Chapter 3. April: Hello, Buttercup Over a decade ago, I loved every moment cycling around Odense with my friend, Jette, felt safe. But I do not cycle here in England, don’t have the confidence, having fallen off twice into traffic. As for mountain bikes, most of what M tells me about their engineering and technicalities goes over my head. But I know mountain bikes absorb the chaos under their wheels. Rocks, roots, sudden drops (as if the trail’s purpose isn’t the way through, but to throw the rider off.) “Explain to me what 180mm of travel is again, exactly?” “The distance the suspension moves to soften the impact. Gives the tyres grip and the rider half a chance of staying upright.” I tap away on my keyboard while M tos and fros from the kitchen. He’s washed his bike, taken a shower, toasted bread. The familiar ritual of return from the fells, the mechanical aftermath of adventure. “Where did you get to in the end?” “Ambleside. Twenty-six miles, three-thousand three-hundred feet of climbing towards Hawkshead, via Claife Heights, to Iron Keld, Hodge Close Quarry, Tilberthwaite. Then down to the foot of Wrynose Pass, over towards the Langdales, through the valley to Loughrigg Terrace and back to Ambleside. Two hours fifteen minutes.” I note all of this down. ”How long would that have taken you on your old bike?” “Three and a half to four hours.” “About the same time it takes me to write a sentence.” M appears in the doorway, ducking under the beam with practiced ease, and steps down into the dining room. “Downsides... “ I say. M and I have been having this conversation for a few weeks now, because I can’t write this book without tales of his adventures on a mountain bike, so much a part of who he is. “Downside is the e-bike takes a bit of your fitness away, right?” “Yes,” he says. “Some people don’t bother going out for a month. Battery anxiety is an issue as well.” “Battery anxiety? It’s another language.” M’s bikes have evolved through the years, each carrying stories of trails he’s ridden, friends he’s ridden with at different points in their lives. If you’re a cyclist or share your life with one, you could say that each bike serves as both object and archive, a physical repository of experience, falls, recoveries and the digital breadcrumb trails of routes tracked and logged through the GPS app, Strava. And for those of you who don’t cycle, or run, that app is the equivalent of a detailed diary that records every mile, every climb. In April 2021, M turned sixty. We celebrated that milestone in the curious suspended reality of COVID’s third lockdown. Days earlier, shops had opened after months of closure. Outdoor gatherings remained restricted to a maximum of six. We still couldn’t socialise indoors with anyone outside our household. We couldn’t host the birthday celebration I’d imagined months before the pandemic. Instead, something intimate. There was M, me, our son and his girlfriend around our dining room table. After our meal, we gathered around the computer to watch a short film. I’d been secretly collecting short videos from our family, our neighbours and M’s mountain biking friends, friends who’d shared hours of pedalling beside him, their rides now replaced by solitary outings during the deepest restrictions. As familiar faces appeared one after another on the screen, each sharing a memory, a joke, a promise of trails to come, I watched the emotions move across M’s face. The film ended with an image of a premium e-bike. “I didn’t have a clue as to what bike to choose,” I told him. “David Simpson was my guide, helped me no end.” We look back at the screen, M’s face agog. “How?” “Hire purchase,” I said. “Three years.” Beyond the surprise of the new mountain bike, though, what the film truly represented was mutual support through rough terrain. Mountain biking had given these men, in their forties, fifties and sixties, a way to speak about vulnerability and resilience. Whenever M has shared their stories with me, I know I’ve been holding something not meant for casual retelling. So now, as M approaches sixty-four and we prepare to leave Cumbria, I listen more closely to those conversations about bikes and trails, trying to absorb all the pleasure mountain biking has given him here over the years. And when we’re driving somewhere and M points out a trail he rode last week, or when he spends weekend hours servicing his bike, our talk inevitably turns to how e-bikes have extended riding careers. “People with long-term injuries can ride power-assisted,” he says. “Also, as you get older and lose strength and power an e-bike assists you in those respects. More distance in a shorter time. It’s quicker.” Beneath our chat lies an unspoken truth. The community built around these shared adventures will soon exist more in memory than in weekly experience. And while they didn’t see each other nearly often enough, H’s