The names of things

Oak tree, Peewit hall, Anglezarke

No two walks in the same territory, or even following the same route, are ever actually the same. It’s not necessary, therefore, to hanker after fresh ground all the time, though it is distinctly human to do so. I have walked this route up from Parson’s Bullough countless times, come over the pastures towards Twitch Hills and Jepsons, and passed beneath the two oaks that mark the line of the path to Peewit Hall.

I already know the photographs I’ll take, but though the physical perspectives are the same, there’s always a different mood by way of light and cloud. First shot then, the oak, looking towards Jepsons, with another oak on the skyline. The clouds are interesting today, but the camera will not capture them in one go. I suspect I can recover that dynamism though, using a particular software filter, and some artistic license. It comes out a bit gritty, a bit grungy, but I still like it.

For company, I have a wheatear. I think he’s a wheatear. I take a picture, then show it Google Lens, and it concurs. He’s flown in from Central Africa, where he spent the winter. I’ve never seen one before. He’s quite a dashing fellow, but doesn’t hang around to chat. I’m superstitious when it comes to birds. The lore is complex and tied up with personal stuff, but it’s a good omen for the day.

Wheatear, Anglezarke

I’m having fun with Google’s Lens app at the moment. When it first came out, I showed it my shoe. Its sophisticated, multi-billion dollar brain thought about it, then said it was a rabbit. Oh, how I laughed. But I’m not laughing now. Now I can point it at my shoe, and it will tell me where to buy another pair just like it. Or you can show it a picture of a bird or a wild flower, and it will tell you what it is.

We’re short of wild flowers today. The sheep have eaten everything, except, I note, the dandelions and the daisies. But I was in a scrap of woodland the other day and Google Lens put names to a greater diversity of flora. There were bluebells, mouse ear, red campion, garlic mustard (invasive alien), ramsons, lesser celandine, anemone and wood sorrel. I suppose at one time we would have learned these names from our countryman elders. But, apart from the more common weeds, I never did pick up the names of things, and am only now discovering the time, and the pleasure in doing so. Plus, countrymen elders are getting harder to find.

It seems a bit Victorian and reductionist, knowing the names of the bits of nature, like opening a watch and naming the components. But if it helps you find your way around the mechanism, you’re a good part of the way towards describing how it works. And how it works in my little scrap of woodland is that it supports a greater diversity of bugs. And then there are the things that feed on those bugs. Meanwhile, these pastures cover a hundred times the area, yet only sheep can thrive, and even then, they need the unremitting labours of man to keep them out of trouble. Nature does it all, it takes the whole impossibly complex diversity of the planet, in its stride.

It’s a beautiful prospect all the same, sterile though it is, this view from Peewit Hall – a small ruined farm – and my wheatear seems to like it too. Sometimes, though, we don’t understand what we’re looking at, even when we know what it’s called.

I’ve no idea where I’m going today, but the track to Lead Mines Clough is calling, and this takes us on to the ruins of Simms. There’s a Peak and Northern signpost here that lures you down into the bog. Sometimes the paths fall out of use, while the markers remain. This one’s number 260, dated 1997. The list of these robust and reassuring signposts is still growing. Signpost number one is of historical importance and dates to 1905. It lies between Hayfield and Glossop, and the cradle of the ramblers’ movement. It would be quite an achievement to visit, and photograph every one.

Peak and Northern Footpaths Society

There’s another oak of my acquaintance nearby, hanging on above Green Withins Brook. I’ve tried a few times to photograph it, but can never do it justice. Same today. I settle down with the camera, but my head’s elsewhere, and none of the shots are in focus. Sometimes we plunge into the details, and forget the basics.

I have read recently how consciousness is intentional. That means we are not aware of everything the senses throw at us, only what we focus on. And what we focus on is filtered by the psyche. But the psyche is not a machine. It’s fuzzy, and mysterious. Today I’m thinking “wild flowers” and “diversity”. Otherwise, I suppose I would not have spotted the tiny purple blooms hiding in the moss, here.

