The Sacred Combe: A Search for Humanity’s Heartland

308 Pages·2016·2.92 MB·English

by  Barnes

THE SACRED COMBE
For CLW
who encouraged me to go
and who welcomed me back
THE SACRED COMBE
A Search for Humanity’s Heartland
Simon Barnes
Illustrations by Pam Guhrs-Carr
Contents
1 The Valley
2 A Hoopoe
3 Some Famous Elephants
4 The Leopard and Her Child
5 Riding Through the Glen
6 Some other Boyhood Identities
7 An Enchanted Combe
8 The Rift
9 Love Dawns
10 Pig in the Middle
11 Some African Animals that Can Kill You
12 A Walk
13 Some Turds
14 Edenever
15 A Patient Man
16 Ask Alice
17 A Brave Man
18 Mammals Sighted in North Luangwa National Park
19 Paradise within Paradise
20 Rio By the Sea-oh
21 Big Boy and Little Boy
22 Mchenja
23 Book-list
24 Some Bob Stories
25 Cross Lady
26 The Lion Dream
27 A Fool in Wales
28 That Near-death Thing
29 Bucket List Ideas
30 Lost Innocence
31 Walls of the Combe
32 Giraffe Crossing
33 Jill and Jewel
34 Delicate Savagery
35 Sensitive Types
36 Manhattan White
37 Secret Sacred Monsters
38 Some Famous British Big Cats
39 Being Prey
40 Nsefu
41 Morning
42 A Good Old Lovey-up
43 Lovely Leah
44 Doing the Knowledge
45 How We Destroyed Eden
46 The Sin of Pride
47 Ring a Dong Dillo
48 The Spotlight Kid
49 Wild Centaurettes
50 The Suicide Month
51 Climate of the Luangwa Valley
52 Tourism
53 Three Lists of Five
54 Uncle Monty’s Cat
55 Banished from Paradise
56 Nothing Wasted
57 Pretty Woman
58 Rain
59 A New Brain
60 Fight or Flight?
61 Crocodile Fears
62 Are there Werewolves Still for Tea?
63 Death and All That
64 Blood etc.
65 A Manly Tear
66 The Unenchanted Combe
67 Cranes of the World
68 Crowning Glory
69 All One
70 Wet, Wetter, Wettest
71 Giving Blood
72 My Family
73 A Tribute in a Tributary
74 Fear in the Air
75 The Emerald Season
76 Not-seeing Season
77 Caracal
78 Whydah Still and Whydah
79 The Eureka Bird
80 Listening to the Land
81 The Golden Age
82 A Sacred Combe in Redditch
83 A Cathedral
84 Vermin
85 The Curse of Specialness
86 Last Footprint
87 A Twitcher at Large
88 Combe Together
89 Cetti’s
90 First Day of Spring
91 The Great Comeback
92 Bugles in the Sky
93 The Fawn
94 Doggedness
95 The Old Hippy
96 A Banquet
97 Being Quite Wise
98 Phoenix on Speed
99 Fired with Joy
100 Pillars of Wisdom
101 Storm
Acknowledgements
1
The Valley
It was the moment when I noticed someone was eating my house that I knew I’d
come home. It was my first night in the Valley: perfectly black, the air filled
with swishing, ripping, munching. The house in question was a thatched hut a
few yards from the river. There wasn’t much of a window; the place wasn’t
designed for anything except sleep, but I got from my bed and peered through
the insect-gauzed strip.
There were about half a dozen of them, a cheery and sociable little group
lightly snacking on my roof and on the trees that surrounded the hut. Their
footsteps made no sound, in the eerie fashion of elephants: vast, bedroom-
slippered feet. They were quite unafraid: happy, relaxed, comfortable. I
wondered what would happen if I were to step out among them, perhaps to
attempt a mystical communion with them, perhaps to run for my life. But I had
no real thought of doing either.
It was alarming, but it wasn’t frightening. An important distinction. Being
about a foot from a group of animals that could tear both me and my hut apart
was curiously soothing. There was a thrill of wonder in this - wasn’t I an
adventurous devil to be in such a place and in such company? But that was only
the superficial emotion. Behind it was a great soul-deep happiness: a profound
sense of having arrived.
If I could have been sent straight back home - right now, after just four hours in
the Valley, back to Hadley Wood, in Hertfordshire, where I lived in those days, a
couple of miles beyond the furthest reaches of the Northern Line - I would have
been satisfied with the trip and I would have been changed forever. The
adventures of the rest of my first trip to the Valley were all wonderful enough,
but they were just confirmation of what I learned on that first elephant-haunted
night. The world was no longer the same and nor was I. I had been in the
magical valley: I had found the sacred combe; I had entered the secret garden.
The great round wet loaves scattered around the hut when I rose at dawn were
proof that it was not a dream. Or perhaps it was dream-dung. No matter. I had
dreamed all my life of being in such a place; to be there at last, dung, ripped roof
and all, blurred the distinction between dream and reality so completely as to