It actually took me a solid ten minutes to calculate how many weeks we’d been in lockdown for the title, which I suppose is a testament in itself to how long we’ve been like this. The small glimpses of normality that have been visible since May have made me realise that there won’t be a precise moment to pinpoint as the end of it- but life as it was in January still seems very far away. I can’t remember the last time I’ve spent so long in a single place – being in a long-distance relationship and having my close family scattered all over Europe has resulted of years of semi-constant travel, but of course that all got turned on its head. And because we don’t have a car, the world for the time being has pretty much shrunk to whatever distance I can reasonably cycle (around 16 miles, it turns out).
The notion would have terrified me if you’d asked me to do it last year – but as places to be stuck for six months go, our spot on the edge of the Norfolk Broads hasn’t been half bad. This summer was filled with uncertainty, but it was also full of bike rides through wet woodlands, the discovery of new places where we could hear cuckoos and skylarks and owls, afternoons eating cake in the long grass of quiet verges, post-work botany sessions along the riverbank and really pausing to take in the beauty of these places in the detail they deserve (once one was allowed to pause as part of one’s daily exercise, of course- one of my enduring memories from the first few weeks of May was cycling past the entrance to Whitlingham Broad while the tannoy threatened to call the police on people having picnics).
One of the best things about being a naturalist is that you will never run out of new things to learn, which lends this way of life an advantage when you can’t travel very far. Once you’re done with the birds you can move on to the damselflies then the moths and the trees and the grasses – and so places that you’ve been to many times before present themselves anew and you understand them in a way that weren’t able to before. I’ve often thought that my luxury item on desert island discs would be a field guide.
Not everything has been peachy, of course – I really miss my family, and not knowing when I’ll be able to see them in person again is a horrible chest-tightening feeling. But I guess I wanted to write this post to say thank you, Norfolk, for providing such a tonic and an avenue to escape from the the news. I guess we’ll be spending Autumn together, too.