death makes this reality sharper, more immediate. In January this year M and I had a flu-like virus. And now, as April unfolds, a lingering malaise settles between us. We aren’t fully sick or entirely well. I attempt lists of what needs doing, the tasks of preparing a house for strangers to judge worthy of their future. My enthusiasm for regenerating Bert’s garden last month has surpassed my body’s reserves. A gallbladder infection at the tail end of COVID lockdown, followed by an operation that inserted a stent through my bile duct, may have compromised my immune system. Back then, a consultant suggested that village isolation, long hours alone with my thoughts, and the emotional weight of our son’s mental health might further compromise my body’s defences. “Not the whole story,” he’d said, “but something we’re understanding more and more.” A few years on, I understand better how stress works against my gut, killing off the bacteria that should’ve been protecting me. Of course, knowing this doesn’t stop the worry. M and I carry the weight of our son’s struggles with addiction. We lose sleep over his mental health. And, dear reader, I’ve got creaky suddenly. Of course, energy levels aren’t what they were at fifty, at forty. The body keeps its own accounts now, demanding payment for overexertion in ways it never did before. What used to be resilience feels more like borrowing against tomorrow’s reserves. Time feels different now, less expansive, more precious. I look to the community archive to get over myself, coming back to the idea of a hedgerow game for the young parishioners in the village. A way that children might contribute to the community archive. The game could work as a progressive challenge that grows with each attempt. Rather than simply counting species, I imagine children could earn different badges based on their discoveries. They might start looking for five common species, say, blackthorn, hawthorn, dandelion, primrose, dog violet. Once they’ve mastered those, they advance to a tracker badge, looking for bird nests, insect holes in foliage, spider webs. The ultimate level might challenge children to look for evidence of ecological relationships. Drafting a proposal to various community groups in the village, I consider what an adventure kit for children might look like. A kit parents could hire, for free, from the hall for a weekend family adventure in the village. A trail camera, entry-level binoculars, field recorder, bug box, bat detector, magnifying glass... These activities are what I imagined M and I would do with our son when he was a toddler and beyond. We even named him after a woodland plant, dreaming of walks we’d take to meet his namesake. But those early years went differently. Between my own struggles after birth trauma and the terrific strain that put on our marriage, M and I often chose the path of least resistance. Our emotional survival demanded more of our weekends than searching for our son’s woodland namesake did. The hedgerow game, the adventure kit, they’re a way of honouring what we lost and what might still be possible. I suppose I’m trying to acknowledge the grief of missed adventures while refusing to let grief end the story. There’s healing, isn’t there, in imagining children who will know the difference between hawthorn and blackthorn? Creating opportunities for other families feels like it’s part of what it means to leave well. In any case, what are our collective responsibilities to the children who come after us? A trail camera and bug box, acts of resistance against a culture that separates children from the natural world. We can still cultivate attention, patience and wonder. One hedgerow at a time. Hedgerows quicken with life. And under the hedgerow halfway up the lonning, where it has flowered every April for all the years we’ve lived here, the marsh marigold, a member of the buttercup family, will be shining in the sunlight. There are stories which connect marsh marigolds to a Goddess in Norse Mythology. Freyja’s golden tears. When Óðr disappeared, Freyja wept golden tears which turned to gold upon the land. Grief transformed into something beautiful. Golden flowers emerging from dark earth, returning each year. The Prose Edda, a 13th-century collection of Norse mythology written by Icelandic scholar Snorri Sturluson, mentions Freyja’s golden tears, but not their connection to marsh marigolds. Mythology fascinates me, though. I don’t believe in Norse gods or magic for these stories to feel meaningful. Instead, it’s about recognising something familiar, when you see a pattern you’ve noticed before. Old currents flow beneath the everyday world. I’ve carried something for years. We were in France. Mum had asked me to empty the teapot in the field behind the tent. I didn’t see the snake until it whipped the ground. Leaning back, as if to strike, it put
