Up at 6am. It’s still dark. Dress warm and step outside onto soft sandy soil strewn with pine needles. It’s a black, still morning. Owls are calling. Two large Corsican pines stand sentinel over the van. There’s no wind in their branches. There was rain in the night and everything is wet. Raindrops held and released by the trees patter on the ground.
Look up. A few stars pinpoint the sky. There’s something very bright shining through a haze of cloud. That’s no star. It’s Venus. Pan across the sky. The clouds are making way. More heavenly bodies reveal themselves. There’s Jupiter hanging in the celestial sphere, not as bright as Venus - the Roman god of thunder is being rightly deferential to his fellow goddess, as he should be. She is resplendent with beauty, radiating love, desire, sex, fertility and prosperity. Arcturus, the fourth-brightest star in the night sky, sits low on the horizon north-west of me, watching this sensual planetary courtship.
Absent lady moon was bright a few days back, in her first quarter, reclining elegantly, shining a path of light across the mouth of the River Deben at Felixstowe Ferry, further south from here on the Suffolk coast.
The red harvesting conveyer with its long neck, so noisy yesterday pouring sugar beet into waiting trucks, is silent now, and looms out of the gloom like a Late Jurassic brachiosaurus.
My ears are cold for the first time this year. Tuck them under the rim of my hat. Water Wood to my right. The Ordnance Survey indicates a pond or small lake within.
Something is barking. Fox or deer? No. It’s muntjac. This type of bark is conspicuous in muntjacs. Males bark to attract a female, ward off predators or defend territory. One animal becomes two, three, maybe four responding from different parts of the forest. They go on and on, having a long and loud exchange, settling their differences.
Walk on to Broom Covert, a small wood nearby. Old English brom corresponds to Dutch braam, meaning bramble. This would be the place covered with brambles then. I’m pleased to discover Broom Covert is indeed still covered in brambles. This is very satisfying, but I can’t get far into the copse as a result. The verdant green leaves on the prickly vines glisten under the recent rainfall. Each leaf is brown with freckles. I follow an animal path as far as I can without getting snared. A mass of thorns halts my progress. The trickster Br’er rabbit is hiding underneath the bramble canopy no doubt.
It’s a-quarter-to-seven. The first light of the day is suddenly in the sky, brightening it almost imperceptibly. Morning has broken. It’s daybreak. Dawn. The first morning crow takes over from retreating night owl.
As I walk back robin redbreast sounds the alarm at my approach. Jenny wren joins in. A flock of wetland birds fly overhead, roughly organised in a V formation, heading north-west.
“Something told the wild geese
It was time to go.”1
A damp misty morning washes into the watery light of day.
Something told the Wild Geese by Rachel Field (1894-1942)