Welcome to A Wild Green Heart. I offer my appreciation for your time spent here. Today's post is my monthly photo-diary report from Pomona Strand, at the end of my favorite month of all in this wild and sacred place.
There's so much I could tell you about June at Pomona. How the rain that fell during the first half of the month revived the dry, bare patches of ground, and turned everything greener than green once again, as everything seemed to burst exponentially into life.
How the wildflowers proliferated all across Pomona: small carpets of glorious biting stonecrop; the first flourishing of the wild mignonette, which will likely be taller than me before long; vivid knots of deep blue bird vetch nestled among the young saplings; glowing patches of smooth bedstraw on the verges; the pretty pink of ragged robin here and there; tall stalks of purple toadflax lining the edge of the paths; the first bright flowers of the rosebay willowherb, already towering over the other flowering plants; the immaculate, tiny flowers of common centaury; the outlandishly delicate proliferations of evening primrose blooms, a sight that, remarkably, will remain present for another few months yet; and the mysterious Pomona sweet peas, here for their second year, pushing the expression of magenta to its very limits.
I could tell you how bird species have been variously present throughout the month: a majestic looking heron, strutting nonchalantly about the place, and a shining little egret with a much more delicate manner, who seem to have been taking it in turns to have the run of Magic Pool throughout June;
there’s been the constant chuckling and surprise appearances of magpies from all directions; the glorious melodies of wrens and blackbirds in the mornings and of an astonishingly loud song thrush in the evenings; the regular visits of a kestrel, hovering magnificently over Pomona.
Also, the strange disappearance of every last gosling since the end of May. One day Pomona was crowded with families of Canada Geese - two adults with between one and six wee ones in tow - the next, they had all disappeared, with only a few adult geese visible in Magic Pool since then. I know that soon I'll be seeing huge flotillas of communal groups of geese, young and old. Meanwhile, all the individual families seem to have disappeared completely, presumably while the youngsters undertake some kind of initiation that accompanies their transition from wobbling fluffballs into accomplished swimmers. And, most delightful of all, I could tell you about the evening hours I've whiled away, admiring and praising the sand martins in their joyous aerobatics over the river in ever greater numbers as the first of their two broods take to the skies.
I could even rave about the stunning array of colours possessed by leaves and grasses across Pomona.
Oh, and of course I could also mention the stunning cloud forms that have graced the skies over Pomona several times this month. Simply awe-inspiring!
However. For me and Pomona, June is focused very heavily on the summer solstice, and the days following it. For the last two years I have observed a solstice ritual at Pomona, followed by daily visits for the following week - and that was the intention I set for this year as well.
Solstice and the following days have proved to be times of rich magic at Pomona for the last two years, so I was eager to see what they might bring this year. I used the opportunity of regular visits to enrich my own practice in new ways, incorporating something a current teacher of mine calls “Trysting Place”. The nature of this practice means leaving my phone at home and immersing myself into the many sensations of being in a wild place, and how that all feels in my body; then to journal about it using pen and paper. The key questions we have been given to explore are:
• What did I notice most strongly? • What about this place wants to make itself known to me?
I'm using this space to type up a few of the notes I wrote each day after my practice. I'll use a few photographs taken on a separate visit, so that it remains a visual feast as well as a sensory record.
Summer Solstice
I made my main solstice visit in the morning. I was aiming to be there early enough to avoid the intense heat of the day, but my body wasn't ready to be out and about until well after 9, and the temperature was already well into the 20’s. I knew I'd need to find some shade for my practice!
I started off by welcoming in the elements at my ritual space, followed my making prayers and blessings. Then I took a slow meander around Pomona, seeing how it felt. I recognised many familiar sensations: how, no matter how fatigued or unwell my body feels, I always notice some improvement after being at Pomona for a while. How my body gives me a strong sensation of “being home” when I am there.
On this particular day I noticed that, as I passed a certain part of Pomona I call “the Sitting Stones”, I was overwhelmed with a sensation I can only describe as “childhood”. Something about the shapes and arrangements of the stones and the dense saplings that surround them reminded me in some primal way of a place I often played between the ages of five and eight, known simply as The Orchard. It was an old orchard that had become overgrown with scrub and undergrowth, twisting narrow pathways, and an assortment of fly-tipped items. We moved away, and not long afterwards the whole place was uprooted and replaced with housing. In these ways, and some intangible others, I've long felt a resonance between The Orchard and Pomona, the latter being overshadowed by the apartment developments on every side, and long-threatened with the same for the whole site.
