Aqua Vitae by Kirsteen McNish
There is an old well hidden down a small, overgrown path in the hamlet I live in. This hamlet sits 400 feet above sea level and at the foot of Dartmoor, and is in the folds of the hills in a curved basin. In Autumn the mist and fog is plentiful, and at times engulfs the view from our kitchen window as it creeps up the fields that lead to the ancient church. Our house is surrounded by a network of working fields, mainly occupied by a carousel of grazing livestock, whilst other fields are left to grow wild. But it’s the open moorland views that really catch my breath, studded with dense green woodlands and high hedges embracing the curves of the hills, as if they are containing them like waves breaking against sea walls. We live at the end of a small row of cottages that seem to have been built more meticulously than the others I can see up the hill which appear to have been scattered and flung by the high winds up the lane – taking root along the ridge of the hills and petering off into the distance – like a gappy necklace that has lost some of its beads. The houses on the hill are linked by gardens, high stone walls, tall trees, a newly planted vineyard and the odd derelict, unused barn snaking down the steep hills to the Avon River. But these barns are not empty – they are home to nesting barn owls, sheltering sheep, toads, huge fringed mushrooms. These buildings, which make developers and estate agents’ eyes shine and their palms clammy, are quiet refuges of sorts, making a mockery of our ability as humans to commune and forget our differences. Many species under one roof, rubbing along together amongst boggy foundations.
This part of Devon is a wildly watery and windy place, a micro-climate of sorts. When the rain comes, it comes hard. It can be head-batteringly biblical, the most robust raincoat or even brickwork can’t keep out all the downpour. It is a place of water, water that seeks out fissures, seeps into everything, that mixes with the Devon soil and streams, which hangs heavy in the holloways, making shadows shimmer kaleidoscopically, and is the greenest and most fecund place I know.
The ancient well in this hamlet is secreted down a narrow rough path and when I look closely at the mud track that leads me there, I see tiny shards of pottery embedded jewel-like into the bank. When I try to dig them out of the mud with my fingernails, they resist – nestled in a haphazard mosaic, a wavy, ribboned pattern. At the end of the path is the beautiful green well. Soft moss springs from its walls and water trickles across small stones at its open mouth. Before running water was piped into the cottages, villagers would have had to carry water back from the well themselves. It is likely that the earthenware shards along the pathway come from vessels that were broken on the way home. The well also once served the bakery, which was situated in our house, the water pummelled into the flour to feed the hungry farming villagers. I wonder about what else has been carried from this well on this soft desire path. How many feet have traversed the short footpath here over the centuries, carrying with them hidden fears or hopes. I wonder too how many distracted butter-fingered children were chastised for breaking water vessels, how many pregnant mothers walked here after a long day, bone tired and heavy, how many games of hide and seek and clandestine kisses stolen here, and how many girls dreamt of other lives when carrying water for chores as brothers played or were out in the fields. I love that this place still exists quietly in its quiet green grotto.
A trickle of water dances over my feet, releasing a barely audible sound that makes me want to immerse my face into its gentle flow. I can only find mention of the well on a fragment of a map on the old deeds for our house, which also mention two other wells close by. These have since disappeared, as if the earth has reclaimed them. I kind of like this. A village secret worth keeping, like turning over a special stone hidden in your pocket. We have come to think of ritual being associated with pagan rites, but just walking the same routes or making our morning coffee re-grooves our beings as much as creating altars or lighting candles. The British archipelago is surrounded by water, and the ancients seemed to understand its spirituality and how we are always connected to it. Our seas and rivers are polluted and it feels ever more important to honour these wild sources that tumble through towns, cities and moorlands and their gravitational pull.
