Finding Roots

Now in Cumbria where the rivers run to the Irish rather than the North Sea and the rock is shifting to shale it is otherwise as picturesque as Yorkshire with the most pleasant of pastoral scenes abounding.

Several days into this walk I notice my mind settling, less commentary and judgment, I am slowing and sitting, enjoying breakfast on a church yard bench, drinking in and savoring views with nothing to accomplish or compare, just being here.

I've felt the presence of my mother and wondered if her side of the family came from these parts (Sanders). I base this on some of the words, phrases, styles of speech that feel familiar in the locals and in the novel I'm listening to set in York.

Life seems hard, even now, and generations of women have had a rough go as was my mother's lot. Her style of speaking to us as children resonates with the northern UK regions and I wonder if these linguistic habits carry through family lineage regardless of geography.

Later in her life she found a spiritual home in the Anglican Church in Canada, and I find these thousand year old Norman churches built on a human scale comforting and inviting and the Church of England fairly low key.