Who’s there?
From my house’s mustardy Picasso face, I peer sleepily in the morning through one of its offset eyes. I’m trying to motivate myself to go for a run.
The cooling towers of the power station opposite provide the backdrop. I imagine the sounds of a brass section at their bases, performing three descending low blasts as though accompanying an ominous storyline for a film.
The tidal, floodable river below reminds me of the weeping angels in Dr Who. One moment I look out of the window and the grass below looks a little soggy. The next, I look back and water is lapping at the steepest part of the bank, threatening to annihilate my home and garden the next time I turn away. It’s daring me to turn anyway. Which I do. The local lord of the manor told me ‘It won’t flood here.’ End of story, no debate. He’s been right so far, which is of course good for me. But dammit, he’s right.
The classic set of wild animals in illustrations of the English countryside are all here, unobtrusively: mole, vole, fieldmouse, weasel, hedgehog, pheasant (or grouse, I’m not sure), hare, owl (barn and little), buzzard and, more rarely, fox and deer. When I spot one of these, I stop still and breathe quietly, even from behind glass. I marvel at them. They all seem a little unreal. If there’s time, I try to take a photo and I call my husband to come and look. I’m a tourist in my own home.
Passers-by occasionally must spy me and my husband walking with arms outstretched in the neighbouring field of crops, apparently trying to hug cows. We are performing a free, albeit amateur, cow herding service. The Belted Galloways and a very mischievous white cow like to hurdle comfortably over the barbed wire fences designed to contain them to the riverbank side. In the summer months, at some point one of us will hear a noise, look outside and hail: ‘Cow in the garden!’ to the pace of ‘Troll in the dungeon!’ (a la Professor Quirrell in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone).
In the summer months, I park on the drive instead of the carport, to give way to the swifts. I’m delighted to save disturbing them and encourage the possibility of new life. One year I thought we had a birds’ nest in the eaves of the outbuilding. I hoped to witness returning birds in year two. I’ve since learned that it was a wasp nest. My waspinators didn’t work, but I’m glad I didn’t realise and become fear-ridden. I pored and poked at the fallen nest, admiring its perfect hexagons and delicate, swirling paper walls.
I feel sorry for one particular tree in my garden. It’s some kind of gum or eucalyptus. It’s long been shoved out of the best light by its neighbour, forced to grow at a 45-degree angle, and seems to have been trunk-rubbed by animals, probably deer. After the latest strong winds that coldheartedly ripped off most of its limbs, there’s not much of it left. I’m not sure if I should try to save it, somehow.
*****
Wondrousness
I’m a geographer by training. Recently, my sister texted me one of those dream questions: where could they go on holiday in Europe for warmth, the sea but also to see something geographically noteworthy? My first draft reply was long, full of my own landforms wishlist.
In the mustardy Picasso house, all my geographer’s dreams have come true: I live on the edge of an oxbow lake, in sight and reach of a tidal river that floods part of my garden and changes direction every day. It miraculously exists right in this spot because, in a human-like way, it decided to take a shortcut from its earlier course 500 years ago. The textbook is alive! It’s like seeing a famous person in real life. You feel that you know them, but there’s a strange moment when you see them, so familiar, face to face for the first time. It’s like waking up from The Matrix, because I never really experienced anything before of the rural life, nature and landforms, I just learned about it instead.
Now I feel like I live in a college case study example or field trip waiting to happen, debating the balance between nature and human intervention: farming, the power station, the protected corner designated a nature reserve, the wildlife, the river, the public footpath and the mole tunnels that undermine the riverbank food defences. Who will win? Who will compromise or be compromised?
*****
Fear
A mile-long section of the riverbank just west of my house is mine from late October to the end of March. Well, I own it emotionally. It’s flat, boggy and unremarkable. It’s usually deserted. I go running there when I can drag myself out of the house before I’ve had chance to talk myself out of it. I share it mostly with cows.
I regret that I’ve always been a little afraid of being physical. I don’t have confidence in my body, I don’t have any strength, and I lack spatial awareness. In my most religious times, I considered whether the Devil was pushing down my waving arms, trying to stop me from lively worship. I knew it was unlikely he’d single me out as a worthy opponent, and admitted to myself it was probably because I never exercised my arms, let alone waggled them above my head for more than a few seconds.
Now I live in this flat, unchallenging environment that gives me the confidence to explore it alone and get a little fitter. Since moving to the country, I’ve tried to undo the physical limitations of my past. I read Simon Barnes’ Rewild Yourself but my only subsequent action was to purchase waterproof trousers. It’s a start.
I know someone who is currently in prison. He won’t have seen a tree or the horizon or probably even a bird in over three years. I don’t know if that matters to him. Perhaps he won’t realise he’s missed it until he’s out. But I think of it, when I’m jogging freely along my portion of the riverbank where the flatlands provide a virtually unimpeded scan of the horizon from east to west.