This curious, visceral reminder of childhood stirred some emotions, and I made a mental note to revisit this spot later in the week. Because for my Solstice sit, I knew I wanted to be next to the water of Magic Pool.
Heron has his ducks in a row
I had a gorgeous time there, watching all kinds of birds gathering, swooping and preening. Both little egret and heron were there when I arrived, although the latter disappeared while I wasn't looking. Six swifts - the most I've ever seen at Pomona - wheeled and dived, scooping up insects from the water’s surface. A pair of sand pipers flew in, making noises like squeaky toys - something they kept up throughout my sit. A blackbird sang his lilting song from within the cover of the nearby willows. And in the lowest branches I caught sight of a tiny brown bird - clearly a wren, but I think perhaps a very young one, so unimaginably tiny was she.
Sand martins flitted past in small groups, bubbling away in conversation continually. Magpies bounced around the edge of the island, chuckling and cackling to one another. And finally, just as I was wondering if I would catch sight of kingfisher at all this Solstice, a large one flew in a slow circle beneath my feet, before taking a perch in a nearby willow branch, so that I couldn't possibly miss them. It was a thrill to get a good look at them, first sitting still, and later making a couple of dives for the small fish that abound in the pool at this time of year.
For a long period of this time, the most notable internal sensation was one of great love welling up in me for Pomona and all her creatures. I told her how much I love her, and found myself suddenly in tears and finishing my sentence with, “…and I don't want to lose you!” There's certainly been a part of me that, for as long as I can remember, including my childhood years spent in The Orchard, adores places that are the meeting point of the wild and the urban. Nowhere personifies this more than Pomona, where the same gaze that sees kingfisher also takes in a heap of plastic bottles and a submerged waste bin. The cormorants I admire as they dry their wings are most often perched on an old wheelbarrow, half buried in the silt and coated white on top from the birds’ defecations. All of this elicits such a powerful feeling of love in me.
On this note, here's my journal note from Solstice to answer the question what about Pomona wants to make itself known to me?
“Love and grief are the same thing here”
Those are the words that most accurately describe the feeling in my body and emotions as I sat in tears of rapture that day. The depth of my affection, paired with the amount of detritus and pollution, and in particular the overwhelming threat of eradication for the sake of apartment blocks, means that both love and grief are ever-present, and so closely entangled as to be one and the same thing.
The Week Following Solstice
The rest of my Trysting Place experiences I'll summarise more briefly. There were two days that I sat on or near the Sitting Stones, the place that evoked the sensation of childhood. Those days my body seemed to want shelter, to be hidden, to be close to the ground. One of them I spent lying on the grass, looking up through the slender, leafy willow stems, watching the clouds blow rapidly across the skies, occasionally surprised by sand martins whisking past a few feet above my nose.
On these days my strongest noticings were that:
• However unwell or fatigued my body feels, being at Pomona for a decent amount of time reliably causes me to feel somewhat better. I don't know of anything else this restorative.
• Pomona is a place that my inner child feels safe, sheltered and free. He can be himself here.
• When I need rest, Pomona offers it. This is especially available if I get close to the ground.
• There are a handful of places around Pomona where the plantlife is so dense, diverse and beautiful that my body responds with a feeling that I can only describe as a desire to become rooted somewhere in the midst of it all myself.
• Other spots, such as the one pictured below, seem to be warmly inviting me to come and lie down in them in the human shape I'm in. “Here is softness,” they say. “Here is rest and shelter!”
Another day I walked around Pomona unsure what my body needed, noticing only that I had dramatically underestimated the temperature. Consequently I was dressed in too many layers and was overheating. I stripped down to a t-shirt and intuitively headed towards Magic Pool. As soon as I emerged from the tangles of undergrowth onto the concrete edge and sat down, I was aware of the stiff breeze blowing across the water, directly at me.
The air appeared to pass both around me and through me. It was refreshing, invigorating, blowing away all thoughts, plans or ideas I may have had about the rest of my time there. I ended up sitting for what I would guess was 30-40 minutes, simply enjoying the sensations of being blown through and of watching the constant ripples move hypnotically across the top of the water. Occasionally the sun came out and reflected intensely off these ripples, making enchanting sparkles. A fresh, silty, almost coastal smell was carried on the fresh breeze, and I found myself longing to be by the sea.
If I had taken the time to think rationally about what I might have wanted that day, I would probably have landed on “shelter again please.” But my body, in tune with Pomona's body, knew better: more than anything I needed the invigorating sensation of air blowing at me across the water. It felt like a fresh reminder from Pomona that she will always work with my body to deliver what I most need on any given visit.
