north wessex downs
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Nature Notes
Wild Light, Weather, Portals. In the last hour of light, I walk along the high chalk ridge to a spot where I’m hoping for closer views of fallow deer. I find I am walking between storms; the loose flint vertebrae of the whaleback rattle away from my boots. The hill’s spine soars clear of the […]
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Nature Notes
The Moon and the Goshawk. These are strange and unsettling times for us all. I head for the high tops, to clear my head with a clearing storm. I can see it coming; great grey brush strokes drawn down with a broad sweep over the wet page of a lemon-yellow sky. I decide to cross […]
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Nature Notes
Black Bryony and the Jaggy Creel. Dawn, and a mist rises from the lake by the big house, and a small cloud inversion hovers over the source of the River Enborne. It lifts and mingles with a plume of smoke from the biomass wood boiler, and all is caught in the most ethereal, golden light […]
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Nature Notes.
Old Gods & Raven Calls. These winter days, we become crepuscular. Sometimes it feels that, outside, only the glow from big round hazel leaves, or the gold flare from a little quince tree in the hedge, with its hard, yellow-green fruits, provides the only natural light. Like a stored memory; a facsimile of sunshine, a […]
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Nature Notes
Ocksey Daisies & Open Gates. Trying to clear thoughts muddled by persistent headaches, I go for a little lie down – on the broad open flank of the hill. Evening, and nothing but the sound of skylarks and meadow pipits singing their way up and back down to the grass wigwams of their nests, and […]
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Nature Notes
Cowslipping, Part II. Before the rain, we took a lesson in walking underwater, without getting wet. It is entirely possible to drown in the sensory celebration of a bluebell wood, even as they are almost over: the mist-blue haze floating at calf-height, lapping the trees; the sticky sappiness, the honey scent, the squeak and tangled […]
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Nature Notes
Brown hares, snow hares. I never meant to go out that far, that high or for that long. At least, not before getting some chores done. But, when it stopped snowing after more than 24 hours, the world was so transformed, so breathtaking in its beauty, I was utterly taken; spellbound. The light coming through […]
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Nature Notes
Hedgebottom Foxes. A blank-window pallor gleams through the bottom of the bare hawthorn hedge on the hill above. Where protective tree tubes have been, the hedge bottom is open and spaced evenly by slender trunks, giving it a cloistered appearance. It is an unusual vantage point for me: a steamy kitchen on a Saturday-job afternoon. […]
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Nature Notes
Trespasses. The fog and its hiding, muffled property lends me a welcome, invisibility cloak that I wear in repudiation of some kind of exile. Walking alone and further to get to familiar places sharpens the senses. By the swing gate, the upturned aspect of ash twig-ends, ending in lamp black buds like deer’s feet, show […]
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Nature Notes
Rain birds, sun blushed. Pluvialis apricaria. On the highest hill we are under the rain. Exposed as we are, we can see it coming towards us, a wall of grey obliterating the landscape in its path. Later, there are spectacular rainbows. After sunset, I walk out onto the big arable fields on the highest hills. […]