Best of 2024: Finding Your Creative Flow Through Careful Observation

The summer in the United Kingdom was brief and unmemorable – but Trish and I have found that, whatever the season, there are vivid and memorable details to be spotted and investigated in the river and on the river bank , all within just minutes from us via kayak.

In this summer piece, we go adventuring with a very specific goal in mind.

This is one of four pieces from this year that we’re repeating while I put my feet up.

Going with the flow on the River Great Ouse

Join me as Trish and I embark on another research expedition on the River Great Ouse. You’ve tagged along before on these voyages, I know – but this time I have a very specific objective in mind: I want to photograph whatever novel species of wildflower we come across, identify them by means of Google’s handy plant-identification function, and conduct a little additional research via Wikipedia.

Sound like fun?

We begin by paddling out of the marina into the lazy flow of the summer Ouse. We turn right, paddling upstream. Opposite us is a bank of bramble, covered in blackberries at this time of year, so we hurry across and greedily stuff our mouths with berries. But there, amongst the vines of the bramble is a little cluster of flowers, star-shaped, each with five rich purple petals and yellow stamens. There are as well as the flowers, a few round red fruit, just a centimetre or so in diameter.

Google tells us this is bittersweet nightshade, also known by a host of other folk names including felonwort, poisonberry and blue bindweed. Its grand Latin name is Solanum dulcamara which, roughly translated,, means comforting bitter-sweet. (A “felon” by the way, is not what you might suppose, but means in a folk-medicine context, an abscess of the soft tissue on the finger or toenail.”)

Bittersweet, as at least one of its names suggests, is poisonous – or at least its fruit is. But it’s been used medicinally since at least ancient Greek times. In the Middle Ages, Wikipedia informs me, it was thought to be effective against witchcraft.

Now while I disentangle myself from the coils of the bramble and head up-river towards Longholme Bridge, let me share a question that occurred to me recently: Is any specific mental state particularly supportive of the creative process?

The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi said it better than I could. He described what he called the concept of “flow” – a condition of deep engagement where time seems to fall away and work feels effortless. Now, isn’t that what we all strive for? And if it is, then how do we enter into that state?

Now, it seems to me that the act of closely observing and identifying wildflowers demands your focused attention. It helps clear the mind of distractions and anxieties, creating mental space for creative thoughts to emerge. Is that a precondition for the emergence of Csikszentmihalyi’s “flow”?

We passed under Longholme Bridge, niftily avoiding a fisherman’s line that stretched halfway across the river. A large and lovely cream umbel beckoned from the right. We paddled closer. Now, I toss off words like “umbel” as though I’ve been long acquainted with them. In fact, it’s a new addition to my vocabulary, so let me share its definition with you, so that you know more precisely what I’m talking about. “An umbel is a flower cluster in which stalks of nearly equal length spring from a common centre and form a flat or curved surface.”

Got that? It’s not one flower, but many, clustered round a common centre, like so many moons orbiting a planet. I took a photograph of the flower head – the umbel – with some difficulty, because the plant from which it sprang stood a metre and a half above me.

A moment later I had the name: Wild Angelica, or, more exotically, angelica sylvestris – angelica of the woodland. Actually, I have vague memories of the word angelica, as I’m sure you do. In fact, many of you are probably able to identify glaced angelica used to decorate cakes. A website called foragerchef tells me that it’s strongly flavoured and is used as a key ingredient in many specialist gins.

Sounds worth trying.

I push off the bank with my paddle and we continue upstream, heading for a favourite spot where overhanging branches create a sylvan dell (geddit? Sylvan deriving from silva = forest, hence sylvestris?) between a riverine island and the bank.

Immersing yourself in nature has, of course, been shown to reduce stress and improve your mood. And you’d agree, I’m sure, that a calmer more positive mental state can enhance creativity and sharpen your motivation to write.

And there is nothing more immersive than tethering yourself to a moss-covered willow branch, opening your flasks of coffee, and congratulating yourself smugly on having had the wisdom to invest in a two-man kayak.

Actually, there is. Because twenty minutes later, we’ve moved up the river and happened upon a heron preparing for his morning’s fishing. Herons are skittish birds. Invariably, if we venture too close – say, less than ten metres – from a heron waiting patiently for his breakfast to swim by, he’ll rise with a harsh kvaak! and wheel way indignantly in search of peace and quiet.

This time, though, perhaps because we took the greatest care not to move or make a sound, he tolerated us drifting closer and closer to him until he was no more than a paddle’s distance from us. For a good ten or fifteen minutes we watched him as his beady eyes seemed to pierce the water at his feet. At one point he stabbed his rapier-like beak into the water but came up empty. Then his tongue slithered snakelike from his beak, he seemed to shrug, and continued his scrutiny of the water.

Watching our heron – it’s amazing how quickly you become possessive about the things you observe very closely – engaged us wholly. This kind of close engagement triggers multiple senses: sight, smell, touch, sound. That sensory richness can stimulate the imagination and provide raw material for some fine descriptive writing.

We set out to find wildflowers. We found two – but despite my enthusiasm for them, I think the prize of the morning was the heron.

It was, all on its own, an inspiration.

Richard

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