Fireball Harvest.

In the relative cool of the evening, I go out for a walk to see the planets align. A few white moths flutter, bats hawk above my head and tawny owlets call their French name softly, persistently, from the wood; chouette, chouette.

At the top of Trenchfields, above Milking Parlour, the broad, blue-black downs lie like the smooth rise and fall of a horse’s back. The poll, crest and high withers of the hill fort to the east slope to the sway back of Old Gallows track, rising again to croup and quarters and falling to the dock of Rivars – all above the still, pale-gold fields of rustling barley.

I see Venus first, faithful and low on the western horizon, out to where they are harvesting in the Pewsey Vale, under actual chalk horses carved into the hills. Then, I make out the bright planets of Jupiter and Saturn. A moment later and Mars appears; the brightest thing in the sky, breathtaking and glowing like a hot coal on the shoulder of the down. It makes up for the disappointment of the lunar eclipse when we all went up the hill to watch the cloud blush a faint carmine.

The sky is still light and a few stars are appearing. The combine comes into view in this big field, roaring up the hill, its bright lights smudged by its own dust-cloud. Then a sudden streak, a fireball, shoots across the sky from east to west and vanishes, leaving a bright afterburn. What was that?

The combine makes a turn at the headland and I shield my eyes from it, anxious not to lose my hard won night vision in an instant. It trundles and roars up the field like an incongruous, bright, mobile fairground, tail light flashing beneath it like the fire of a stoked engine, smoking with dust, gobbling up barley with its wide header. A fallow buck is illuminated as it crosses the field. Only the huge rack of palmate antlers are visible, thickly wadded in brown velvet and beginning to shred, riding the waves of barley like an embattled galleon with torn sails.

I can still see the fireball when I blink. It seemed to fizz. I am left with the impression of a squareish sheet, a furled ribbon of glowing magnesium lit by a Bunsen burner. A firebolt of lit foil flung by petulant gods across the sky.

I wonder, was it a piece of space junk? A particularly large, bright meteor? I think of the rectangular, angled photovoltaic ‘wings’ of satellites. The International Space Station crosses the sky then, super-bright, to disappear somewhere near Mars. At the same time, two satellites cross its path and race each other across the night sky, parallel with the emerging Milky Way. We are everywhere I think.

I wonder what the labourers in the fields would have made of this in harvests past, had they looked up to straighten their backs a moment? They must have been used to the annual Perseid meteor shower, but perhaps it would have been seen as a portent? Or had it been two months and seventy-four years earlier, what would those soldiers from 9 Para, training for the fight of their young lives in these fields have thought? Tasked with dropping ahead of the D-Day landings to destroy the formidable Merville battery, a full mock-up of the installations and obstructions were built in these quiet fields and several rehearsals, with live ammunition, were run through. The fields are still known as Trenchfields.

I see two more exceptionally bright meteors, one that leaves a trail behind it, the other like a flare that simply brightens and goes out without seeming to move.
Crickets chirp from the grass down the lane as I walk home and somewhere near the village hall, a barn owl makes its strange and unearthly call. Down the dark lane, I make my eyes wide as possible, to take in all the available light.