Dear friends,
Summer is in full flow here in the borderlands, which means we had one warm day this week. Our cocker spaniel is unfortunately confined to lead-only walks due to a petition signed by all the birds requiring us to curb her hyperactivity. And my Labrador has just been given the Healthiest Looking Very Elderly Dog Award by our vet. She is 80 in human years and still thinks she can outrun a squirrel, which is just not the case and never has been. But she will not give up, ever!
This week’s episode is a story about wildfires, birds, regeneration and creative acts (and a little bit about my special kind of dopiness). The full story, comments section, and now book-length archive of other stories are available to paid subscribers.
Next week I shall be writing from a graveyard somewhere in Wales where an inordinate number of swifts will be screaming overhead. It may be the nearest I’ll ever get to a live wordcast. I’m currently trying to bring my sound recorder back from the dead so I can share the experience more closely with you.
In the meantime I hope you like this week’s story.
J
Strange how you can live in a place and never get the news. I have a talent for this. When something’s happening in our square mile I’m usually absent or oblivious. Talked-about events happen, celebrities visit, I think the king came once. I may have been there. I have no idea who or what is on the TV; I am not familiar at all with the celebrity landscape. Wasn’t Roger Moore the last James Bond? But you’d think, given how much time I spend with the other-than-human-beings in this area - the wilder community, I’d at least know what was going on there. Well, I don’t.
Earlier this week I walked a short section of the Offa’s Dyke path along Hergest Ridge, the first time I’ve been up there for, perhaps, two months. Skylarks and wheatears, swallows and rooks, a yellowhammer, a redstart. And a hunting kestrel, the first one I’ve seen in two years here. I couldn’t get close to it. As I approached it flickered away, dived and arced, then flickered again. I watched it from afar for a while, until it turned into a speck far off in the valley. The bracken was at full height, but still pale with fresh growth. The ponies had young foals, all asleep in the warm sun. The mawn pools were starting to dry up. The Black Mountains and Brecon Beacons were stark on the horizon. And the Malverns, Brechfa Forest, Clee Hill - the full 360 degree view of the border counties. My new back yard lay beneath me, the dome of Worzle Wood, emerald green and glowing. Hanter Hill, its nearer, higher twin had a shadow on its west side, which seemed normal at that hour, but as I walked further I saw that half of it had been burned. There had been a wildfire. Given how quiet life is here on the borders, this must have been a newsworthy, much talked about event, being so close to our town (a town which is made of mainly wooden structures). I knew nothing at all about it.
It’s strange to see blackened ground in this usually drenched land, especially when we’ve just had the wettest 12 months for a century. The climate in the UK is predicted to get wetter due to climate change, particularly here on the west side of the country. We’re descending into a world where the sun never shines. The word wildfire is not part of the global warming lexicon here.
Local farmers used to burn parts of common land in winter to clear gorse, heather and bracken, creating more grazing for cattle and sheep. It’s not a common practice now. I’ve only ever witnessed fires on Ireland moor, where they control heather for grouse, while I’ve lived here. Seeing fire on the horizon when approaching our village after dark was dramatic and somewhat unsettling. This is a once disputed land, a place where villages were repeatedly burned and pillaged. That was centuries ago, but, somehow, the memory is in our blood. Or, at least, in mine. Sound the alarm, the vikings are coming!
Hanter Hill is my favourite part of the common. It’s a steep-sided, green whaleback, always switching between lantern luminescence and shadow as clouds scud overhead in the westerlies. Its slopes are rocky and thickly matted with gorse, rich nesting habitat for birds. Or, they were. The fire happened mid nesting season. I hope the young birds managed to escape. It’s unlikely. The place seems to be full of fledglings at the moment and they seem to prefer scuttling along the ground to flying. You can out-fly a gorse fire, but not out-scuttle it.
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