As I progress along the bank, I evade yet am simultaneously drawn in by the angry, dinnerplate thistles in abundance around here. I think about what it would be like to fall face first into one, have my face rubbed into it. Maybe it would be a way to torture someone in a rural-set film. Riverbank Dogs don’t need no knives, could be the tagline.
This week I spotted something new and unobtrusive, and was pleased with my attentiveness. There’s a series of miniature cosy dens, along the highway of the footpath along the riverbank. They must be a bolt hole for tiny animals seeking protection from predators or the elements.
At low tide, the River Ouse oozes. I hope I might spot something old and manmade, glinting and wedged in the sucky, uniform mud of this riverbank. Perhaps the waterproof trousers will goad me into action and I’ll bring my husband’s metal detector, along with its owner.
There are trespassers on my lonely mile, I have deduced. Last week I double-backed along my tread to be sure I hadn’t just leapt over a decapitated snake’s head, sliced off after a few centimetres of neck. I’m horrifically fascinated by snakes and have seen two in real life (one was the deadly puff adder who, I was reliably informed by a park ranger, was ‘a very lazy snake.’ The other was a watersnake cruising along a path near Wake Forest). You know this was not number three or I would have brought it up earlier. It was clearly a rubber toy. I still poked it with a stick first, to be sure.
Those cows, by the way, are the reason my sovereignty over the riverbank mile is seasonal. I feel like an urban cat, sharing the same territory with others who claim it at different times of day. The end of my reign is near in March, so I need to make the most of the remaining opportunities to go running. I keep my eyes ahead (cow spotting in case they’re back), eyes down (cowpat spotting), and to the right I judge how widely spaced and free of faded greenery is each section of the barbed wire fence, in case of emergency. It’s my escape plan if the cows appear by magic and start sprinting, intent on squashing me to death.
I took horseriding lessons a few years ago. I got further than my wildest dreams. I learned to canter around the arena on little Penny, who like me also was a scaredy cat. Unfortunately, this meant she’d bolt at the sight of a nearby car or empty packet of crisps littering the ground. Too many falls and a walking stick later, I decided to cut my losses and be happy with what I’d achieved. As a plus, it helped my balance and posture a little.
At the moment, the challenge literally facing me is my shiny new green tent, purchased two years ago. It currently serves as an expensive footrest at my desk. I wonder, will animals attack me, unprovoked, as I pretend to sleep?
My nature to-do list also includes summoning the courage to get in the water. I mean, it’s right there, waiting. I’ve read a few tales of death in the river from Victorian newspapers about this very locale. I know I’ll look a fool, but I also need to not do it at night and alone (although I’m tempted), in case it’s as dangerous as the newspapers report.
*****
Are there stupid questions?
I have some funny questions arising from my nature lessons. I think I need a guide.
- Is the mole the strongman of the animal kingdom? Surely pound for pound they’re a muscle bag, pushing the sodden, solid earth far higher than their own height.
- Do cows like a bit of peril now and then? Their hoof prints are all over the exposed mud banks with no obvious food source they’d be seeking, but an entire riverbank of grass behind for the taking. Rosamund Young’s The Secret Life of Cows made me think it’s entirely possible.
- Why do birds float on the temporary ponds of shallow water in the despairingly wet and grey season, when they’ve got a frigging great river within sight?
- Who in their right mind would’ve taken the time, money and effort to plant random groups of daffs along the river bank? And when?
And one final question I know the answer to: in a fight, an owl will tend to be victorious over a cat. Google it. I had to lock my pets inside one day recently when one cat was clearly torn between looking down for vole and looking up for the owl that kept flying overhead.
*****
Death
The downside of living here is seeing death. Most heartbreaking is the needless death: the deer, foxes and badgers that are strewn along the country roads with their national speed limits. The smaller mammals too, brought in proudly by my cats, who are not natural predators in these parts.
I hope there’s a role for suburbanites in saving the environment. We grew up knowing ideologically that it matters to protect not pollute. We aren’t hampered by the doctrines of generations of farmers or fathers of industry. But we didn’t grow up experiencing much of the natural world around us. I recall trees felled next door to make way for an impervious driveway and second cars. I know potholes, not sinkholes. I know streetlights not starry skies. My best friend – also suburban, also a geographer – has moved in reach of the water too. After work she goes for dips in the sea and her son is growing up with that as the norm.
I’m very much loving becoming incrementally more knowledgeable about the environment surrounding me. From the cosiness of my sofa, I imagine I could win Castaway or trek with the explorer Ed Stafford. I know my limits though: I couldn’t go on Naked and Afraid. I mean, I’m not American. That’s why not.
Death by fox as I sleep in my tent, death by cow as I run, or death in the river as I’m being curious? None can be my epitaph. But worse would be death by indoors in my dear Picasso house. What’s more, I can’t die from the bafflement of my dear, hardy, outdoorsy neighbour as I try things just because they’re there. For today, though, death by chocolate is the most likely outcome.
