Pussy Willow Is
A Disabled Woman's Thoughts on Connections to Nature
Where did April go? Abruptly, it’s May, and from last month’s sudden flush of greening, I’m now surrounded by the true flow of nature’s magic. I am sad when people don’t notice this – I’m not going all hippy-dippy wild woman, though I have the privilege of an early childhood in a semi-rural environment.
I know what pussy willow is, and catkins. Natural primroses and when the first blossoms come. Even earlier than that, the tiny crocuses and snowdrops that appear around the bottoms of trees, little jewels, gifts to please the heart as we came out of winter. May brought the explosion of new colours and, something that brims joy in my heart, the arrival of swifts that circle around where I live, my ground floor flat in a tall Victorian house. Swifts are declining, so to hear them, with their distinctive high-pitched call, is a true and precious announcement of the season. I live on a gentle hill, very near the seafront, which means I have spectacular views of the sky. The swifts, famed for their flying speed, circle around, dark blurs that I occasionally catch when I can sit in my tiny garden – and even inside, I’ll always hear their shrieking.
This makes me think of how I often come across the frankly prejudiced preconception that disabled people are unlikely to appreciate nature due to a lack of access to it. Has this concept of ‘nature’ as a playground for the financially comfortable and privileged non-disabled gone too far? It all becomes so competitive. Who’s noted the most birds, who’s climbed the most hills, trekked the deepest woodland?
What is nature, anyhow? It is simply itself, and no matter how we imagine we are removed from it, we are within it and it is within us through our fragile yet weedy, persistent and breakable biologies. Why should disabled people be any different in finding ways to connect and recognise this? Highly ableist views suggest a limited imagination, in my opinion.
Lately, through reading books by Tristan Gooley, the ‘natural navigator’, I am learning techniques for weather forecasting and navigation literally on my doorstep. Some claim I have witchy skills merely because I know where the sun rises and where the sun sets. On a bright day, of course, I can sense this by where the warmth falls on my face. If I observe it with some mindfulness, I don’t need to see it in the literal sense, which has been a blessing lately due to my sight deterioration. Not that I like that word. I prefer evolving, and perhaps this is part of a coping mechanism but why should that be a negative? Colour and detail blur. I see halos around concentrated sources of light. I enjoy the thoughts – okay, perhaps a writer’s fancy – that this is a blurring of dimensions. Why does it matter if this may be metaphysical, metaphorical or simply my imagination? I’m curious when I look at the sea on a sharp sunny day, and the ‘glitter path’ stretches into the horizon as millions of dancing dots of lights, jostling fairy photons, hint to me at infinity.
Back to the bursting of early summer in my tiny garden. Here is the universe of green and nascent multiplying colour. Nature personified as a driving force of maturing, full unfurling and, let’s not forget, the nesting and breeding birds – I have a small sparrow crowd in the shrubby hedges of my outdoor space. Nature’s dramas play out here as much as anywhere near where I watch from indoors through a window. Poor health that plods along in a chronic fashion has actually allowed me to refocus into a more mindful state, triggered by the devastation caused by my brain bleeds in August 2023. I’ve learnt – not always without a fight – to be still. Deeply still. And when I manage it, nature shows further magic. The sparrows come and look, and don’t mind me. This year there are more starlings, bold beautiful birds, who, we are told, are also on the decline. I hear my darling collared doves who trigger me into daft flights of fancy with their timid and somehow giggly behaviours. Mostly bullied by the larger rock pigeons and too shy, or perhaps daft, to fight back, they have a delicate persistence. They, too, watch and wait. And with their gentle coos, they eventually have their turn on the feeders.
My close friends tease me that I have a supernatural sense of smell, and maybe there’s something scientific behind it. Since my brain trauma, it has been exaggerated to the level that sometimes I can’t bear perfume because it gives me headaches. Very rapid headaches. And you don’t want them after your brain has been bleeding.
Thankfully, that has lessened, though smell remains one of my keenest senses, and when I’m able to go out on a mooch I connect with my natural environment through smell as much as anything. Living so close to the seafront makes this interesting. The breezes bring different aromas at different times of year, and change rapidly. The sea is briny, and right now the bursting out of green is undeniable, not to mention the banks of wild garlic that are just beginning to fade. In my tiny scrap of outdoor space, the smell of the sea comes with the smell of my herbs, the chives making a sudden reappearance although a monster rose geranium bush hovers like an eager lady in waiting with a huge, unruly skirt, ready to lift up and let those essences fly.
Forgive me for not sharing updates of a more prosaic type. Day by day, I aim to keep things chugging along, offset by the challenges of fluctuating health. Choices can be difficult when your energy is severely impaired; when even half a day of extra effort can make you acutely ill for a week. Some days I go out and have lunch with a friend. Other days it’s hospital (or should I say hospitals?), mostly in London, 70 miles from where I live. And on lots of days I write. While the sparrows keep me company and the sky stays a luscious blue, writing is, and always will be, my work. My purpose. Telling the story. And, believe me, there’s some exciting news to come!
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