Holding on tightly to the sense of wonder I had when I was 10
Canberra is a small city. A lot of people know a lot of the same people. This can be annoying sometimes, especially if you are at the shops and have not bothered changing your top since last night’s spaghetti bolognese explosion and you run into someone who knows someone who knows someone and you belatedly realise that switching out your tomato stained top for a clean top would have been a good idea but it can also be helpful for connecting people to people and placing people in context. In this case, during the the non-recorded, introductory part of my podcast, Local Environmental Heroes, I discovered that our guest, Dr Siwan Lovett, lives next door to friends of mine. They had lockdown drinks (over the fence) last week. I know her garden. My daughter knows her son. Placing Siwan meant that I immediately felt that the interview we were about to conduct would be a very happy conversation, despite the fact that there was a high probability that Siwan has seen me at the local shops in my pyjamas (as I said, Canberra is a small city). And it was joyful. There were many, many laughs. But there was also a serious side, a more contemplative conversation which resulted in me, post-conversation, making a list of other books and resources to read, spending a Sunday slouched in my blue beanbag re-reading The Wind in the Willows and writing this story.
The Wind in the Willows had entered my consciousness the night interviewing Siwan. I was digging around the internet, searching for tidbits of information that could be used as the basis of questions and I found this quote by Siwan:
I believe that if we had more meetings in boats and kayaks, floating downstream and appreciating each other’s views, we would do even better at sharing and managing our wonderful life-giving rivers.
A neurone — or many neurones perhaps (I know very little about neurones)— sparked deep inside my brain and I was transported immediately to my 10 year old self. I felt the bliss I remembered feeling back then (and perhaps only then or a very specific type of bliss that only occurs when you are 10) as I was curled up on my bed, delightfully devouring the adventures of Mole and Ratty, two central characters in The Wind in the Willows.
Along with the complete series of Anne of Green Gables, most of Ronald Dahl and all of Enid Blyton, The Wind in the Willows is a book that I have kept from my childhood. I have packed, unpacked, packed and unpacked it innumerable times over the last twenty or so years. While it has travelled with me, I don’t recall having actually read it over the last thirty or so years, (ten is really a long time ago now) but something about Siwan’s idea of meeting on boats on rivers fired my neurones right up and I found myself, close to midnight, flipping through the pages of The Wind in the Willows, stopping only when I located this line, said by Rat.
“There is nothing — absolutely nothing — half so much doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing.”
During the podcast recording the following day I repeated this line to Siwan and she laughed loudly, telling me that she loves the book. I was not surprised (I was also grateful that she did not think I was completely insane and nor did she mention having ever seen me in my pyjamas). The more we spoke, the more convinced I became that if Kenneth Grahame had not written The Wind in the Willows and the stories of Mole, Rat, Toad, the Badger and, most importantly, the river then Siwan absolutely could have.; Perhaps she still should write a sequel as the world needs to know — and then get on board with - Siwan’s love of rivers.
I spend my working life raising awareness about the importance of rivers for not only our economic, but also our social and spiritual wellbeing. This means that for me, water defines my life. It brings together the communities I work with who want to protect and restore their watery assets, and motivates me to continue caring for and celebrating the wonders water brings to people and places.
Siwan loves rivers but she also loves people and the communities in which people (we) all live. Earlier on in life, Siwan had thought she would be a social worker. Instead, what she has done, incredibly successfully, is to bring her two loves together into one career, based off a firm belief that “rivers and people need each other to thrive.”
“…rivers actually physically do something to you…we know that your heart-rate slows down…you become more attuned to nature…we are better able to relate to ourselves and our community when we are out in nature.”
It’s early on in The Wind in the Willows (the second page of Chapter 1) when Mole first encounters the river that plays such a central role in the book, so much so that it is itself a character. Upon seeing the river, Mole was “bewitched, entranced, fascinated.” These are such wonderful feelings to have — in every sense of the word “wonder”. Doesn’t everyone yearn to have some part of their day punctuated by moments of amazement and admiration? I do. Yet I worry (and I wonder) whether the bucket of emotions that the Mole feels is enough.
“The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spellbound by exciting stories.”
Siwan focuses on fostering connection between humans and our natural world, seeing it as critical for forming a relationship with the river.
“It is only when you really connect with nature that you go, OK, I actually care about this.”
Connection is one of the three core values of the not-for-profit, Australian River Restoration Centre (ARRC), which Siwan is the Director of, having founded the organisation in 2008, (optimism and empathy are the other two values).
To connect means you feel an association to something, and that feeling is critical for you to care. My clumsy summary of Siwan’s thoughts on care and connection goes like this: We need to connect. We need to care. We need to care about what we connect with. We need to connect with our rivers (and our plants, our animals, our soil, our trees, our insects, our world). We need to wonder. And around we go again
From the very limited amount I know, (and I am in no way trying to speak for others here), I feel this relates closely to caring for country. But I can’t speak to that. Instead, I recommend reading Tyson Yunkaporta’s amazing book, Sand Talk. I will, however, rely heavily on this Maori proverb: I am the river and the river is me.
I am the river and the river is me.
If I could draw, I would attempt to couple this proverb with Siwan’s thoughts. into a diagram of sorts. The diagram would essentially be a circle, with no beginning or end. It would — sort of — be like the water cycle itself where, in what is a very simplistic explanation, water is continuously collecting, evaporating, condensing and precipitating. It becomes impossible, or perhaps not even necessary, to understand where the beginning or the end is. Instead, the focus turns to the system, and the motion that takes place within it.
But we still have a problem here: you don’t wonder if you don’t connect, if you don’t connect, you don’t care but you can’t wonder or connect (and end up caring) if you haven’t experienced — or you have forgotten or you have limited access to — the thing that you need to care about. This is why we need Siwan, and loads of other Siwan’s — (and possible also the neurones from when we were ten) to help us join the dots.
Siwan fervently and passionately communicates — to everyone — the stories of our rivers. She wants all of us to understand just special our rivers and their contents are. Like fish. Siwan tells me that everyone needs to know “not just what they are but what they do and why we should look upon them with a sense of awe and wonder.” The description below of the river in The Wind in the Willows is another example of a piece of magnificent communication over the beauty and the power of nature.
“…this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again. All was a-shake and a-shiver — glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and bubble.”
When I was under water this morning (sadly the water source was only from my shower, not from a river) I thought for a second about cutting out or re-doing the introduction above. But then I realised that my long-winded introduction was actually relevant and had an important point to make. The connection I formed with Siwan at the beginning of the interview — based off the fact that I knew her front yard, that her son teaches one of my daughter’s best friend’s guitar and that there was a high probability that Siwan had seen me dropping off kids in my pyjamas—meant that I was super keen to ensure the interview went well. I connected and therefore I cared. The same rule applies for nature: we need all of us to connect for all of us to take care. All that remains is to add the wonder. For that, go back to your ten year old self when the world really did seem like a wondrous place. It still is that wondrous place. Perhaps you just have to take some time to reconnect. Take guidance from Mole and go sit on the banks of a river and be “bewitched, entranced, fascinated” about the world that is around you.
“…he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.”
One final thought. On the podcast, we ask all of our guests what the first thing is that they would do if they were elected President of the World. This is Siwan’s answer:
“…the first thing I would do would be to get everyone to stop what they’re doing. They would have to leave everything, leave their screens, leave their phones, leave their weapons behind and they would have to go and sit under a tree and they would have to have their back up against a tree and they would need to sit there for at least 15 minutes with no distractions and just reconnect with something nature and then look around themselves and go “ok what is it we’re here again for” and have conversations around that topic first.”
Nailed it!
