Shocked and grieving after a miscarriage, Katharine Norbury decides that she will walk from the mouth of a river to its source. The idea gathers force when she visits the convent hospital near Liverpool at which, as an infant, she was given up for adoption. Norbury knows almost nothing about her birth parents, and, after losing a baby herself, she feels this separation with new intensity. The few details she has been told at the convent are disturbing. Perhaps a journey to a river source will be a healing ritual. Emerging water symbolises the moment of birth, yet also the renewed flowing of blood, and the release of sad experiences to be carried away.
The idea comes in part from a writer she loves, the Scottish novelist Neil M Gunn. In The Well at the World’s End , published in 1951, the protagonist, after his son has been stillborn, searches the wilds for a legendary well, whose water is so clear as to be invisible. His true search is for the renewal of his ability to love. Highland River, published in 1937, takes its young hero from the river mouth at Dunbeath, Gunn’s birthplace, to the river’s source, a hidden loch. This is the pilgrimage Norbury chooses.
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