Nature Boy

‘There was a boy, a very strange enchanted boy’ - Eden Ahbez

Some of my earliest memories of Dad are of being woken at first light.  Roused from slumber by the tinkling of steel on porcelain and a buttery waft of toast from the kitchen.  Bundled afterwards into the left hand drive, pea green Mark 1 Escort, swaddled in a blanket until the engine got warm enough to generate heat.  We would drive through silent streets to the sounds of Django Reinhardt and Jose Feliciano.  Street lamps still orange, aglow.  Flask and foil wrapped sandwiches in back.  Hide ready.   

I knew the names of most of the common British birds before I knew all of the names of my aunts and uncles.  Dad and I would sit, near silent, huddled for hours overlooking the flickering waters of Fairburn Ings, in various wooden hides that dotted the shoreline.  Wind played around the lap slatted sides, whilst we sat cosy inside.  Him tapping me gently, quietly gesturing as to where to point the binoculars.  Wide eyes to lenses. 

He taught me how to differentiate a coot from a moorhen.  Bald as a coot; on account of their snow white tonsures.  We would scour the reeds for ungainly grey herons then scan the shimmering, pale blue water in search of great crested grebes, always reminiscent to me of busy, bespectacled businessmen on their way to an urgent meeting.  Nuthatches scrambled nearby tree trunks, wheedling unsuspecting insects from their hidey holes.  In the summer we’d spot swallows and swifts, mesmerised, by these super heroes of the sky, with their feats of flight and endurance, spending the majority of their life on the wing.  

In late spring our thoughts would be interrupted by cuckoo calls or the ‘rat a tat tat’ of a greater spotted woodpecker.  On occasion, a skein of honking Canada geese would fly in low, aquaplaning in formation to a watery land, whilst over on the foreshore the distant nattering quacks of greedy mallards could be heard as they tapped visitors at the viewing point for their bready offerings.  Dad was amazing at recognising birdsong.  He could distinguish the descending quaver of a willow warbler, the chirps and beeps of a song thrush from a blackbird and the joyful squee of blue tits squabbling, aside the sci-fi, gamma ray gun trill of greenfinches.

I loved these times with my dad.  It felt like the every day world paused for a while.  I felt safe and solid.  My breathing would slow and a deep sense of calmness seemed to envelope us.  I recall being acutely aware of my surroundings.  An overarching sensation of peace, accompanied by a perpetual lapping of water against the bank, the wind riffling through boughs and bird calls that bounced all about us.  I was conscious of where the sun hung in the sky and how the light impacted on the environment.  How crisp and blue the water could appear and in the next minute it would be as if a blanket of cloud had been thrown by the wind, turning the water as black as ink.

Fairburn Ings is one of my favourite places.  Not just on account of my memories of my dad but because it feels other worldly, where one can still see the faint scars of bygone excavation and visible evidence that transformation is constant.  Flanked by the River Aire, it was once a marshy flood plain scuppering armies dating back to the year 655.  The land was later given over to monks in the 12th century and subsequently drained in the 17th century for agricultural use.  Quarries began to appear to take advantage of the rich alabaster and magnesium limestone and by the 18th century the area was further developed for coal mining.  Eventually subsidence took hold and by the turn of the following century the marshland returned and open water took form in the spaces where miners formerly toiled.  With the help of two men named Bob Dickens and Dr Pickup, they persuaded the local Council and National Coal Board to designate the site as a nature reserve.  A reserve that was looked after by volunteers until 1976, when it was taken over by the RSPB.  

I don’t know whether it was dad’s verve for birds or whether some imprint from him was genetically transferred to me but I’ve always found birds pleasing. From their varied physiognomy, songs and silhouettes, to the perfection of symmetry and the intricacy of their plumage. I like being a snooper into their private world.  Fratching and fighting, attracting and mating, nurturing and losing.  An avian soap opera playing out beyond the scope of our window sills.  

