#hacheston

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Ankle High

A breeze that blows cold to warn against uncovered toes.

A breeze that brushes the heads of the trees that stand so proud with their new green crops on top, like babies sprouting their first hair, old men their last. Their ill-fitting wigs ready to fall into the long leaves of summer

The goldfinches that charm.

A pool of primroses that don’t want to quit and so sit and wait quiet in the corner in the hope that no one will notice them till next year.

The tiny violets that fly across the hollow lanes floor like iridescent butterflies.

The last delicate white stars of the Blackthorn’s hedgerow supernovas as they fade to night . And next to them, the first stars of the Haw being born.

A sky that waits with a pregnant pause for the first swallows of the year. And we wait too, like the fathers of the unborn children, counting the days until they appear.

A telling off from a Great Tit.

A golden sea of oil-seed rape, its tide turned overnight from green to gold by a greater alchemist, that spills across the open fields like a flood of wonder. That stands like the unending golden helmets of an awestruck army. Suffolk’s ark of spring sprung open and laid bare.

Two geese who are deep in conversation as they gander north across the big blue sky.

The  small tortoiseshell butterfly that sows its way across the first stitches of the thistles, needle and thread, needle and thread.

And a small white too, that appears amongst the nodding heads of the last of the stars of Bethlehem, a ghost of eastertide.

The steeple of All Saints at Wickham Market, far flung across the fields. The top most tip of his tower standing in a line with the Pylons that stretch out like a giant’s washing line from the coast towards the industry inland.

A symphony of skylarks singing a constant coral cacophony.

The wheat that will one day feed the nation, but for now waits no more than ankle high.

And a song thrush, that skips and skittles across the meadow.

If you join the dots of its chest you’ll hear the song it hold’s in its heart.

Seen Today: Rabbits, Rooks, Hares, Seagulls, Wood Pigeons, Pheasants,Goldfinches. Sparrows, Blackbirds, Geese, Butterflies ( Small Tortoiseshell & White), and a Song Thrush.

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The Naked Bones

A thick frost so sure of its resolution to freeze that it sets hard, fast and early. Its attack as certain as that of a lead ballerina's.

The sunlight that skims across the water meadow like a stone tossed across the sea’s table top, it's tack so shallow that it never quite lands before sunset.

An emptying of the woods. A thinning. So that only a bedraggled army of bare trees remain, their trunks alone still standing to attention like the last defiant hairs upon a balding man’s head.

The too big heron that flips and flaps along the old railway line before running the rails and settling like some gigantic coat hangar upon the open field.

The gentle heave of the empty hills that stand as barren as a supermarket’s shelves at closing time on Christmas Eve.

The ice in the shaded pools that lingers all day long like a man waiting for the last bus home, like a full moon discarded amidst the sleeping fields.

A broken style that leads to nothing but a thicket, nevertheless, this is the path that calls to me.

The ripple of the Pheasant’s applause as it claps its way through the theatre of the undergrowth before exiting stage left.

The blue and yellow of the tit upon the green of the Ivy - a robin’s red breast short of a rainbow.

A pine fallen across the path in Pam’s Wood that lays like a drunk, asleep before he even hits the ground.

The deep turned up trench of the field’s irrigation channel that fills like a great grave for the rain’s tears, that half a mile down stream will break the ford's heart.

A small deer behind Moat Hall, that knows it can stand still longer than you can wait to see if it moves. That understands how time really works.

The pew pew of the Buzzard as it calls in circles, the sound like the song of the wind as it whistles through the ropes of a boat that lays whispering in the harbour.

A Greenfinch, that flickers and fans the flame of the hedgerow, like a Victorian lamplighter come to fire up the oil lamps of the last remaining haws & hips.

The naked bones of Oak’s row that rattle around the coffin of late December, so beautiful in their fragility, that their simply being here on this cold and dark day is enough to make you believe in the resurrection of spring.

Seen Today: A Heron, Goldfinches, Greenfinches, Blackbirds, Blue Tits, Great Tits, Sparrows, Seagulls, Wood Pigeons, Phesants, Partridges, Rabbits and a Dear.

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And he showed me a river of water of life

After fall, flood. Three days of downpour turn the burnt dusty meadow in front of the cottage into a lake. The land so flat, nothing but the sand of a forgotten sea, that any slight incline is enough of an angle to tip the water away. The run-off rain settling in an instant across the meadows.

This is, of course, what they are there for. The rest of the time the water meadows are seemingly vacant fields. Open spaces that leave people to wonder, why has that space not been built on? Or, at best, how come no crops are in those fields? 

It is when it rains that they come into their own. These fields soak up the excess water and capture it. They become a redoubt for the flood, a sponge. Sparing not only the local villages, but also those downstream, who would become threatened by the flash flood of a river too high for its own banks.

