Having woken with the sense it was all ending – light, warmth, growth, much else – I am pulled to the river. But when I arrive, it is brown, low and so lethargic the flow would be imperceptible if not for a few early-fallen leaves and small blobs of spittly scum. My mood isn’t helped by the state of the banks, where Himalayan balsam and hedge bindweed seem locked in a grim, ugly-sister tussle.
I walk. A grey heron cranks into the air, trailing orange legs and so begrudging the cost of two heavy wingbeats that I can’t help but smile. He alights and I avert my gaze as he reorganises his wings, so he doesn’t feel the need to move again.
A fallen willow blocks the path, so I slither down the bank to the “beach”, a strip of silt scarcely half a metre wide. Sometimes, when the river is dropping, this narrow margin becomes a canvas on which there are – yes! – footprints. At first I can’t be sure, but they become more distinct as I follow them upstream. Round pad, round toes that made deeper impressions as they gripped, and here’s one showing claws. Three toes, four toes, five. Otter.
Seldom do we actually meet, but otter and I have shared this spot for years, overlapping in space, adjacent in time. I go to where the beach peters out and she slips back into the water. Then, I notice what otter and autumn sun and overhanging trees have been trying to explain: that the river is not brown at all, but gold and green. And a gliding buzzard calls three times as if to say: “There now, now she sees!”
I blink and a cormorant has appeared where there was only water. A dragonfly skims my shoulder. Two grey wagtails loop in tandem from the weir, the air their stage. And then an electric dart slides past us all, taking the light and my breath away downriver with it, carrying fire and awe as if they weighed nothing. Kingfisher, rainbow bird. And I do see. I see that sometimes, the shortest of moments can be everything.
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