My dad was one of six children; fourth in line son to a bipolar coal miner and a mother with a heart of coal that could never be hewn.  When his mother died in her nineties, he told me that he never remembered her saying she loved him.  By all accounts it wasn’t a particularly happy home.  His parents worked hard but fought even harder and they would often use the kids to communicate through.  Grandad was a rampant gambler and drinker.  He would often be known to disappear on pay day Friday, to return with a pocket full of empty and a blazing row on the following Monday.  As a means of escape from the familial unrest, Dad spent much of his time with his Border Collie, Glen, wandering and twitching the hedgerows, woodlands and banks of the River Calder and the Aire and Calder Navigation.  At a time when oology was still legal, my godmother recalls how Dad used to carefully blow birds eggs, that he had found in abandoned nests on his ramblings.  Delicate speckled shells bore pride of place in a handmade wooden cabinet that sat atop the marble fireplace in their home - a handsome rented victorian villa, straight out of an Enid Blyton story, known as Clayton House in Methley.  We would often drive through Methley on our way home from Fairburn Ings. Another former mining town, home to Savile Colliery, surrounded by lavish woodland and agricultural land.  I could see even back then the allure of the landscape.    

Dad was diagnosed with bipolar disorder sometime in the late nineties, or as it was known then, manic depression.  Prior to this, the doctors termed these episodes as ‘nervous breakdowns’.  I do remember my dad being different but when I was really young it didn’t matter.  He was kind of wondrous and animated.  When he was high, he would explode with words and stories and these amazing acts of random genius.  One time, he made a greenhouse in a day, with a A-frame pitch, from bits of wood, corrugated plastic and window frames that he’d cadged from the neighbours.  I was maybe somewhat shielded from the darker times. Dispatched over the road to live with the neighbours, I recall with sadness being able to see into our own front room and waving at my dad, laid prostrate and sedated on the sofa.  It wasn’t until I got older, when the realisation set in that he was actually ill, that it became apparent just how hard it was on all of us.  This was at a time when mental health wasn’t really a thing that folk talked about or had much empathy for.  That must have been really difficult for Dad.    

I do believe that history has a tendency to repeat itself.  Whether that be in terms of a generational cycle such as that described by Strauss and Howe, or on a more personal, familial scale.  If you look at cause and effect there can only be so many permutations, that to me it seems bound.  I certainly recall myself falling away from the family at times, just as Dad had done when life at home was tough for him as a young boy.  And so, when a record was played on the stereo turntable, thirty times on the spin, or the weight of seeing eyes that I knew so well, had been replaced with glassy marbles that didn’t seem to see, I too would escape to the fields, woodland and hedgerows with my Border Collie, Sage.  I would walk for hours being soothed by the solitude and the sounds of nature, stopping to watch the sun setting across fields of rape and corn, lulled by birdsong in the fading dusk light and feeling that same sense of calm as I did as a small child, huddled in a hide. 

It got me thinking about the parallels in both of our lives.  How we both found solace and escape, particularly at hard times, in being in and around nature.  Coincidentally, I live on the same stretch of river and canal as Dad did - albeit further upstream in the city centre - and I’m perpetually amazed at the abundance of wildlife rubbing up against the bustle.  I can stand on my balcony, overlooking the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and see shoals of chub and carp basking in the weedy water below.  Cormorants and red kites can often be spotted overhead and long before I glimpse the turquoise-orange, arrow flash, I’ll hear the penetrating call of a kingfisher skimming the surface on the scout for it’s next lookout.  Grey herons regularly stalk the reeds on both the river and the canal, seeking out fishy trophies, a succulent vole or a spring ducking.  Weeping willows are abuzz with long-tailed tits as they chirrup and trill in synchronised flight from branch to branch. Cawing crows, jackdaws, magpies and jays are regulars in the tree tops opposite, whilst kestrels hover atop railway sidings in search of tasty rodent titbits.