Where there is water there is life. The meadows in deluge are a pop-up feeding ground for all kinds of aquatic life. The occasional swan dropping in to join the varied gulls and ducks paddling up and down stream. The hares turn up great spitting sprays of water as they skim across the shallows. 

The impromptu lakes of autumn and winter a small reminder that no matter how dry a land the east is - and it is amongst the driest, it remains at heart a water world. Last of our emerald isle to become land, aqua vitae never lurks far from the surface here. 

It’s found in the curls of the River Ore as it winds its way through the village, in the little ditch brooks of field run offs, and in the great dew mists that rise up this time of year and come forth to smother you twice a day - early morning and late evening. 

Beautiful white siren shrouds into which you are drawn. The dew clouds are phantoms that fill you with the strange desire to step into them and disappear.

Seen Today: Rooks, Wood Pigeons, Rabbits, Pheasants, Seagulls, Hares, Swans, Starlings, Sparrows, and two Deer.

You can now see these words in pictures at Visions of the Halt

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A conversation with the land

Eldorado. The endless furnace of the sun’s forge has spilled over on to the land and turned everything gold. The fields of hay, the wheat and the barley. Every single thing, bar the trees, behind the meadows towards Moat Hall farm is gold. It is a shining dawn.

You should make hay whilst the sun shines and they do. The second cutting of the year is baled and in, whistling past me on a long trailer drawn by tractor, with a  third still to come by September. After several spoiled years the grass can not grow quick enough for the farmers.

The sight of the glistening golden fields being gleaned turns my mind to the naming of things. When you have been in a place long enough you start to map it. When you map a place you name. It is a process as old as time. I like to talk  with the land in this way.

Of course each place already has a name. The one found on the ordinance survey map. However, as you learn your place you add your own nouns. From this path alone I can see Long Meadow, Holy Tree, Favourite Tree, The Oak Road, Oak Cross, King Oak, Rabbit Run, The Cutting & Deer field. 

There is something eternal about this process. It is a continuation of a dialogue that started with our earliest ancestors and it is not restricted to the landscape. Take the fauna. Of course there are the formal biological names. But if I was to say I saw a Maniola Jurtina Lepidoptera  you may have no idea what I am talking about. 

Yet, if I was to say I saw a Meadow Brown Butterfly you would know not only what I saw, but where to find it and how it looks. The same goes for the Cabbage White. The Skylark, Swift, Blackbird and Red Kite. We name so that we can understand our world, and once we know it we can share its wonders with others. It is a conversation with the land and you only have to listen.

Seen Today : Blackbirds, Swifts, Swallows, House Martins, Goldfinches, Meadow Brown, Whites & Ringlet Butterflies, Skylarks, Rabbits, Hares, Squirrels, a Kestrel, a  Red Kite & a Sparrowhawk.

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To wear the willow

The willow grows like a weed here in the sandlings of Suffolk. The land is flat and low so that the water seeps over the earth in a series of brooks and marshes, and willows love these damp conditions. 

It is the second week of consecutive sunshine and the white willows have turned the silver of the moon’s reflection when you catch its face in the sea. In winter they were bare and back then they held a different sort of magnificence. One of permanence and of past glories, reminiscent of the ruins of a castle. 

Today they are very much alive and once more my eye is drawn to the greatest of them all that sits in the far corner of the meadow.The branches of this king tree so abundant with silver treasure that they hang down invitingly to the land. 

The leaves never quite touch the earth no matter how long you look at the tree and it appears as though the willow is engaged in a long, slow, love affair with the earth. Its silver leaves courting the ground for months, but never quite consummating its love with a kiss. 

For centuries, to wear the willow meant to grieve the loss of a sweetheart. The willow itself has no choice but to be a bearer of this token of remembrance. I watch as its kisses are blown on the wind over and over again and yet they never quite reach the ground. 

The willow unawares of course that its unconditional love will be returned in autumn when its leaves finally fall into the arms of its beloved. And so for now it goes on in its endless courtship, never tiring of trying to win the dry earth’s embrace. 

In winter the willow was still and it did not weep because its love lay dormant. Now, it can not keep itself from moving, or for that matter weeping. I guess this is what it is to be alive. The willow a mass; a billowing blob of beauty burning with desire on this hot summer’s day. 

Seen Today: Goldfinches, Rooks, Rabbits, Meadow Brown Butterflies, Robins, Blackbirds, Pigeons, Pheasants,Swifts, Swallows, Seagulls, House Martins, Hares, Two Red Deer, a Collard Dove, a Green Woodpecker and a Yellowhammer.

