Summit
Heading home from a weekend away I felt a little disloyal. I think I could easily fall for the little bit of Monmouthshire I'd left 200 miles behind. As I drove the last mile towards home the smell of wheat from the cornfields met me and I thought about the intimacy of landscape, the excitement of getting to know a new place and the comfort of familiarity.
Whatever the weather throws at a landscape over the course of the year, if you know a place you'll greet each seasonal, annual nuance, and you'll be alert for every new aspect too. You'll know the way the light falls on the land, the drifts of temperature, the mist collecting in favourite hollows, the way clouds bank above a certain hillside. You'll know its changing colour palette and you'll know its smells.
Wales smelt of cattle dung, fungi, mud, ferns and oaks as my brother led me from his new home to his nearest highest hill. My brother is finding his feet using the bridleways where horses have stamped a channel through the bracken. We disturbed two deer as we advanced. I felt very conspicuously a visitor, crashing through. I wondered if my brother's small children, my niece and nephew, might become one with this landscape as they grow up, knowing rather than visiting the hills and woods. I hope they do.
I stopped. I noticed fragile harebells only just hanging on to their territory, thuggish bracken keeping them at bay.
We reached the top of the hill at sundown. Swallows flew urgently over our heads. They seemed to be winging their way west.
A steep lane led us back down to my brother's home. Tawny owls called and I glimpsed a bird I've never seen before in my life: a crepuscular, hawk-like silhouette flying low over the hedge in front of us formed the words nightjar in my head.
The next day I picked up a Woodland Trust leaflet about the area. Yes there are nightjars there. Goshawks too. We looked out for fast and furious raptors doing a fly-past in the garden but all we saw all day were foreboding military helicopters patrolling for the Nato summit in nearby Newport.
Whatever the weather throws at a landscape over the course of the year, if you know a place you'll greet each seasonal, annual nuance, and you'll be alert for every new aspect too. You'll know the way the light falls on the land, the drifts of temperature, the mist collecting in favourite hollows, the way clouds bank above a certain hillside. You'll know its changing colour palette and you'll know its smells.
Wales smelt of cattle dung, fungi, mud, ferns and oaks as my brother led me from his new home to his nearest highest hill. My brother is finding his feet using the bridleways where horses have stamped a channel through the bracken. We disturbed two deer as we advanced. I felt very conspicuously a visitor, crashing through. I wondered if my brother's small children, my niece and nephew, might become one with this landscape as they grow up, knowing rather than visiting the hills and woods. I hope they do.
I stopped. I noticed fragile harebells only just hanging on to their territory, thuggish bracken keeping them at bay.
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| Harebell - Photo by Jo Sinclair |
We reached the top of the hill at sundown. Swallows flew urgently over our heads. They seemed to be winging their way west.
A steep lane led us back down to my brother's home. Tawny owls called and I glimpsed a bird I've never seen before in my life: a crepuscular, hawk-like silhouette flying low over the hedge in front of us formed the words nightjar in my head.
The next day I picked up a Woodland Trust leaflet about the area. Yes there are nightjars there. Goshawks too. We looked out for fast and furious raptors doing a fly-past in the garden but all we saw all day were foreboding military helicopters patrolling for the Nato summit in nearby Newport.
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