Penny Walker, 2026 story writer-in-residence, who invites you discover where a river might flow
River Pant, Essex.
2 miles
13th January 2026
Seven of us and a dog walked down the track, watching for the flow and rise of water under our boots.
We had detailed LIDAR maps from official agencies of the river’s current course, previous meanders, the very edges of its catchment. We had copies of maps from two centuries ago, marked with springs and water meadows.
And we had the evidence of our own eyes. The flattened grass pointing downstream where the flood has swept over it. The bare soil washed down from the field, sprinkled with claw prints, maybe crows and pheasants. The high tide line scribbling across neat rows of winter beans with its anarchic piles of debris. It has left the broken stalks of reeds, drinks cans, a small leather football smeared with algae.
This is the river’s desire line. Where it will go, regardless of its banks or the field boundary or the map.
If the water is allowed in, if space is made for its desires, people who live downstream will be slightly less vulnerable to it rudely crashing their homes and gardens.
We speculate about a new reed bed, snipe, a hide. Other walkers, waders, swimmers, flyers enjoying the overflowing river in future wet seasons.
We weave timelines, sharing what we know. Part of the old wood is ‘ancient’ and ‘semi-natural’, which means it’s been here for at least four hundred years. The spring and its pond were likely ploughed over ‘after the war’. One of us remembers annual cutting of vegetation on the riverbanks thirty years ago. The new wood was planted twenty-five years ago, when my children were small, and their grandfather was young enough to dig holes all day. We swap more recent memories of drought and flood, a ditch running from November to April, which in another year carried barely a drop. We wonder how long it might take to get funding and permits so this river can follow its own path.
The oldest of us says it will be something to keep alive for.
APA style reference
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