Horizons
There is a buzzard. I see her just beyond this first field, where the pea-shoots are still stunted from the unseasonable frosts. For a while she just circles, broad wings stripped of colour from the sun. Her shadow hangs above Great Yews. I know it’s Great Yews because their colour is darker than the rest of the trees; they are still dressed in deep emeralds, whereas the other trees are beech leaf fresh.
She is heading for the horizon now. Lifting. Rising above the uniform yellow of the oil-seed rape, cutting across hedgerows that bleed white petals into the green of the byway. As she passes the racing yard I try to sniff out the cut pine scent of the woodchips forming the gallops. They are empty today, no horses tearing across the flats, no lungs and legs pounding, just stillness. Just wide open quiet.
I watch her drift across all of this, until she is nothing but a speck in the distance. Gone. Carried beyond view, on wings that read the wind like braille; feeling all its indents and raised bumps.
In her wake she leaves the lines of the horizon for my eyes to follow. Forcing me to read what lays ahead.
Up here, where the van is parked, you can see for miles in all directions. From the valley head, where the weather always meets us first, I can make out the high-rise flats of Bournemouth; rectangular blocks that throw the sun back at you in certain lights. Somewhere beyond them lies the steely sea. Directly ahead is a line of pylons all strung together, threaded by a giant needle; that is Telegraph Hill on the New Forest, where I go to walk sometimes. At night the villages that lie in the dips, hidden from us in the day, are given away by lit windows. And I always know the weather before Mum does, because I often watch it form and travel to where she is a good 20miles away. Oh yes, up here I see it all.
It’s funny, because I can see for miles, but I have no idea where I’m going.
Tolerating uncertainty is something I’m not particularly good at it. I don’t know how to navigate it. It’s like trying to find your way through thick fog; you keep walking in the direction you think you should be going in. Trusting that your feet know the path. Trusting that you’re walking in as straight a line as possible. Only for the mists to lift and you realise that actually you are entirely off course.
That’s a little bit how things feel at the moment.
Living in a van, unsure of where you’re going to be next, is like walking through a real pea-souper. You keep placing your feet, one after the other, going and going and going; with no real confidence that you’re making the right decision.
We chose this way of living when it was all working out. When we had a job lined up that would accommodate the lifestyle. We didn’t choose for one van to clap out on us, we didn’t choose to have to settle whilst we found another one suitable. We didn’t choose to be here nearly 4 years on, almost homeless. But we are, and in a way that is a blessing. I look back at the bad weather and feel happy with what we did. Grateful for all the people we met, friends we made, and wild opportunities that took us to magical places.
Looking back isn’t hard. Looking forward is.
In a strange way now, I feel more settled than I ever did living in a house for the majority of my life. I feel more sure, and more certain, about who I am; who I want to be and what exactly it is I love and need most with me along the way. For all the uncertainty I’m being forced to tolerate, there is a level of certainty in other things to balance it out.
And I can’t help but like this contradiction. This ability to peer out of the van window and see with astounding clarity for miles and miles, but to look towards next week and see nothing certain. I’m sure there’s some kind of cliché lesson in there somewhere. Some living for the moment, being present in the here and the now. And that’s cool. But me? Right now?
I’m just watching the horizon. Acknowledging the way it sits, dressed in a coat of clouds, always out of reach. Looking out for the next buzzard on wind-wheeling wings.
View from campervan door, green fields and blue skies of Wiltshire