*
I am reminded that the first time I came to Totnes, more than eighteen years ago, my partner took me down a long, steep street with high walls to see the Leech Wells, a historic holy well known for its healing powers. Like an altar of sorts, ribbons and coloured fabric flutter around the well, surrounding three irregularly shaped granite troughs called the Toad, Long Crippler and the Snake. I am a stickler for a triptych and for the significance of this number and its relation to the natural world and spirituality – specifically, the cosmic triangle of sea, earth and sky; its occurrence in folk stories, mythology and even the Bible. Painted pebbles, shells, flowers and tiny offerings are placed carefully around these troughs and the peaty tinged stone looks vaguely reddish in colour like the distinct brick red Devon soil. A string of small Nepalese flags around the grate set in the back of the well flip gently, making a put put sound in the breeze. As we arrived, I remember a woman with her head bowed in an act of quiet caretaking, diligently removing any unnecessary detritus that had blown into the stone trays in the late Autumn winds. The Leechwells are situated at the cross section meeting point of three lanes and would have been connected to a three-sided immersion bath in the Leechwell Gardens just over a high stoned wall, once the site of the medieval Magdalene Leper Hospital. It is thought that the immersion bath was constructed for the afflicted patients to bathe in and the Leech Wells were used by local folk for topical infections, disability or ailments that couldn’t be explained. It strikes me as poignant to think of the overlapping lines of thousands of lives journeying here, creating invisible maps of hope somewhere between these springs and the ether, and the lives of those hidden, sick, and out of view, connected by the water source that ran from one site to another.
*
Since moving to this part of the country, I have found myself leaning over many stone bridges arched over the Avon, Dart and Teign – ranging from still, amber, slow moving streams to frothy, tumbling rivers travelling fast and furiously under my feet. But, unlike the healing wells or the stone rows and circles I find myself seeking out, I have rarely thought of these places as spiritual. Many locals tell me cold water swimming has always been a pastime in these parts, and rarely called wild swimming. When rivers and the sea are in your lifeblood and commonplace, perhaps it is a natural rite of passage to learn to submerge yourself in them and think little of it. On a late September day, we drive to the Two Bridges car park in Yelverton where bikers congregate in their leathers in a pub car park and, more unusually, the roads are lined with clusters of young people with unfeasibly large rucksacks – some holding maps, others bent forward like the gnarly trees on the moors themselves, pink cheeked and breathing open mouthed with effort. There is a slight chill in the air, thinly dividing the late summer from incoming autumn. It seems odd to see these spools of teenagers with their arms swinging by their sides, when normally you just need to avoid the odd pony or sheep drifting nonchalantly onto the open roads. My partner tells me that they are likely doing the Ten Tors Challenge, walking up to 55 miles over a weekend. I can detect a wistful tone in his voice as he recalls his late father, a devoted headteacher clapping his sixth formers in at the finish line, congratulating their not inconsiderable efforts. I can see some of these kids are just a year or two older than my own son, who is incredulous that they would do this voluntarily, snorting in derision. Irritated by his eye rolling, I pull on my mac, and wave my partner and two children off as I make for the famous Wistman’s Wood, a temperate rainforest. It is out there, some way in the distance, led to it by an ink blue shimmering smoky plume of the River Dart, as if the wood drinks at its mouth.
As I walk the path, flanked for a good while with intricate stonework walls, I envy the position of the farmhouse I pass, which sits next to a rowan tree ablaze with scarlet berries, lit up against a bright blue sky, a pool of deep water separating me from touching its knotted branches. Teenagers who had romped past me a few minutes ago, say hi shyly as they dis-robe in the sudden heat, just as I’ve already removed my mac. I blink hard in the low sun. Up and over a muddy track, I can see a distant swathe of a copse, standing tsavorite green in the crease of the golden and sandy pink valley – the West Dart river far below leading me toward it like a long pointed finger. This river looks benign but is both beautiful and powerful. I think of an old saying I read about in The Witchcraft and Folklore of Dartmoor: ‘Dart, Dart, Cruel Dart, Every year thou claim’st a heart’ – a warning for to not become beguiled by the river since its waters are as treacherous as being caught unawares in a sea squall. The “cry of the Dart” is also an old Dartmoor superstition, it was thought that each year the river would take a victim to a watery ending to feed its hungry depths – demanding an annual sacrifice with its uncanny wailing sound. Others think the wailing sound that is sometimes heard from the river here is perhaps created by meteorological conditions, the strange sounds carrying over certain quarters of open moorland into deep valleys.
