A HYPER-LOCAL SPRING by Amy Liptrot
‘I was interested in how children belong, needing their kith, their local acre, as they needed their kin. An entire history of childhood is in that one word ‘kith’, which is now used as if it means only extended family, whereas in the phrase ‘kith and kin’, ‘kith’ originally meant country, home, one’s land. Childhood has not only lost its country but the word for it too: a country called childhood.’ - Jay Griffith, Kith
My two-year-old son leaves his cherished doll’s pram at the end of our street and enters the woods. I trot behind as he ascends the familiar rocky slope to meet the main footpath and crosses a bridge over a dried-up stream: “water gone”, he says. The wind shakes a young tree and he waves back.
I often think about how the geographies of our childhoods define our psyches. I grew up next to cliffs, in big skies with the open ocean and wide horizons. I’m coming to see that my son’s ‘local acre’, his native mile, will be different. Where we now live, in West Yorkshire, is about as landlocked as you can be in the UK. His is a world of woods and rivers, of terraced houses among trees: a world of gritstone and green rather than sky and sea.
It’s been striking how something global (a pandemic) has made me focus on the local. Our street leads onto the woods: a gorge extending a mile or so up the valley along a stream. This locality - both the street and the woods - has taken on a greater significance in the last twelve weeks than ever before. Discouraged from driving, and accompanied by a two-year-old, my horizons have contracted.
We live in a traditional northern terrace of houses, built for textile factory workers in the 1890s. The front doors open straight onto the street, the architecture leading us to more communal living, particular when the sun shines. None of the houses have gardens, so we’re out in the street to get some sun, dry our clothes, exercise our children. And with everyone home during lockdown, it’s been busier than ever, each day in this unusually sunny spring feeling like another Sunday.
The street has a population of around fifty, just a few less than the population of the small Orkney island Papay where I lived for a while. It’s about the minimum number of people required to make a functioning community. Our street’s Whatsapp group has become busy, from people arranging to get others’ shopping and medication, to the sharing of food, plants, old furniture, cakes and painkillers. We’ve celebrated the birth of a lockdown baby and shared tips on takeaways.
It is interesting to watch new behaviours emerge. A few streets away, they come out of their houses for a ‘socially distanced disco’ every Saturday afternoon. In the absence of charity shops and with the tips closed, piles of unwanted belongings appear on street corners for others to take. Friends and delivery drivers leave goods and gifts on each other’s doorsteps. All this, combined with the lack of cars on the road, feels a bit like how I imagine the 1950s, with an eerie, threatening undercurrent. Our town was flooded back in February and some businesses have not reopened since then.
Most days, the toddler and I go into the woods. Over the weeks we’ve watched the plants bud and bloom, unfolding into fresh green and at the same time noticed the stream dry up and the water in the millpond recede. Whereas ‘before’ I would have taken him to playgroups or the playground, we’ve had to stay close to home and think more creatively, but this has often been rewarding. The playgrounds are shut but he used the roots of a tree and a broken down wall as a climbing frame. I’ve been seeing things with a child’s eye: delighted by bees and butterflies, by snails and worms. He’s started to collect stones and feathers in his pockets. I teach him to smell the bluebells, to blow the dandelion clocks. Some things I don’t need to teach: he instinctively crouches down in the stream and uses cupped hands to drink the water. His sharp eyes notice squirrels high in the trees, spiders in the walls, the faint moon in the afternoon sky.
I’ve lived here a couple of years but lately have been noticing new things all the time. Normally, I drive fifteen minutes to my outdoor swimming spot but, deciding not to use the car, I noticed that there were some pools in the stream deep enough to, if not swim in, at least to have a dip. On sunny Saturday mornings, I’ve slipped into the woods, stripped my clothes off and lowered myself into the cold water, taking a moment to reset myself after the stress of the news, childcare, the internet, the supermarket. I keep myself lowered in the water to hide from a dog walker, feeling like a frog.
The old idea of ‘think global, act local’ has been jolted into action by coronavirus. We realise that in an emergency, we need to turn to our neighbours. We have been forced to look more closely at where and how we live and its shortcomings and privileges are revealed. I’ve discovered new footpaths and experienced the spring with my little boy: bluebells, wild garlic, ducklings, buttercups. I’ve missed my family and the sea. I’ve seen that big societal changes can happen fast and perhaps it is possible for us to consume and travel less, live a bit more slowly and communally? Perhaps your local acre holds everything you need?