My bird feeders are always full year round with punk, crested blue tits, great tits and goldfinches.  In spring they’re joined by blushing bullfinches and buzzing greenfinches.  Robins and clumsy wood pigeons and doves peck at the leftovers and amazingly at three floors up, ground-feeding dunnocks often make an appearance.  There are always mallards to be seen and for the last five or so years, there is at least one pair of mute swans that spawn surviving offspring.  This year they had a bevy of eight cygnets.  I recently spotted my first reed warbler and a grey heron chick and my favourite of all aqua-bats, the goosander pair, have had a clutch of young just a little way up the canal.  I love the walk from where I live in the centre of town, out towards Armley and Kirkstall, where the remnants of once-heavy, wool and industrial production give way to buddleia, rhododendron, wild roses, wild garlic, bluebells and fern, cherry trees, silver birch, horse-chestnut and hawthorn.  Cleaner waters now flow and aquatic plants flourish and burst into wild water lily flowers, bullrushes and water irises.  A pair of grey wagtails twitch and flit about the lock gates, their flight, pendulous, like shallow swags of bunting.  The banks buzz with butterflies and moths, dodging the iridescent emerald, cobalt dart of dragonflies.  Aerobatic waltzes performed to the noodling accompaniment of blackbirds, robins, thrushes and wrens and the squeaky sea-saw refrain from unseen bullfinches somewhere in the treetops.   

The towpath has progressively become a cycle highway and wayfare for commuters into and out of the city.  People seem to move so blindly forward.  Entranced in motion and music or eyes down, thumb scrolling illuminated screens.  I want to shout down to them ‘hey did you not see the kingfisher?  Did you catch the long tailed tits over there in the willow?  Was that a mink on the opposite bank?’  You can bet with some certainty that the observers are far between and few.  It saddens me, that a lot of people miss this other life all around them and that this practice of really seeing, has been diluted by modern society and at a time when it is probably needed the most.  At a time when life is so stressful.  When we all need to take a moment to breathe and appreciate the natural world around us.   

Ernest Todd, died of pneumonia on the 14 October 2012 at the age of 75.  He died at home in his own bed,  looking out onto the bird feeders in the back garden.  He loved his garden,  heavily planted with bird friendly flora.  The shrubs would grow wild and high to encourage nesting habitats and overhanging boughs would be left to hang feeders and fat balls.  We chose garden and wild flowers as his floral tribute and together with Mum we arranged the order of service. We picked ‘Nature Boy’, the Django Reinhardt version, for the music for the chapel and the lyrics were transcribed in his memorial card.  We left him to the sound of a dawn chorus.  As an adult, ‘Nature Boy’ still evokes Sunday mornings at home with my folks. The whiff of bacon and tomatoes cooking in the kitchen and the dulcet tones of Nat King Cole’s version, with Dad swaying and singing along on the living room rug.  It’s always been synonymous with my dad.  Not just because of this memory but the connotations of the words, that speak of this strange and enchanted boy who wandered over land and sea.  

It wasn’t until some years after he died when I looked up the origins of Nature Boy, that it lent the song even more resonance.  Originally penned by Eden Ahbez, prior to Nat King Cole bringing it to the mainstream, Ahbez  purportedly wrote the song in tribute to his mentor Bill Pester.  Pester had introduced him to Naturmensch and Lebensreform (life reform) philosophy, which was influenced by the Wandervogel (Wandering Bird) movement in Germany, that propagated a ‘back-to-nature’ lifestyle.  It all seems so fitting that I should choose to associate this song and its sentiment with my own birding mentor. 

Mum passed away three years after Dad and sorting through my parents’ house after they were no longer there, was the single weirdest experience I will ever know.  It felt like an imposition.  An imposition, tinged with memories and regret; not a regret for the love and the life that we shared, but regret for all of those questions that I never thought to ask until it was too late.  This piece, Nature Boy, was born from the discovery of my dad's old and treasured bird books and the most poignant of findings - his old scrap book, made as boy after the school year of 1948.  Reclaiming one of his old maths books, he had filled it with pages of clippings from The Dalesman, local newspaper 'birding' stories and bird cigarette cards, all interspersed with his hand inked calculations.  Flicking through the now yellowed pages, it took me back to that place that he took me to as a child and it reminded me that legacies are more than just trinkets.  They can be treasuries of knowledge and a shared love of life and nature and birds.  They are experiences that shaped a person and that person  shaped another person.  Me.