Google tells me this is heath milkwort, or polygala serpyllifolia. I feel very knowledgeable writing that down. The sheep must have missed it, and they don’t miss much. I must look out for more heath milkwort on future outings and hopefully impress someone with my countryphile’s knowledge.

We follow Green Withins Brook downstream, now, towards its confluence with the fledgling Yarrow. There’s a little waterfall here, another favourite photographic subject coming up, and I try a new angle on it: narrow aperture to get the depth of field, focus on the sky, let the ISO wander where it will, so long as it’s below four hundred. I’ve a good feeling about this one. Perhaps in monochrome with a slight sepia tint.

Small falls on Green Withins Brook, Anglezarke

Then we’re up the moor towards Old Rachels. There are oyster catchers here, piping shrill as they make their busy way over the moor. I always think of them as a maritime bird because the first time I saw them was on a beach, in the west of Scotland. They always have an exotic feel to them, though I suppose they are quite common, if you know where to look.

It’s a boggy stretch, this, and we’re testing the ground as we go. I used to carry a pole for this purpose, what I call a bog hopping stick, but seem to have fallen out of the habit. It’s a question of knowing the consistency of the ground – which areas will support a man in passing, and which will open up and swallow him, cap and all.

Sometimes the senses get muddled, and things work backwards. They end up telling us what the mind is expecting, whether it’s real or not. I’m thinking my boots are leaking, because sometimes they do. Sure enough, the feet feel wet as we come out of the bog, but when we check, the feet are dry. Then, even though we now know they’re dry, they still feel wet, all the way back to the car. Imagination is a funny thing.

Common Chaffinch

Another bird of omen greets us on return, settling on a branch and having a good look at us. He dodges about a bit, but we manage to get a shot, so we can show it to Google. Common Chaffinch, says Google, and I can almost hear it yawn. It’s such a know-it-all. But it does not tell me what a pretty little bird a chaffinch is, common or not, nor what it portends,…

for the journey home.

Thanks for listening.

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High dynamic range

I took this picture of a buzzard a few weeks ago. It made my day, actually, felt like a good luck charm. They used to be a rare sight in the UK, but are now making a bit of come-back, except for this one, which is now dead. I was out with the camera recently and I met a fellow walker who told me he’d found a buzzard, shot, in that same area. It was alive, but had a broken wing. So he took it to the vet, but the vet couldn’t do anything, so it was put down.

It wasn’t a good start to the day. I’d set out to get some more miles under the belt, and to photograph trees along the way. I was after experimenting with a thing called high dynamic range. It’s a trick in photography that simulates the way the eye sees the world. I like the effect. Other photographers think it’s an abomination. I think the same thing about shooting birds. But we were talking about photography, except we weren’t. We’re talking about vision, and different ways of seeing the world.

When we look at a scene, we see everything – colour, brightness and so on, all of it perfectly rendered, but a camera’s different. Take a good picture of the foreground, and you might find there are no details in the clouds, because the sky has burned out. Take a good picture of the sky, with lots of dreamy texture in the clouds, and you might find the ground is too dark to make out any details.

The trick is to take several pictures of the subject. The bright areas, the dark areas and the middle brightness each have their own photograph. They call it bracketing. Then you overlay them in a piece of software that’s clever enough to compensate for the little bits of movement between shots. Finally, you apply a thing called tone mapping. This makes the colours brighter, more vibrant.

Anyway, I’d hoped to see the buzzard again while I was out, but from what the guy said it seemed unlikely. So I lined up my trees, and took my pictures. And no, I didn’t see the bird, so I’m assuming the worst, and the day was all the poorer for it. Indeed, it lent the landscape an air of doom and threat. The photography wasn’t a success either, other than getting the exercise in. The light was too flat to take advantage of the technique. But most of all I’d messed up with various settings along the way and my shots wouldn’t line up.

