OUR WORLD RIVERS

"The river has great wisdom and whispers its secrets to the hearts of men.”

Mark Twain

My third memory book will be ready for publication later this year. It completes a trilogy. ‘My Word Café’ was about food, ‘My World Music’ about music and this one, ‘Our World Rivers’, about waterways. The title was to have been "My World Rivers', but I invited friends to contribute their watery memories, .These wonderful 40+ river memories cannot pass unacknowledged and this has resulted in the change of title. They range from childhood adventures on English, Welsh and Scottish rivers, to The Mekong in war-time Vietnam, the horrific drowning of prisoners into the Rio de la Plata, the crocodile-infested Daintree in Australia, the not-quite blue Danube, eating catfish on the banks of the Rio Grande in New Mexico and more than few about the Neretva in Bosnia Herzegovina. Read one example below.

The book  will be designed by Roelof Bakker with this photo of the River Stour by Steve Day on the front cover and Dawn Neely-Randall's photo of the River Neretva as the back cover .

 If you wish to contribute a river memory please send it to me by the end of October. The maximum number of words is 400/500. To david@davidwilson.org.uk

***

Left Field was was dedicated to Rhys Matteo, the grandson who I have never met

My World Music was dedicated to Anthea, Irial , Darla and Brian Eno

My World Café was dedicated to Mundher Al-Adhami and Haifa Zangana

My World Rivers will be dedicated to thre memory of David Hencke and Brendan Ward

Brian Eno on "My World Music" - What a lovely book it is. I am reading it and loving it

One of the 40 contributions to chapter on river memories

RIVER TRAMPING

‘The river flows, flows to the sea

Wherever that river flows

 is where I want to be

Flow river flow….’

      The Byrds – Ballad of Easy Rider

I had never thought about River Tramping until I met the Dorset River Tramp. Walking the Stour from the Source at Six Wells Valley to Christchurch is a sixty four mile tramp down the Stour Valley from the margins of Selwood Forest to the sea. In times past it was a seasonal way of life, sleeping rough in Bender Tents (made of hazel rods and canvas) hidden in woodland copses flanking the river to avoid trespassing laws and poaching fish from the rivers. Often highly skilled at basket making and willow weaving, a river tramp could earn a living from making clothes pegs and chair mending, tinkering and grinding (sharpening tools, knives and repairing pots and pans) as well as offering farmers seasonal labour. Christchurch and the surrounding areas were home to some of the largest gypsy encampments in the south of England in the 19^th and early 20^th Centuries.

The Dorset River Tramp that I met was a man of letters - channelling Arnold’s scholar gypsy - with eyes as blue as robin’s eggs.  He carried a hazel rod which he was washing in the river and said was his ‘Tapping Tool’. ‘What are you tapping?’ I asked. ‘Why the oaks of course.’ This was how I learned the true meaning of ‘Knock on Wood’. The first knock was to awaken the tree spirit to ask the tree for a favour, the second knock was to say thanks. He told me that forest rivers, like parts of the Stour, flowing through woodland were the blood vessels of the land connecting sacred trees in a wetland network. The moving water washed the roots and a sacred grove of river bank trees was far more potent than a landlocked grove. He spoke of ‘Water Lore’ and how tree-tapping was combined with river work and for spell-binding. ‘Lookout for Dippers and Kingfishers’ he said, as he loped off into the Greenwood like a man who knew where he was going. I thought of Turner’s lights across Stourhead gardens and Constable’s river bank at Gillingham, the Stour’s inspiration flows on down the generations, ‘touch wood’.

www.davidwilson.org.uk