The Dawn Chorus

Farewell to deep winter and sausage rolls

A Bird Song / Christina Rossetti 1830 –1894

It’s a year almost that I have not seen her:
Oh, last summer green things were greener,
Brambles fewer, the blue sky bluer.
It’s surely summer, for there’s a swallow:
Come one swallow, his mate will follow,
The bird race quicken and wheel and thicken.
Oh happy swallow whose mate will follow
O’er height, o’er hollow! I’d be a swallow,
To build this weather one nest together.

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The window is cracked open and the mineral-rich tang of morning is flooding the bedroom. Our usual view of the sunrise upon the Pacific ocean has temporarily been replaced by undulating hills and scraggly tree tops beneath an unshifting graphite sky. At 5:50 this morning the first songbird was finding her voice — an unconventional scale of clear notes, clipped and warbling from the hedgerow beneath the window. A flustered pheasant screeches from the copse beyond and a handful of rooks begin their inconsolable caw-caws from a leafless tree somewhere. I hear an owl bidding us all a good day with his sensible hoot, surely tired from a night of hunting mice and voles.

Within minutes a dawn chorus has begun, reaching me from the far corners of the valley sprawled like a quilt beyond the house. With every lightening shade of dawn comes “tutti”, the point when all players in an orchestra come together. The first songbird, of which I can shamefully not name, is well into her third or fourth verse now, filling the room with the sound of spring, daylight, newness and hope — a hope that winter is almost loosening it’s chokehold on England. I can count the slithers of blue sky I’ve seen this month on one hand. The monochrome landscape feels heavy and unrelenting under clouds that rarely part, and it makes me feel quite claustrophobic. It seems a softness has not only tenderised my body, but also my mind. Could I take this much rain again if I lived here? I couldn’t, I would surely perish in spirit. I will stay in California.

I welcome the wind here though, it moves things along giving us all the impression that the seasons are playing out as they are supposed to, and confirms that the calendar does indeed say March, which sounds a lot better than February to a frost-bitten ear. In the summer the wind shushes in the full, verdant tree tops and in the autumn it sends murmations of brittle leaves into the air before they gently kiss the earth.

The wind back in Santa Barbara, when anchored, is a nuisance at best, and when the March gales beginning ripping through the channel we can expect to spend a lot of money in the harbour, or time rediscovering our sea legs at anchor. The wind in California is fierce as it crusades off the mountains and rolls into the ocean at frightening speeds, or when it kicks up from the South sending wicked white-capped rollers into the bay. It is not tameable, and must be understood and wrestled with to live the way we do. You’ve no doubt heard one must “batten the hatches”, but don’t forget to double-tie your dinghy and triple-secure your laundry to the rails — a 5-knot forecasted breeze on an 85-degree day in Santa Barbara almost always means a 15 to 20-knot chop in the anchorage, and a 20+ knot prevailing wind in the channel often means 15+ knot of southerly backwind thanks to a local eddy effect. There is no winning, only preparing and managing.

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We are leaving this week and I think I’m ready this time around. My face is palid and is yearning for the recharging warmth of the sun. My body is stiffer than usual and it will lead me to the foothills for a long walk amongst the sage brush and bush sunflowers. My belly is craving the crunch of in-season strawberries and snap peas which seem like a distant dream here in Sussex. The goodbye will sting, as it always does but with plans to visit again in early summer, I know we will be reunited with my dear family soon enough. Hobby has had quite the growth spurt this month and now has a ferocious appetite for non-milk related food! He’s crawling fast and summits the towering staircase at my mums house with confidence. He’s not walking yet but he is willing and almost able! He turns one next month and I look forward to planning something special and no doubt edible for him.

The South Downs / Hobby / Family outing in Hastings

I’m not looking forward to returning the bland and industrial grandness of America: the strip malls, the big box stores, the XL supermarkets. A trip to Costco is the last thing I want to do when I get back. I want to steep in the quaintness of our boat and come home gently like a germinated seed pushing up through the soil to meet the day in their own time. I enjoy unpacking my newly acquired antique trinkets and art pieces, and finding space for them in a boat with no space. It is an impossible task. I want to potter around and eat a crunchy salad in the sun, and wash it down with a tall glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. I want to go to the farmer’s market and revel in the glorious colour of it all, and then fill my sad and empty fridge with all of that nourishing goodness. But before any of that can happen we must fly for 11 hours with an 11 month old, please spare us a thought xo

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Dear subscribers, thank you for your patience with the recipe part of my Substack! It’s been hard to create and test while we’ve been traveling but I assure you, I am returning Stateside with buckets of inspiration and an appetite for the best Spring has to offer. Will post something very very soon.