Even the best results I got were peculiar, and noisy, a far cry from the images you see by professionals. But one step at a time. We’ll try again on the next walk, different light, different settings. After all, I’m not looking to sell to National Geographic here. I like to stumble upon the occasional shot of my travels that makes me go “wow”! That’s the nature of amateur photography and the limit of my aspirations.

Seeing an egret the other day had perked my spirits up. It had me wondering if we weren’t turning a corner, after the darkness of 2020, and what I interpret as a gravely flawed mindset that’s resulted in over 100,000 dead. But the loss of that buzzard has left a hole. It’s made we wonder if we’re still subject to dark forces oppressing us, even now, with a vaccine being rolled out.

All wild birds are protected in the UK. That said, it’s okay to shoot some of them under licence by calling it “pest control”. Which birds are classed as pests, and why they’re considered pests is very much the subject of debate. On the one side you have the RSPB who don’t like to shoot birds. Then you have the legislators in the middle who make the rules. And on the other side there are the lobby groups like the Countryside Alliance, who represent those who do like to shoot birds. Buzzards can be shot legally under licence – mostly around airports where’s they present a clear danger to life and limb – but the terms are very strict. I’m guessing the majority of birds elsewhere are shot on the sly, either due to ignorance, or more likely moneyed interest.

Personally I’d rather observe, and protect wild birds than look for loopholes so I can shoot them. I’m sure whoever shot that buzzard felt they were justified and could give me a heated dressing down regarding my naivety and ignorance in the ways of the real world and proper country living, which is fair enough, and better for me to think they didn’t just do it for fun.

But this isn’t getting to my point, which appears to be hammering my attempts at photography into a metaphor of sorts. And I think it has to do with degrees of awakening. As I said, not everyone likes the high dynamic range look. Colours can seem over-blown, airy-fairy even a bit trippy. They can take a dull, flat-lit scene and explode it into a Van Gough. But as with light, so with thought. The fact we’ve come up with rules to protect wild birds suggests we’re capable of attaining a much higher dynamic, even though a narrower and near monochromatic attitude persists, and will always find ways and means of undermining the best efforts of those more awakened. It’s a complex argument, and the other lot have guns, but I’d sooner be on my end of the spectrum than theirs. I’d sooner look for ways a creature can avoid being shot than contriving reasons for why it should.

I’d been looking forward to getting more pictures of that buzzard over the summer, getting to know its territory, its favoured vantage points, then I could sneak myself within range of a sharper image. Looks like I’ll be sticking to trees for a while though, trying to make them look Van Gough and trippy. It’s an interest, and it gets me outdoors. And yes, I still like high dynamic range photography, even when it doesn’t quite work.

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The Egret and the Dreaming Tree

wikimedia commons

It was a big, white fisher-bird, smaller than a heron. It was of a similar build to a heron, but more slender, more elegant. It was an egret, I think, the first I’ve seen in the wild and an incongruous sight, out among the potato fields. I’d go so far as to say it was exotic, and had the feel of an omen about it, meaning what, I don’t know,… but something, surely?

I’d come upon it suddenly, disturbed its fishing, and it had risen silently, gracefully from a deep drainage ditch between meadows. It’s not a well walked path, the path I was on. It meanders across the flats from Rufford, towards Croston. For a right of way, it’s hard to pick up and hard to navigate. As usual the way markings had gone, and it was years since I’d last walked it, so all memory of past trials had faded. You have to check the map to make sure you’re on the correct side of the ditches, or you’ll walk to a dead end, another broad ditch crossing your path. Then you’ll see your proper way on the other side, but with no way to cross and a long way to back-track.

