Peaks and valleys: how reconnecting with nature helped me with grief

As gulls rise above the valley they drift into the colours of the sun that is setting over the north Atlantic, a mile or so downriver from where I am standing. Their whiteness turns to pale red as they merge upward into a zone of sky where the colours are most intense. Then, with the smallest of wingbeats, they fly westwards towards the coast.

“Did you see the seagulls, Eli, did you see them?” I say to my four-year-old son who, only a moment ago, was at my side, but is now spinning in circles with a yellow bucket on his head. “Eli, Eli …” I say. But he doesn’t hear me (or chooses not to). Instead, he darts away towards the house, flinging the bucket down into a patch of long grass. I watch him go with the same keen interest as I had been watching the seagulls being painted red by the sun. Both, wonders.

In watching the river, and looking up now and again at the movements of clouds in a vibrant sky, I am swept up and taken, in my mind, to what led us here – our new home in north Cornwall.

In the runup to the birth of our daughter Elowen in 2017, I had been creating this map sketched out in my heart of all the places I was going to take her, places that I had come to deeply treasure throughout my life, and longed to share with her. From the moment that we were going to bring Elowen home from the hospital, I was going to hold her in my arms and walk out on the heath by our home in the New Forest, and show her a special oak tree that we had named Elowen’s Oak. I wanted to show her its winding, spidery branches, and the singular flicker of sunlight in its massive leaves. And then I wanted to show her the flight of geese over Keyhaven Marshes, and let her hear the sounds of windswept reeds there. I wanted to show her the mountains of Snowdonia, where we had our business – a hostel that slept 60 people, and what was once our home before locating to the New Forest to be nearer family. I wanted to sit with her on a particular boulder, located up behind the hostel, that I claimed as my own, perched on the shoulder of Clogwyn-Mawr, a mountain that affords a clear view of the Carneddau and Glyderau ranges, and is an excellent spot to wait for oncoming ravens. I would picture her there, not only as a newborn in my arms, but ageing throughout the years, and me ageing too. A child, then a teenager, then an adult, leaning on my shoulder, and me leaning on her, resting after a day spent walking the mist-wrapped hills. I had, even well before she was born, already given my heart, my life, away to her. And I simply, as her dad, wanted to show her the parts of the world I held dear, to share in small-scale adventures together, make memories.

When Elowen passed away suddenly, without warning, only two days before her due date on 24 July 2017, my world, our world, ended abruptly, too. She was never brought home. Her room stayed empty. She never saw her oak tree, Keyhaven Marshes, or heard the call of geese flying in a wide V over whispering reeds. I never got to sit beside her, hear her laugh, hold her warm hand and gaze down into the Afon Glaslyn river that has its sources on the heights of Yr Wyddfa. And yet that inward map I had been drawing – a father’s dreams – lingered on. But I didn’t want to see these places again. I hated being in this life without her.

But where to go when the world carries on without one that means the world to you?

We had to take another direction, Amy and I. We sold our business in Snowdoniaand, with the birth of our son Eli the following year, we eventually sold our home in the New Forest.

In taking another direction, turning away from the world we had known, not to start afresh, no, but to bring Elowen and Eli to somewhere new, to plant the flag of us in a place that doesn’t hold, so tightly, darkness and pain, we found our place, geographically and psychologically, so to speak. After Elowen passed away, every choice of ours was a door into the dark. I was scared of life, what lurked around the corner of each approaching moment. And yet we had to take the risk, and risk brought us here, to this deep, wooded river valley on the border of Devon and Cornwall.

We knew nothing about this place when, on taking our first viewing of the house, during the 2020 Covid lockdown, the sunken lane travelled down and down, turned a very sharp corner, and went down further still. The Marsland valley, a sign said on the cob wall of a Devon Wildlife Trust building. I was struck that there was even a house this far down, tucked away into a secluded pocket of the land. After viewing the house, we were eager to explore.

The estate agent pointed us in the direction of the coast, and off we went, following the river as it ran straight, curled away and reappeared through arching, summer oaks and sycamores thick with foliage and thrumming with insects, birdsong and, as we came to the edge of the wood beneath a huge oak tree not unlike Elowen’s Oak, far-away cliffs, carpeted with bright yellow gorse, towered above blue water. A buzzard slowly whirled away overhead, and on walking out into high-grass meadows, we were ambushed by horseflies. We ran, an 18-month-old Eli bouncing up and down in the carrier backpack strapped to my shoulders. Breathless, we stood still at a gate in the path to take in the view before us. The valley opened out, then opened out again, revealing its folds and layers that reminded me of Snowdonia. The slim path snaked down to a black beach. The tide was far out, unveiling a dazzling network of rock pools that shimmered in the sun, and beyond that, the Atlantic Ocean glowed and rolled.

At the edge of a pool Eli wriggled and dipped his toes. Amy etched Elowen’s name on to a stone and placed it beneath the clear water among seaweeds and pink sea anemones. Her name shone. Amy and I, sat down beside one another, as close as we could get, found ourselves smiling.

The sky has darkened. Eli has returned, waving a torch across the surface of the river, then straight into my eyes. “Eli!” I shout, half blinded. He kneels down beside me. We stare together into the dark river that runs a mile to the black beach that was so bright on that day – about two years ago now – the day we made the firm choice to move here. And I am so glad we did; a safe place to re-inject life into my heart’s map of small-scale, outdoor adventures and memory-making. Bug hunting, butterfly stalking, pond building, tree climbing, rock pooling …

Kneeling here at the river’s edge, I am full to the brim with the love I have for our son, and broken apart, too, for the daughter that should be here. The human heart, broad and deep like this valley, possesses an astonishing capacity in holding itself together.

Elowen by William Henry Searle is published by Little Toller (£18). It is available from guardianbookshop.com for £15.84