On the first day of 2023, I saw an otter.
It had taken me until 2.30 in the afternoon to leave the house. I hadn’t had much time off that Christmas season and, what holiday I had, was spent running from place to place to see everyone before I had to go back to work. It was very cold outside, I felt run-down and unhappy and the only reason I left the house was because I felt, if I didn’t, it would be giving up on the year when it had only just started.
I walked through my favourite part of Thetford Forest to try to cheer myself up. It was nice to not be slumped at home but, actually, I still didn’t really feel that good. I was looking forward to the end of the walk when I could congratulate myself for being out and go back in!
The last stretch of the walk runs alongside the river Ouse. I grew up near the Ouse in Sussex and have since discovered pretty much every county seems to have one or two. This part of this Ouse is fairly narrow, very rural, and has fallen trees across it at several places. It is also known for otters. I’d seen signs of their existence but never actually seen one. In fact, I’d never seen a wild otter anywhere before. But there was a little splashing noise that caught my attention by the bank just a few metres ahead and, when I looked, there was a dark shape moving through the water.
My first crazy thought was cat! But then, my brain was trying to fit the same sort of size and shape and colour to the momentary glimpse. But, of course, that sleekness, that strength and, once it was in the water, the silence of its movement: an otter!
She was swimming the same way I was walking so I was able to spend a long time with her. I always imagined they would look dog-like, but she was not at all like a dog and so much like a teddy-bear it was startling. I had obviously disturbed her lunch on the bank because, at first, she swam with her head above the water so she could finish eating her fish. She ate like a little child: innocent, open-mouthed chomping, noisy and strangely endearing even as it showed just how brutally powerful an otter’s jaw is.
After that, she looped her body gracefully and slipped beneath the surface and out of sight. But, after a moment, reappeared on the surface. The rest of my walk passed this way, her continually disappearing under the water to fish, and me trying to track her via a thin hint of bubbles on the surface. Each time I thought that, perhaps this time, she’d gone, she’d break the surface again and swim alongside me for a few metres before diving back down again.
She was wary of me, always keeping a side-eye on my movements when she was on the surface, but she clearly felt I was no real threat as long as she was in the river, and I was on the path.
As we neared the car-park, and the bridge that crossed the river, we spotted a large family on the bridge, and a couple of dogs beside the water. She stopped. She had been swimming against the pull of the river and, now she let it carry her away a little as she eyed the scene. I waited with her, watching her calculate risks. Then, after a moment, she turned and dived again and, this time, swam back the way we’d come. I watched down river for a while but didn’t see her surface again. She was gone.
I felt like the world was full of hidden treasures it was waiting to reveal if we only went out looking for them. After that, I decided my word of 2023 had to be:
OPEN
And, looking back, across the year, it’s amazing to see how that mentality has carried me, even through difficult times.
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