Yomping to Dorridge

Last night’s meal loaded our carbohydrates, and we begin with energy and a sense of anticipation, with confidence we can complete the day without a problem, and we feel happy about the whole trip and how we feel and our chances of achieving our goal. We stride into small pools of white light thrown from our headlamps. The canal is perfectly still and silent. No sign of dawn. We’re eating chocolate and drinking lemon-flavor Pepsi. It is a good day to hike. The path is superb – a footwide hard mud trail surrounded by grassy verges, its firm surface damp with dew and frosty where it is more exposed. Gossamer layers of ice shroud shallow puddles. We warm up and move along at a good pace, our legs feeling strong. The canal leads through a series of bends. In the background we hear traffic, but then the morning is quiet again; minutes later, we come upon small woods, the tree branches winterbare and filling with windsounds. The canal is dark and still. Ducks sit in groups on the path; and, as they have for days now, waddle reluctantly to the edge and ease themselves into the water as we approach. One group takes a risk and stays on the bank, avoiding a jump into the cold, eyeing us carefully. Dark heavy waters pushed into slow motion: webdelicate feet. There is heavy dew on the grass beside the path. We pass a few houses, all silent, then one with someone inside, in a comfortable armchair, beneath a yellow light, reading. He glances up as we walk by. There is birdsong, and a faint orange hint of sunrise. Farmyard smells float in the air. A duck stands in the canal, towards the other bank, and we again only notice coming close that it is standing on a piece of wood, almost submerged, barely breaking the surface of the water. farmhouse roosters, lonesome calls faintly echo; duckrippled waters We move along at a good brisk pace, the packs comfortable on our shoulders. Two pure white swans glide without effort through the translucent gloom, close to us. Grey light grows, emerging from the ground as much as from the sky; a slow faint dawn. The rich grasses at the sides of the dark gravelly towpath become luminous. The woods are still dark, filled with slight young trees with pale bark and an occasional gnarled and twisted ancient ivy-wrapped Harry Potter tree. Growing up on this rich landscape, this English soil, for twenty years, I never saw this. There is a poem by Navajo poet Luci Tapahonso that says, “With the dawn come the holy ones... because they are grateful when we remember them.” I cannot remember the poem’s exact words, but the Diné word for the morning light, just now beginning to grow, is adinídíín. The green grass glows around our feet as we walk. dawn emerges from retreating night: an iron sign