Last year I became the owner of another Border Collie.  A puppy named Ted.  Named on account of the fact that he looks like a Steiff bear.  It was the same year that depression hit me and grief caught up with me proper.  My fatalistic sensibilities would have me believe that things happen for a reason but it truly felt that way.  In the midst of my murk I found myself reverting back to nature and rediscovering that sensation of safety and solidity at a shaky time.  I found that same consolation and healing with a new companion, who on my darkest days gave me the impetus to get up and get out.  I returned to the place where I grew up; to the reservoir and the fields around West Ardsley where I had walked as a teenager.   Back to Fairburn Ings and through to Methley, discovering too that the old Savile Pit had experienced a similar metamorphosis to that of Fairburn. Part of the site was incorporated into St Aidan’s RSPB Nature Reserve, whilst the rest was absorbed into the new river and canal works. 

Since starting this piece the world has been devastated by coronavirus.  An atrocity in so many ways, but surprisingly out of such tragedy there have been some inklings of good. A new kind of hum enshrouded the city for a while, replacing the rattle of trains and constant drone of planes and traffic.  The skies were laden with feathered song and flight.  Bird feeder numbers increased on balconies and people were taking leisurely strolls along the towpath.  Burly men were seen cooing at goslings and ducklings, whilst other people stopped to observe aquatic flora springing from the canal bed.  I saw a woman walking home with a spray of cow parsley and a couple collecting elderflowers to make homemade cordial.  And deep in the night owls could be heard.  It’s a shame that it took such a life changing event to make people see another type of life.  I hope that bit continues.  

On account of the restrictions Ted and I have tramped the lengths of the towpath. From the city centre and out westwardly towards Rodley where I too found a renewed sharpness and a greater appreciation of my surroundings.  I spotted a black cap for the first time on that stretch and deep within a hawthorn bush I discovered a tree creeper.  I now notice in more detail and in particular, how varied the vegetation is along the bank and the land that intersects the canal and the river.  There are a staggering amount of wild flowers species that grow right on my doorstep.  Aside from common buttercups and daisies, I have discovered red valerian, cuckoo flower, shepherd’s purse, wild geranium and ground ivy that nestle alongside forget-me-nots, gorse flowers, bird’s foot trefoil, wild irises, plantain and resplendent fuscia hawthorn blossoms.  Cherry trees, once laden with pale, rose pink petals, transfigured in a matter of weeks into perfectly ripe, round, red fruits, providing an early summer harvest for the canal side fauna.  

I love to see how the water and the sidings change from week to week.  How buds rupture into magnolious blooms and florets and how the water can change with the weather and the movement of the locks.  How still it can appear like picture frame glass revealing minnows in the shallows, yet the current silently flows.  Gentle breezes agitate watery skin, creating static dimples as though there is an unheard sound system playing from the depths.  At other times the only tell of the steady undertow, are the silhouettes of roosting swans after sunset, spinning like floating island soufflés.  Big skies present above the canal’s width and it can be just as beautiful on a drab day as one that is soaked with sun.  You can walk for a spell with raindrops and ever increasing circles that ripple out to the waters edge, for it to then end abruptly like a hand drawn line has been etched on the surface; mirroring the end of a rain storm.  Sunsets hang with the nostalgia of an Atkinson Grimshaw painting, where brilliant salmon skies illuminate fallen seeds and pollen on the water like phosphoresce.  Reflected mill chimneys soften in a rhubarb haze and juxtapose with the concrete tunnel of the underpass, where refracted beams showcase graffiti like an urban gallery.  

And there are always so many birds.  And where there are birds, there is always Dad.