My daughter says that if I were an animal I’d be a red kite, but they know my preferred superpower would be flight (and these days, better eyesight). Personally, I think that despite being a certified dog person, I’d be some form of cat. Maybe that’s my Mars in Leo speaking.
Either way, the waters are muddied by the fact that I seem to have something that feels like a memory of being non-human. I know right? Puh-lease.
I’ve tried for as long as I can remember to work out what the feelings actually are. Where they came from. What caused them. My best theory is that during a formative period in my childhood I was pretty feral.
When I was just getting to five, my parents, my little brother and I moved into the ground floor of a big house in the middle of a valley just outside Bath. It was very much like where we live now but with hills and even fewer mod cons. A big house, two cottages, and a chalet down the slope by the river. The big house had been a family home and the huge and beautiful grounds, a tea garden. If any of you are local to me, it was The Mead at St Catherine’s.
Upstairs lived some students; across in one of the cottages a young woman and her son, and occasionally - in the chalet - the owner of the whole place, with his two dogs.
The gardens were still beautiful, including a raised rose garden that smelt like heaven; a big lawn, now bereft of quaint tables and chairs; an orchard with long grass and a stream; abandoned greenhouses that still carried the scent of hot tomatoes; overgrown pathways (“Is that Deadly Nightshade?!”); thick hedges; a grove of nut trees and absolute freedom for a five year old girl and her black dog.
My brother and I both got whooping cough and he was much more poorly than I was, so I was left to entertain myself. I’d started at the local school but hated it because I was bullied, so my mum decided that as we were not planning on living here for more than a few more months, I should just stay home and start again when we moved. (Aside: when asked in security questions,”Name of your first school” it still gives me a kick to name the second one. I’m petty like that.)
So…my feral summer. Me, the dog, and hours spent just sitting and watching, exploring, digging, learning, picking and eating. Either it made me who I am, or who I’ve always been was never happier.
I wonder still if those days are the reason that I remember being an animal. When I look at old stone walls I get what can only be described as flashbacks of what it feels like to scurry between the stones like a beetle. Sometimes I can feel what it is to perch on a branch. The strongest “memory” comes flooding back when I see a little pathway through a hedge - probably deer, badger, fox, rabbit… - and I am there with the grass at eye level. I feel it.
How?? It’s ridiculous, but those pathways bring sensations that aren’t just me imagining what it would be like; I know it. I remember.
Perhaps at the age of five my imagination - already powerful and at that point, fully liberated - watched the wildlife around me and engaged (empathised?) so strongly that it imprinted in a way that feels like memory. That’s the only explanation I can come up with for the visceral experience that has never weakened.
Either that, or this is my first spin as a human animal. Which would explain a great deal.
There are photos of The Mead at this time (the 64-69 gallery off the main menu) showing the tended gardens but not the wilder edges. You can see where we lived, where I explored and Jonathan’s two lovely dogs, Sally and Sheila, of whom I have great memories. There’s a photo of the three of them in front of a Syringa bush outside our front door. I spent many an hour in there, making a den with my dog and some snacks. Being an animal.