Day 7

Things started to pick up today. We met the other members of the house team (Lee, Carolyn and Sandra). We said Morning Office together and chatted a bit before everyone scattered for the day. It was explained that it would be a “mixed day” with stuff to do in preparation for the house opening tomorrow, but room to rest and have some fun.

So I set off for the hamlet of Hazon (see earlier posts for the full story on this). Sandra was able to point out what would not be an intuitive route to get there, and so off I went. In 2016, we made a half-hearted attempt to walk from Nether Springs to Hazon (less than a mile apart as the crow flies) but one has to cross Mere Burn and Hazon Burn and there was no obvious foot path.

The first leg took me down a wooded mud track between wheat fields.

There was water in the air the whole way, but nothing a Puget Sound native would call rain.

The age of the place was once again impressed upon me. This time, I began to understand that where I live is the exception. The places I have walked most often, the land I call home was nearly the last habitable part of the planet to be swept over by europeans. The relative “newness” of western Washington is the exception…it’s just that I was born and raised within that exception…so it feels like the rule. Most of the world is “old”.

Every step taken here feels like I’m splashing in a puddle of history; that I’m stirring up countless spirits which have walked this exact path before, waking them from slumber, many of them overlapped with each other, some of them delighted to be alight again, some of them unthinkingly angry about it – like a man being awakened in mid-sleep walk.

Moving down to the confluence of Mere & Hazon Burns with the River Coquet and back up the other side, put me on a one-lane paved lane. I had driven these roads a couple of times in the past, but walking through a landscape you have usually driven is a new experience. The hedges are still mostly dormant, but buds are appearing here and there. I significant effort to replant evergreen trees is under way along the burnside. Ironic.

Because I was walking, I was much more aware that Hazon was situated on a relative high point. Not THE high point, but on a knoll. I found myself grasping for sensations. Wanting to feel the weight of personal history, wishing the ghost of an ancestor dressed in Georgian, Victorian or medieval garb would emerge from behind the hedge and welcome me. But while I absolutely love this experience, while my connection to this place is just as vital as it was in 2010, I can sense a change. It’s less about me and my “walk” this time.

The farm house where we stopped in 2011 now has a sign outside that reads “Keep Out”. Another sign on the gate at Hazon mill reads (Hazon Mill Only). I saw two people in the Hazon West Cottage who looked up at me as I walked past; not even a second look at this stranger walking through the rain on a lonely country lane.

This place is not mine. I am from this place. That matters. It matters a lot. But it’s not the end.