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All the world's a movie

A tale of two birds. In the morning a Song Thrush feeds on the fat balls hanging from the ceanothus tree. It strikes me that it has been a long time since I last saw one, too long. The Song Thrush is a wonderful bird, a song leopard of the trees. The bird's latin name is turdus philomelas. Turdus is latin for thrush. Philomela has greek origins. The name taken from mythology, where the eponymous Philomela had her tongue cut out. She soon took her revenge by arranging for her assailant's son to be killed and fed to his father, who in turn pursued Philomela. She prayed to the gods for help and was changed, just to confuse things, into a nightingale. Later, I walk the long meadow with Lorca. A large bird of prey circles endlessly above us tracing buddhist mandalas in the sky. At first I take it for a Buzzard. Then I notice how its tail fans out in a perfect triangle. It is a Red Kite from its tail to its feathered finger wing tips and it is the first I have seen in Suffolk. The Kite follows as I walk the old train line to the ford. It occurs to me that maybe it is quarrying Lorca. I hold my hand against the spring sun and look to the bird. We watch each other like this and a moment of recognition passes between us. It is at times like this when you understand that we hold no dominion over the birds of the air. The space between us is broken by a rook flying out of the sun like a spitfire attacking a bomber. It worries the Kite away. Spring is everywhere today and in May it turns all the world into a movie. One in which we get to play a part. Seen today: Rooks, Blackbirds, Goldfinches, Rabbits, Hares, Starlings, Sparrows, Wrens, Great Tits, Blue Tits, a Muntjac Deer, a Song Thrush and a Red Kite.

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The woods of my childhood

In the meadow on May Day morning; two hares running rings. Two pheasants promenading.  A nest of kit rabbits. A goose that ganders through the long grass.The day is clear and blue. It promises a beauty unbound. 

Later, I slip into the narrow strip of woodland that leads to Cow Wood. This L shaped alley borders the formal grounds of Marlesford Hall. In a small clearing are the remains of a giant oak. All that now stands is a stump. A memory of a tree. What a mighty oak it must have been. It is eighteen paces round and the largest stump twelve feet high.

A movement catches my eye behind the tree. It is a weasel. The small animal stands on its hind legs and it looks at me. I can not speak for the weasel, but this is my first encounter with one of its kind. I size it up a while. Take its measure. 

The woods are coming alive. The bluebells starting to show. Their formal name is Hyacinthoides non- scripta. Other hyacinths have markings inside their bell that imitate the Greek death cry Ai, ai. The bluebell does not share this scream and so it is known as non-scripta.

Bluebells are a special plant to me. I was married amidst the beautiful bluebells of Shadow Wood in West Sussex. The home to Clive and Amanda. Two very special people who each in their own way are of the woods. 

The flowers also remind me of my nan. We would go collecting bluebells in the woods of my childhood, Gustard, Sauncy and St. John’s. The name of a wood a poem in itself.

She would bring the flowers home and place them on the table in a glass vase. The table laid with a white lace cloth hand made by my great grandmother. It is a scene I can picture now. This is a day you could walk forever.

Seen today: Hares, pheasants, rabbits, rooks, blue tits, house sparrows, wood pigeons, doves, a blackbird, a mallard duck, a buzzard and a weasel.

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Another truth

There are some paths you will always remember. Tracks that you can stride down in your mind and picture every house and every tree along the way. These lanes usually lead back to your childhood.

However, I am struck by how intimate Marlesford feels on my return from Denmark. How turning towards the village a warm sense of recognition comes upon me. A notion of home. There is something understood in the gentle heave of the hills here. The curls of their cambers carrying in them enough hint of Bedfordshire, my home county, to trigger an inherent memory. 

And yet it is something more. A feeling of Heimat found in the path that leads you from the rise of St. Andrews’s church to the shallows of the water meadow. This is a path in its true form; A way of life. 

It leads to nothing but a shadow of a track across a meadow and then on to a small foot bridge across a brook. This in turn takes you to the old railway station at Hacheston Halt. Yet on seeing it for the first time it was as though I had been walking this path my whole life, perhaps longer. 

It looks that way today too. The snow has stopped smothering us and the meadow is starting to breathe. Soon it will become transformed into a field, but a meadow is never a true field. It is a vision of a land which once was. A wilderness yet of unmanned beauty.

It is walking this path that I become aware of another truth. Spring is here. It has not blossomed yet, but it is here. I have heard its key in the lock. This year is at that moment when you hear your door open and a loved one enters your home. You have not seen them yet, but you know that with just one more step they will be in your arms.

Seen today: Blackbirds, Rabbits, Mallard Ducks, Sparrows, Seagulls, Rooks, Bats, Goldfinches,Wood Pigeons, a Barn Owl and a dead Pheasant upon the grass.