On another day, I sat by the Hidden Portal, which is where I start the storytelling walk when I take friends to Pomona to hear her story. But rather than sitting on top of the portal like I usually do, I felt the urge to sit in the position that the listener usually takes. I spent part of the time sitting, and part lying down in the mossy grass. The portal lies at the side of a small glade, mostly protected from the wind that blows across Pomona, and is something of a sun trap. I can only describe the conditions of it that day, mirrored in my body, as “absolutely ideal.” My body was filled with a deep sense of contentment.
As I lay down, I could hear a blackbird singing in the bushes in front of me. His song was bittersweet and enchanting, speaking of homesickness and longing for an idealised place. Behind me I could hear the rumble and screech of passing trams, reminding me of the burdensome nature of mechanised life. Between the two was the chuckle of a magpie. This I received as a call to reality; the both/and wonder of the imperfect-but-intimate here-and-now. I felt that Pomona was communicating that love can be simple, gentle, restful.
A final day comes to mind: another where I didn't know what my body needed. That day magpies led me on a merry dance and I followed them wherever they appeared, eventually emerging on the far side of Magic Pool. As I sat down at the top of one of the tall metal ladders that line the old quay, a mama moorhen scattered out madly from beneath and onto the island. There she proceeded to call repeatedly, and I could hear the tiny peep of a moorhen chick coming from somewhere.
Eventually I caught sight of them - they were heading towards mama, wobbling uncertainly in the water, then walking even more unsteadily over the mud. For anyone who hasn't seen a baby moorhen, they entirely resemble the soot sprites from Spirited Away - tiny balls of black fluff with stick thin legs projecting out of the bottom, and a miniscule beak hidden away somewhere. This fluffball made its stumbling, wobbling way towards mum, falling over every three or four steps, and occasionally just because a breeze blew. It looked half the size of a standard pompom, and like it weighed significantly less. How anything that small and vulnerable survives is a mystery to me, surrounded by razor-beaked gulls and feisty magpies. My heart swelled and my mind boggled.
I could also hear the peeping of more babies coming from somewhere. I assumed the nest was hidden deep within the jungle of purple loosestrife on the island. After quite a while of watching and listening, I looked down to see where on earth the baby might have been hiding from hungry gulls before it bobbled over to mama, and found myself looking directly down into a nest, with three other baby moorhens shuffling about and squeaking. I was equal parts delighted and horrified! How on earth had I been so close to the nest all this time and not realised? The sound seemed to be coming from anywhere but directly below me… Until I was looking at it, and suddenly it was obvious. I decided to make a hasty exit, apologising profusely to the mother hen as I left.
There's so much more I could say, but this feels like plenty. I'm so grateful to be taking part in a practice that dictates leaving my phone at home. For so long I've toyed with the idea, but justified having it with me for purposes like these Substack musings. To take photos, make notes, to document my time with Pomona. But I can do both, and time without a phone to reach for has been qualitatively different.
Birds will happily let you get much closer, it seems, if you're not trying to wave a lens in their face. Which seems beyond obvious now I'm writing it. But it has enabled me to achieve what I hoped for this post-Solstice week: to deepen the relationship between my body and the body of Pomona. To feel how they resonate and work together. To become more aware of how this sacred place will always seek to provide what my body most needs, if only I will closely attend to both of these two bodies, unmediated by technology.
Oh, and before I forget! Those of you who've been following this space for a while might recall the story of Little Fluff, the young goose I rescued from an open drain at Pomona in the week after Solstice two years ago. One year later, in the week after Solstice last year, he made his first reappearance since the rescue - recognisable by his strange wonky limp, probably from a leg injury when he fell down the drain.
Well, he appeared again this year, and he's a she! Three times this week I've come across the same family of Canada geese at Pomona - two adults and three large goslings, the only family unit I've seen there all month. The smaller of the adults is definitely Little Fluff - that same, strange gait as before. It doesn't surprise me to see her at the same time of year once again, but it does delight me - especially knowing that she now also has a family of her own, after nearly meeting an early demise down a litter-strewn hole in her first year.
I'll leave you with a final image. It had to happen one day, and it turned out to be the one day I did take my phone to Pomona in the last ten days. Heron and heron, hanging out together. Pure magic.
Thanks for reading this month's update from Pomona Strand. What stood out to you most from today’s piece? I'd be delighted to hear about it in the comments. Or share your own Solstice experiences - I'd love to hear about them too. Do you have any embodied practices with places? That's also well worth sharing, if you're willing. Wild Green Blessings on you all!
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