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Writer's pictureCrone

Sulis

Updated: Jun 12

This tree is at the edge of someone's garden on one of my shorter running routes. I have sat under this oak before and felt drawn to return. As I laboured up a very slight incline on the first part of the run, with the drizzle dampening my face, I suddenly realised that I didn't feel absolutely awful. That was a good sign. I ran past the lovely horse chestnut, which is now covered in blossoms, and up the hill to this tree.


There I sat. At one point a dog ran past and yelped in surprise when she saw me before hurrying on. Her person, some distance behind, didn't appear to notice me at all.


A crow had flown into the canopy when I neared the tree, and clambered further up as I got closer. Tits foraged in the leaves and I could hear the songbirds singing.



The song of blackbirds and robins has this watery quality. Yes, birds, like plane trees, can seem connected to the element of water. The song has a purity and a flow, like brooks and streams, running over golden-brown stones and between mossy boulders.


Although I wasn't getting wet under the tree's generous canopy, water was everywhere.



It was because of the water that the name Sulis came to me - the Celtic goddess of healing, wells and waterways, associated with the hot springs at Bath.


I thought about edges too: about the soil as this peripheral place between mineral rock and vegetal growth. A fertile and event-ful borderland between planet and sky. The terrestrial equivalent of the thin atmosphere that protects us from solar rays. I thought of how one thing flows into the other... rock to soil to plant to animal and back to earth and maybe rock or maybe plant. Water molecules swept up and falling down. Sinking in and drawn out. The carbon cycle and the nitrogen cycle. Life and death.


Oh dear.


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maplekey4
10 juin

Wonderful water. "Sulis" is a fine name.

J'aime
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