Country diary: A vial of water from the rivers, becks and springs of Yorkshire – but not without permission | Amy-Jane Beer

I visit the source of the tiny stream called the Gypsey Race now and then, drawn by the everyday miracle of its water welling to catch sunlight like a plaything and alchemise it into colours and sparks. Today, though, is different, because I’ve come to ask for something. Something like permission, or approval maybe.

I’ve been helping to organise a gathering of river advocates to co-draft a regional charter of river rights – making explicit our responsibilities towards them. We will be holding a ceremony to blend waters from across Yorkshire to make ink in which the charter will be written. I want to collect water from the Gypsey, but I also want some of its potent reputation. Its course is regarded as auspicious thanks to an extraordinary concentration of nearby prehistoric barrows, cursuses and henges, not to mention England’s tallest standing stone. Local folklore insists that its capricious flow holds the power of prophecy.

I address my request to two sentinel trees rooted in the water – sister salixes, willow and sallow – then begin to walk around the spring. I’ve barely gone 10 steps when the clouds part and the recently tilled soil at my feet starts glimmering. I look up and the field is alight with what must be hundreds of miles of spider silk. Is this the answer I was hoping for?

Early on the day of the ceremony, I meet my collaborators and we decide to swim at the confluence of the Ouse and the Foss. On the slipway, a gleam of colour reveals itself to be small lost brooch with an enamelled kingfisher. Minutes later, as we’re towelling off, a young lad comes hurrying along the path with a net containing a monstrous green, gold and russet pike, magnificent and terrible, with a judging eye and, as Ted Hughes put it, “the grin it was born with”.

I choose to read the cobwebs, the kingfisher token and the pike as positive omens, but I remain nervous about the ceremony. Will the pragmatic Yorkshire folk we’ve invited get it? I soon relax: the first offering is a vial the woman says contains not only local rivers, but water from sacred springs around the world. I think this might just work.