The High Stream

The river is high this morning. The dog wades across a section of bank she normally walks, nosing curiously through waterlogged reeds festooned with plastic and fragments of wood, detritus abandoned by the passing water.

It is an uneasy passage. With each rising tide, the runoff from heavy rains over the valley and downs is penned back. The banks here are too high for the water to spill out, but its level is rising and other areas of the valley are already well flooded.

This is for now an ordered outcome, the water levels set to stabilise and then recede as the rains subside. The meeting point of the flood water and tidal flow also appears orderly, with little surface movement. But this is one of the country’s fastest-flowing rivers, and appearances can be deceptive.

The rise in water levels can be insidious. At lunchtime two weeks back the path over the bridge connecting Pulborough to the RSPB reserve was dry. Returning in the afternoon, after successfully twitching the valley’s first White-rumped Sandpiper, the path on either side of the bridge was under water. The swollen channel bearing the waters of the Chilt and Stor had run up against the rising tide.

Not much of the path was covered, nor was the water deep or difficult to cross. But it was a reminder that, for all its watercourses have been harnessed for centuries, the valley still belongs to water. It remains a place where boundaries are never quite certain.

That uncertainty of definition includes not just the course but name of the river. In 1636 the author of The High Stream of Arundel bemoaned the fact that half a century before Camden’s Britannia had called the river the Arun, a name that was gaining traction. However, the unknown writer and water bailiff said the correct local usage was High Stream, the name derived from Hault Rey, based on the Norman word for high and Saxon word for river.

The Saxons had themselves renamed the river. Ptolemy’s Geography of 150 AD called it Trisantona, which may mean the meeting of three waters, or thoroughfare, or trespasser. Which, if any, of these meanings is correct remains unknown, but it does seem certain the Roman-period name is based on the Celtic Trent, or Tarrant, which appears to return the name full circle to Arun.

My musings are disturbed as three Reed Buntings are accidentally flushed from the battered reeds by the dog and flutter into a nearby bush. A Stonechat is less shy, keeping pace and calling softly. This is not entirely reassuring, coming from a bird that supposedly converses with the devil.

The omens remain dark as croaking from a tree across the river reveals a Raven, not a bird to be taken lightly. I’ve never seen one perch there before, but then each visit to the high stream is different, and at least the jump in bird activity indicates an easing in the rains.