Murmuring in our ears at near subaudible levels, the forest seems to draw us closer. It is whispering something, so we lean in, heads tilted, to catch the words. We are walking through a fairytale landscape: a gruffalo hiding behind every tree trunk, under every bridge a troll. The air is so still, yet so thrumming with life, it’s hard to shake the feeling that it is listening to us more than we are to it.
A jay’s sudden alarm call rattles out like a struck washboard, and is just as quickly smothered by soft, wet air. Every pine needle is stitched to the next with spider’s silk and the whole forest is aglitter with diamante necklaces, each with a resident brown‑and‑gold flecked spider dead centre like a tiger’s eye pendant.
One day, I might walk the whole 210-mile length of the River Severn, or Afon Hafren to give it its Welsh name, but on this drizzly, misty day I’m happy that we’re only four or five miles from the source. The mist muffles and befuddles, making dragons out of rocks, stag heads out of dead wood, ogres from boulders. When you can’t believe your eyes, your ears step up a notch. I yawn and stretch, clearing my Eustachian tubes.
At one point, there’s a strange shift in the acoustics. The soundscape splits in two. Below us, the regular splash and gurgle; but coming from the forested slope opposite is a soft, steady roar. Not thunder, not a plane: it’s the water reverberating around the hollow it has carved at the bend, and listening to its own echo coming back through the trees. I click my hearing aid on, and get the sound of a million crisp packets rustling next to my ear. I switch it off. Turn to the right, the sounds are clear and quite distinct: the upper register roaring, the lower all tinkle and glug. Turn left, and I can barely hear the river at all. I stand there swivelling around like a loon: right roar, left shhh. It’s amazing.
As we walk upstream, the cloud thickens and the river quietens until, at one point, it’s as though the sound has been simply turned off. At the source we stand, in silence and mist. No bright or bubbling spring, this, just a soggy peat bog giving quiet rise to a river, and sending it on its way.
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