The body did not need to create such pain. That is my impression on recovering from a herniated disc, not once but four times in as many years, the liquid oozing out in different directions on each occasion, thanks in part to office-wallah bad posture, or maybe the broken vertebrae from a fifty-foot fall upon glacial hardpack, some two decades before. ON the first stint, I had no idea what was happening. My core writhed in agony, blocking all ability from doing anything at pace, with dexterity, with a smile, while imagining tasks would stop rational thought, in the knowingness of discomfort ahead.
Only weeks or months later could I break down the sensations into the wider aches, the localised spasms and cramps, the specific pins and needles. At a job interview I was quizzed in a tiny interview room (the scene of later managerial dressing-downs) as an invisible munchkin lay at my feet, laughing, saw in hand, incompetently hacking off my lower limb. And on the drive home, a contract in the bag nonetheless after months of joblessness, I was screaming from having sat for an hour, and nearly passed out at the lights. Taking the bus would have been safer.
And so, as an active person, having defined myself principally by outdoor achievements, what could I do? My enjoyment from running hills, tramping glens, scrambling ridges and climbing rocks seemed of yesteryear. But chance takes strange turns and, a month after beginning that ibuprofen-enhanced desk role, still hobbling and slow yet with pain under management, I was adventure-bound, behind the wheel. South I drove, to where the landscape rolls leisurely giving solace for the eyes, and different challenges. I stopped by the outflow from St Mary’s Loch and watched the water of the upper Yarrow sluice past, her banks lush with grasses, the sun shining. Stripping to shorts and trainers, I waded up to my knees and let the current take me onwards.
This was my first river swim. Looking back now, the moment was seminal, the start of my recovery, the veil between one life and the next. Nothing had been planned and the experience felt natural, floating feet first. I lasted 15 or 20 minutes, until the cold jabbed, and hauled myself out with difficulty to limp back along the road. But as I hugged the hedgerows my mind was mulling over how incredible this had felt, perhaps from delivering myself into the dark unknown, with no reconnaissance, or from a renewed empowerment though weightless mobility. But more likely was the sensation of embarking on a spiritual rebirth, of catharsis from that injury two decades previous, and of the many other traumatic incidents of my teens and twenties that had somehow packed their forbidden messages into my flesh and bones.
The next day I bought a wetsuit, headed out in the same direction, and drove around for further inspiration. From my map sprung another river adopting a meandering trajectory, supervised by gentle paths, the beneficiary of regular quadrants of mixed woodland and green fields. Once I’d selected a spot, the heartbeat picked up and the prospect of losing myself metaphorically overshadowed any aches and pains. With suit, goggles and footwear readied I was again into the drink. The experience differed violently. No longer was this a novelty, but a session to develop my craft. With every stroke I learned about myself and the place, about how to survive once more, about how to enjoy.
Certainly, the landscape was wonderful, and all the more so with a vista only an inch from ground zero, a full 360 hemisphere of water, land and sky. In the current the trout seemed to brush the limbs, and a constantly changing flow kept me vigilant. Occasionally she turned dead calm, requiring full throttle freestyle, yet 50 yards beyond would present her shingly skirts, a parabola of diamonds, to demand crawling and walking before I could drop into rapids, to be carried under protruding branches, knees cycling to avoid the hidden boulders. After three miles I found a place to exit and sauntered back. This was the River Tweed, and the start of a five-year romance.
Images
St Mary's Loch, Scottish Borders
The Tweed by Innerleithen
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