Whenever I used to hear the term “Off the grid”, I always thought that it meant living a more environmentally-conscious existence – doing everything possible to limit one’s consumption of energy and resources, getting back to nature. True, it does seem to embrace all of these things, but as I get older, I realise that this term encompasses so much more. Not many of us will ever retreat to a cabin in the wilderness, or live out our days in a beach hut, listening to the crash of the surf, but all of us will, at some point, feel the need to get off the grid in some way, no matter how abstract.
Some days I feel this need more acutely, particularly those which feel like they have been reduced down to a simple measurement: 5×5. That’s my life, Monday to Friday, in a nutshell. Five days, five one-hour lessons. Okay, this may be overplaying things slightly when you consider those times when I do usually manage to slip off the grid, such as weekends and the odd after-school hour here and there, but it’s safe to say that, in so many ways in our lives, habits and routines are easily formed hard to break. In this way, I plod on, day by day, walking the same route to and from work, but strangely enough, it has very little to do with personal gridlock or the fact that I’m a creature of habit (guilty as charged, m’lud). Rather, this journey has more to do with the route itself, and the freedom it offers.
This path momentarily takes me across the river Afan at a very convenient point for viewing it. There are three crossing points in the vicinity but this one seems by far the most pleasant. This might have something to do with the fact that here, at this time of year, I can stop and watch the swallows hawking over the shallow water that flashes beneath the bridge at my feet. Just as likely, though, is this route’s ability to act as both buffer zone, where I think ahead to the day’s classes and lessons, and as a decompression chamber where I can shake those thoughts off again and leave them behind for the day before returning home to my family.
Through all of these journeys, regardless of the time of year, the river is always the emotional barometer that not only measures, but often sets, my mood either way, a kind of litmus test that I must take to see what kind of day it is.
There aren’t many others who walk this way, I’ve noticed, and fewer still who glance down in the river’s direction whilst upon their journey. No doubt, some see it simply as a mass of moving water and nothing more, whereas others might simply see confusion, a clear film of moving stillness, like the wavering air of as hot day, blurring the rocks beneath, an element unable to be more definitive, to be one thing or another: ‘O heavy lightness…misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms’ (I’m teaching Shakespeare to my year tens in lesson three, so he’s on my mind right now). Maybe one of these opinions is correct and maybe neither. Maybe I’m talking nonsense, but the river does always seem to be able to gauge my mood and react accordingly.
This morning’s mood is definitely a spring mood. Already, it’s getting warm, even though it’s not yet eight o’ clock. Hopefully a day for a slightly slacker pace to complement the sunshine. And here, as always, is the river, sliding gently past on its leisurely route seaward. It seems to unwind like some great serpent, expending the least possible amount of energy by not even spanning the distance between both banks, leaving the pebbles of the town side high and dry, baking in the sun.
New energy will always rebuild itself from restfulness, just as new terms will spark up from the remnants of the old as we slip through spring toward summer and then, eventually, on into the ‘ember’ months again. I know that when September and October eventually arrive they will usher in the first of the serious rains as well as the new classes of a fresh school year. Then, the river becomes a rushing, endless torrent powering its way down from the valleys toward the sea, here and gone before we even realise what has passed us by.
It is often the case, at this time, that the river flows muddied and coloured by the endless inward seepages down from the land, and school days will usually their cue accordingly, filling up with myriad fragments of detritus – new class lists, new faces, phone calls to and from parents, new schemes of work. There are also, of course, those times when the river’s state and mood will change just like my own, times when a sudden storm will sweep in from somewhere unseen, transforming the benign into the tumultuous. I realise that my mind itself has followed the river now and is meandering its way into the future, as all of this is months away yet. I suppose, though, that all of this seems to prove the point that, present or future, whatever my mood or the river’s, both the water and I will follow our courses in our own winding ways, and always seem to get where we’re going in the end.
