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AFON
Book Review: Rain
Rain: Four Walks in English Weather by Melissa Harrison comes across as much more expansive than just its 104 pages. Set out as a tetralogy; each section describes the author’s experience of walking in a different area of England in a different season, with the common theme being wet weather.
This seems like a rather simple idea until you realise just how much information the author manages to pack into relatively few pages. In the introduction, Harrison writes that she “blended these expeditions with reading, research, memory and a little conjecture” and as I continued reading it became more and more obvious just how much time and thought she had put into researching for this book. From the inclusion of traditional and local proverbs and saws to brief biographies of key people and organisations (such as the British Rainfall Organisation); short quotes from historical written weather guides to modern poetry; personal observations of plant and animal behaviour to explanations of cloud physics.
The first chapter deals with the East Anglian flat lands – the part of England most familiar to me out of the four areas featured as I grew up in rural Suffolk. Harrison focuses on Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire, a locality steeped in history where much of the people’s livelihood has been dictated by the environment and weather. On her walk through The National Trust’s oldest nature reserve, Harrison takes time to explain how people first came to learn how to live alongside water and how our relationship with it has changed through the ages.
From Roman times to the industrial revolution, Victorian windmills and modern hydro-electric pumping systems the fenlands have suffered hard core drainage resulting in rich, fertile farmland. For me, an especially apt passage in this chapter was when Harrison describes her observations of the arable country, her lack of knowledge of agricultural practices and the disconnection between “we laymen” and the source of our food – thoughts that echo my own concerns.
Chapter two considers a countryside village walk in Shropshire amongst April showers. My only experience of Shropshire is a school trip to Blists Hill in 2001 but Harrison has a way of describing unfamiliar landscapes that makes them seem close and tangible. This section speaks a lot about changes; spring is coming, the landscape is awakening, the weather is capricious. Across the book, Harrison draws on her memories of weather and in this chapter she reminded me of ‘wet breaks’ at school – a fun recollection that I’ve not had cause to think about since leaving school.
Next we are taken to The Darent Valley in Kent – somewhere I had never before heard of but may soon visit as I’m planning to walk the Thames National Trail. The story here starts with Harrison leaving a “stale and heavy” London behind on an August morning in a bid to find out the state of the chalk stream habitat of the River Darent which apparently is particularly affected by drought.
Harrison writes that there’s been little rain across the country for three weeks and the way she depicts this trip makes it seem like a spontaneous act spurred by curiosity above anything else – just the kind of adventure that I love! Sheltering from the pelting rain: she recounts some old weather related folklore and discusses its merits and downfalls – it’s something I often say jokingly but now I know whether or not there is any truth in ‘cows lying down means rain is coming’. She also takes the time to explain where the ‘smell’ of rain comes from – another phenomenon I’ve often wondered about.
The final chapter is the onset of autumn; Harrison is walking the blanket bogs and tors of Dartmoor. She speaks of the array of fall colours contrasting with overcast, dull skies through the thin (but drenching) mist. Fittingly for the closing story it acknowledges the place of rain not just in giving life but in death and decomposition too, and Harrison touches on personal tragedy. Throughout the book the author builds on themes such as the huge role that the fens and moors play in preventing catastrophic flooding (of which Harrison gives plenty of examples in history), and explains how ‘re-wilding’ is becoming increasingly attractive and parts of land, with & without human intervention, are being returned to a more wild state.
The book uses a few nephology terms that I’m not familiar with (cumulus congestus anyone?) which has spurred me to learn my cloud formations so I’ll be picking up the relevant FSC chart next time I’m in my local Wildlife Trust’s visitor centre but as I wrote previously; ‘Rain’ is about so much more than rain. The “constant patter” of January’s driving rain, April’s “sunshine and showers”, a midsummer lightning storm and accompanying short-lived “downpour” and finally the “mizzle” on the moors in October make interesting backdrops for an investigation into the human relationship with weather, contrasting historical events and imaginative personal accounts with science and social anthropology.
Readers of all ages and backgrounds can relate to the subject matter, and Harrison’s writing style along with the amusing but helpful appendices “glossary of meteorological terms for rain” and “100 words concerning rain” make Rain: Four Walks in English Weather an all-encompassing, engaging and accessible read.