Home: Endings and Beginnings by Anita Sethi

I was higher up than the hills, level with a low layering of cloud, gazing down at a curve of glowing green. It felt like a miracle to witness, not least as I was in the heart of a city.  Mountains in Manchester? Well, not quite – but visible from high up in my hometown. I had heard it rumoured that on a clear day you can see the Pennine range from the city, but it seemed a ludicrous suggestion from my earthbound perspective, and I cannot remember having done so until that moment.

I saw my hometown literally from a new perspective, from the 10th floor of a hotel, having lost my rented home. Also visible were seven enormous cranes reaching high into the sky – not cranes of the bird variety, how wonderful it would be to see the world’s tallest flying birds, but cranes constructing new high-rise homes for humans.  High-rises are abundant here, cluttering the skyline; from ground level it is easy to feel claustrophobic but from level with the clouds and higher even than the hills and looking down upon the world, my claustrophobia lifted a little. I savoured that glimpse of the hills. 

Then my heart fluttered to see a flurry of wings over the rooftop opposite, a blur of a bird, so fast I could not quite identify it. Perhaps it was a peregrine, for I had heard that some of those birds have made a home for themselves on the clock tower of the city’s nearby town hall. I looked out for further sight of the fastest creature in existence, for a glimpse of its bright yellow feet. How clever animals are to know how to make homes for themselves: birds building nests; bees making wax inside their own bodies from which to build hives; foxes and badgers burrowing out holes in the earth; spiders spinning webs. After I lost my home during the pandemic, a crushing anxiety and depression descended, I felt profoundly unmoored, but spending time watching wildlife helped root me emotionally even as my actual life was in a state of unrootedness. I lost my actual home but found a deeper sense of home and belonging in nature.  I’ve been coming more than ever to consider notions of home. 

At 6am sunrise bleeds over those buildings, and sets aglow the distant mountains, and the heart fills with hope, those colours so strong and clear before dispersing into the daylight. I had not been sleeping well at all, insomnia gripped me fiercely since the loss of my home, but this sight wiped the weariness from my eyes. I was apprehensive about descending from that great height, from losing this calming perspective, but I rose and walked near the nearest watery nature there is – the River Medlock, which I was delighted to discover was just a few footsteps away. I followed it as it flowed and joined the larger Irwell. The river was a slick of shiny blackness, like an inky cartridge burst and bleeding its bountiful heart into my hometown. 

I walked and walked by the water and listened to the song of the river and felt myself grow stronger. The term ‘blue care’ refers to the ameliorative effects of being by water, the benefits it brings to both physical and mental health, including decreasing stress levels, and is increasingly being recognised alongside more established ‘green care’.  I felt these effects as I walked by the river, although I noted that the colour of the river is not in fact blue but actually almost black. I walked back along the river and then by the canal and saw a sign reading:

“Enjoy your local canal. A special place that we all need now, more than ever…  #LifesBetterByWater”.  

I walked through the pain of having lost a home and most of my belongings, which were damaged in storms that flooded the storage space where they were kept – an experience in which I came to learn the sheer force and power of water and also what meteorological havoc has been wreaked by climate change. I walked on and a bright hotspot of purple quickened my heart, and I stopped to gaze into a gorgeous geranium nearby a statue of feminist campaigner Emmeline Pankurst. How fine are these flowers, how intricate their veins. I gazed in awe at some anemones.

 It was here in this city that the wild first grew in me. Despite preconceptions, cities can be teeming with nature, wildlife growing where least expected, a dandelion in the cracks of a pavement filling the heart with joy on the greyest of days. Moss can make a home for itself even on concrete, whatever surface is moist enough – and there is much moisture in Manchester.  I saw a pigeon roosting nearby.  Since learning about homing pigeons, I’ve long been fascinated by ‘homing’ instincts of other creatures too, which can find their way home using near magical magnetic imprinting – how heartbreaking that due to habitat loss they might not have homes to return to at all.

Lockdown showed more than ever inequalities in access to natural landscapes and the countryside, that not everyone lives near woods or forests or has gardens, and it is vital to ensure that nature in our cities is looked after and abundant like that in countryside areas. It is vital for trees to line city streets, for parks to be plentiful, for as many seeds as possible to be planted. It is also important that in the post-pandemic world all, regardless of racial or regional or socioeconomic background, have more ready access to countryside, national parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and feel welcome there – that those hills and mountains are not forever just on the horizon but something that those in inner-cities can also venture towards, into, climb up.

 I dream of a world in which children in inner-cities cannot just look out at the distant mountains - should they glimpse them from their hometown - but have the chance to make it up to those mountaintops and gaze back towards the city.  And that they have the confidence to write about their experiences of nature, that they have the chance to one day see their writing published. That’s why I’m fundraising for the I Belong Here foundation, to help those of all backgrounds have greater access both to nature and the chance of becoming a nature writer.  Please consider making a donation – every little helps.

I walk and walk and feel myself grow stronger. I close my eyes and the sight of the hills on the horizon and the sun rising is now part of my inner landscape. Those bright purple flowers are within me too, powering me on – seeing such determination to keep flourishing even in the toughest of conditions fills me with the courage to begin again.

Donate to the I Belong Here foundation by clicking here.