The river finally leads me to Wistman’s Wood – an ancient woodland said to be a ritual pagan site where Druids once congregated and that is purported to be haunted. I keep checking my phone app as the copse looks smaller and lower hung than I had imagined it. On the left bank I can see boulders scattered up the hill climbing towards a steepled peak. This place strikes me as the busiest of all the remote places I have visited on Dartmoor: a tall scraggly-haired man smiles warmly as he passes, two women with huge huskies plough past me, and young couples walk quietly with fingers interlaced. As I climb over a dank, slippy stile, I can just see dappled light bouncing off huge green boulders and between the branches of gnarled dwarf oak trees beyond. At the fringe of the wood a sudden sound startles me as, to my right, a robin darts in and out of the bushes like a small staccato klaxon. As I step toward the canopy, I see two men – one incongruent with his hood up in the now vibrant sun, the other, older and white moustachioed leaning against a walking stick. I say hi and they murmur back with a side eye, unsmiling. They sit behind a sign that asks you to not ruin the unique ecosystem by clambering over the boulders. They slowly turn their gaze from me to a distant woman doing exactly that, jumping between boulders with her darkly mop-haired son, and I feel the weight of their watching. I step around them and the huge emerald moss-laden boulders, which, once inside the canopy, give the impression of landscapes found in fantasy books. Although underwhelmed at first, I am soon engulfed by this uncanny place. Sun streams through the oak branches hung with bearded wool-like strands of lichen, starry mosses creep across the huge boulders between twisted snake-like tree trunks, and as I close my eyes it feels as if I am floating. I don’t feel anything ominous as the folklore tells me I should, or see ghostly processions or the demonic hounds it is said to be home to, but still this place feels sacred. I can hear the waters rushing below, adding to the lightheaded, unusual feeling enveloping me. As I open my eyes, the robin I had seen in the bushes appears before me, head cocked to one side, its black shiny eye fixed on mine. It communes for a good while, then flies off after a tiny sandy coloured moth. In folklore, robins are the spirits of departed loved ones. I shuffle off and clamber on to the huge slab that sits just outside the woods and I lie down. The grey granite mingles with the silverish strands of some of my wind-tossed hair. I wonder, as I lie there, if sacrificial offerings had once been made on this rock that I have made my temporary bed. The ancients, I think, knew a thing or two about place and awe. No-one really knows how this wood exists in the folds of these high hills, but here it remains, a green enigma.
As I walk past a steady stream of people arriving, I descend a bank to get closer to the river, and as I reach the edge, I suddenly spy the woman who I briefly caught sight of amongst the trees; the woman who the two men were silently judging. She is now standing barefoot in the middle of the river, her long hair streaming down her back as she touches the stones ceremoniously with the palm of her hand. I can hear her low melodious singing as the sun glances in silver shards off the water. Her small son turns and says hello to me and then asks his mother why I am there. Time feels strangely suspended. Not wanting to ruin their private moment, I climb over a nearby stile, hugging the river’s edge to my right and then, after walking a while, I remember I can’t go much further – I am approaching the realms of Duchy-owned private land. I stride up the hill wondering where I am in relation to the ridge I walked to get to the woods. I can no longer see the woman and her child in the water behind me as I look back – they seem to have vaporised mirage-like in the dancing heat. My foot suddenly gets sucked fiercely into a bog and a horned sheep looks at me querulously as I dramatically lose my balance, slamming my left side into the rich, peaty ground as I unsuccessfully grab at some sharp-ridged granite. It is easy to be taken by surprise by unseen water and the moors. I wonder what it is like to be lost here at night when the fog comes over and the ghosts are alleged to appear. I am soaked, swearing and embarrassingly disorientated. I struggle to find my equilibrium again.
When I reach the car and climb into the passenger seat, my partner tells me I look different somehow. I laugh because the side of me he can’t see is soaked, as if I have been dunked into the tea-coloured moorland waters like a biscuit. Driving home, as the world whips past, I hold my damp arm out of the car window, the palm of my hand coddled by the warm breeze. I smell the amber-like ooze of the moors in my nostrils. Later that night, I search my phone for more information and learn that this wood is one of three small, isolated, high-altitude woodland areas on Dartmoor and is considered to consist of three distinct regions or groves of oak trees – a clear spring aiding the abundant lichen and moss. I do not feel haunted by the woods or the river this time, but I am undoubtedly watermarked by it.
***
Kirsteen McNish is a writer whose interests are focused on unearthing lesser heard stories and as part of her practice curates one-off special events in unusual places.
Photographs by the author