Tor Falcon: Diary of a Wild Place

May, A Good Year for Dandelions.

This week I have been basking in the sunshine of dandelions. Like my son’s noses, the bare earth has suddenly come out in freckles. Unbelievable that those weightless seeds blown last summer have done more than survive this winter, they seem to have thrived. Content to take root wherever the wind blows them they are beaming from every untended piece of ground. Adding their shaggy brilliance to the world, putting a smile on my face wherever I go.   

April, In Praise of Ditches.

The gods of the weather and the months of the year have conspired to make this week perfect for sitting in ditches. It’s been warm and dry, there’s not too much vegetation and importantly there are no mosquitos yet. It’s easy to find yourself a comfortable spot and steal a glance at these private places before nettles grow to terrifying proportions and bar you for the next six months.

You need to pick your ditch though. Not all ditches are equal. From the deep, steep v’s that drain farmland, wheat right up to the edge, to the hedged and even the tree lined. Some have deep water in them all year, some dry up. Some stink. Some are roomy, some aren’t.

This one however, is a Queen among ditches. Once a stream, it still bears some reminders of it’s noble past. Old alders and warty oaks remember it before it’s demotion eighty years ago when the lakes were dug and the water stolen. Unbothered it trickles through a no-mans-land of lakes and more ditches. It is home to the shy and the retiring and it hides an invisible network of paths. It is as wide and as lovely a ditch as you are likely to find.  

And yesterday a blackcap sang in it.  A woodpecker emerged from a hole above my head. The hazel linked arms with the oak. The ivy and the moss waltzed over the water and made edible reflections. Dogs mercury was dressed in pure gold. A guelder-rose swam naked with a shoal of tadpoles and twenty pregnant hinds tap-danced over a honeysuckle bridge. The sun couldn’t stop shining and I watched through a brief window as this enchanted place danced before my eyes. 

April, Light.

Light dazzling through the first chlorophyl of the year. Young nettles on a bank next to a sluice. Water falling from lake to stream. A hazel ablaze. Finally, swallows. Balm to my tired soul. 

September, An Invisible Herd of Red Deer.

Dickie, George and Dean have all told me that they’ve seen a herd of forty red deer recently. I’ve never seen the whole herd but I’m very aware that I’m not the biggest creature living here. I’d have to be blind not to notice huge hoof prints and piles of dung. Not to see the paths only really large animals could make, not to wonder at the fence neatly squashed, not to see the crushed vegetation and not to notice the browsing. But only very occasionally do I actually see one or two of them. Their size is shocking in this intimate landscape. An unexpected creature as big as a horse, suddenly, between me and the horizon (that alder tree about twenty foot away) causes my heart to take refuge in my throat momentarily. I’m more used to seeing them on the vastness of a Scottish mountain, with them carefully keeping airy miles between us. It’s astonishing that here in this over populated, intensively farmed corner of Britain, a large herd of our biggest mammals not only thrives but hides. I enjoy the thrill of knowing these gigantic beasts are here but never really seeing them. Knowing that I probably walk right past them as they rest in the tall grass, forty pairs of gentle eyes watching as I amble along day dreaming. That we can happily share this place, aware of each other and not much concerned. That this small spot, an island in an ocean of cultivation, is rich enough to make invisible an army of giants.

July, The Feeling of Being Under Water.

I’m sitting on a mown path in a little wood that was planted the year my daughter was born. It’s just a small belt of trees that runs between the road and the hay field. I’m painting in here because I’m in love with the colour and texture of the ash tree’s trunks. Tall and slender and smooth grey green blue, they’re more like seaweed than trees. There’s a real feeling of being under water in here. The long grass each side of the path is hanging heavy with pale blue seed heads, each one coated in a mother of pearl rain drop. And through the layers of different leaves above my head, come trembling pools of brightness.

Cars drive past, nobody notices me. A yellow council lorry pulls over and two men sit and drink tea,I hear their chat about football. Then Arthur drives past and stops to unlock the gate. He’s looking summery in his hay making clothes; purple shirt, mustard tie, pale blue knitted tank top and floppy hat. As he swings the gate open I wave. He hasn’t seen me. I shout Hello Arthur! But he doesn’t hear me either. I feel more than ever submerged, invisible to the outside. I’m in a strange wooden, watery bubble,where trees have blue trunks and girls have blue hair (yes, my daughter really does have blue hair this week!) And as I look up into the canopy I wouldn’t be surprised to see Edward Lear’s Jumblies sail over my head in their sieve.

They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,

In a Sieve they went to sea;

In spite of all their friends could say,

On a winters morn, on a stormy day,

In a Sieve they went to sea!

And when the Sieve turned round and round,

And every one cried, ‘You’ll all be drowned!”

They called aloud, “Our Sieve ain’t big,

But we don’t care a button! We don’t care a fig!

In a Sieve we’ll go to sea!”

Far and few, far and few,

Are the lands where the Jumblies live;

Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,

And they went to sea in a sieve…….

June, A Still Moment Between Rain Storms.

A hot day, heavy rain all morning. A moment of respite. A short, still truce. The air is thick with water. Evaporation is visible, you can feel it’s softness on your skin, it’s warmth in your lungs. It plays with perspective and mutes colours. Shapes blur, insects take to the air and the heavy scent of honeysuckle trickles down your throat.

Then the wind whips the poplars into a roaring frenzy, the sky darkens and it begins to rain again.