I’ve jumped these ditches in the past, in desperation and frustration, but at times of flood, they run deep and wide and cold. They’re also steep sided, so you’d struggle to get out if you missed your step and slipped in. Anyway there’s no dignity in it. Dignity is finding your way by means of the proper way, the right of way. There are more convenient routes around here, routes that present no difficulty at all, but those are farm tracks signposted to tell you there’s no public way,… trespass and all that. Naturally the markings on those are hard to miss and tend not to disappear.

So, it was an egret, then. Swan-white, like an omen did I say? Well, maybe a blessing. Whatever, it was beautiful.

It had been a morning of contrasts. Clear and cold, the ground beginning to thaw a little, so it was firm underfoot, without being too hard. There was still a little snow lying about, and the flooded fields were sheets of ice, with a cold wind blowing off them.

I’d just come down from the cut of the River Douglas. It had dropped twenty feet from the weekend floods, stranding a thick line of unwholesome detritus, up on the banks. There were bottles, supermarket bags, footballs, tennis balls, all manner of glass and plastic, a line of rubbish stretched from Wigan, out to the Ribble, and from there to the sea, for the sea to wash it all back up on the beaches from Blackpool to the Hebrides. The supermarket bags of course would find their way into the bellies of whales, who mistake them for jelly-fish. There’s something sinister, I think, about this man-meddled stretch of the Douglas, something godless about it.

The land here, once marshland, is pretty much an open-air factory, cut up into squares, and navigated in straight lines, north-south, east-west. I’ve long found it aesthetically sterile, interest coming only sporadically in the occasional lone tree or in the skies at the day’s extremes. Lots of it has been turning back to wetland though, these past few winters, as the water-table rises.

An egret! Really? Are you sure?

I’d had the camera, but the wrong lens, and anyway, there was no time. The bird was up and off and out of range before I even thought of a photograph. I had a wide lens on, so that bird would have been a small white dot against the winter blue, indistinguishable from a seagull. Landscapes are more my speed. They give me time to fumble through the settings on the camera. It’s our fourth year together now, master and apprentice, the camera being the master, teaching me about the contemporary art of the possible. The single lens reflex cameras I grew up with from the 70’s onwards, were a much simpler affair, and easier to get along with. These modern digital versions are a bit daunting, with more options on them than I can learn in a lifetime. Fiddle with a few settings, and you’ve a whole new camera, and that’s even before you change the lens. But it’s an interest, and it gets me out.

Spot meter. That’s what I was experimenting with today. You measure the light from the brightest area of the frame, get that exposed right, so the details of it don’t burn out, but the rest gets under-exposed, which makes it go dark. It can be tinkered with on the computer to look a bit arty. Anyway, I’d shot a dozen pictures on the way round before noticing the focus was on manual, so they were all blurred. Too many things to control. Thirty shots, and all deleted when I got them on the big screen at home, except for two or three that made the cut.

The lone tree, above, shot into the sun was one. The frozen track was ablaze with reflected light. It was part intended and part good luck. I’ve photographed the same scene a dozen times in all seasons, and mostly it looks nothing like that, except this morning, it did, and for once the camera and I saw things the same way.

Then there was the weeping tree – beech or birch, I don’t know. That was an unusual find – easier to spot in winter when most other trees look dead. This one was dreaming though. It was by this tree I saw the egret, which added to the magic of that little spot – the Egret and the Dreaming Tree? Good title for a story.

Did I tell you how dreary I find it, around here, normally? Ten square miles of assorted vegetables and mud. But I have to admit, as I’ve been forced to look closer, this pandemic year, denied the distraction of broader adventures, it’s begun to open up a little, and share its secrets.

I’m wondering if the Environment Agency has stopped the pumps that drain the fields into the Douglas. Maybe that’s why the ditches are topped so frequently now, and the land turned to lakes. There were rumours of it some years back – austerity and all that. A guy once told me that if they ever stopped pumping, the giant mere you see on old maps of Lancashire would be back inside a decade. Sure, there’d be shortages of Lancashire potatoes and carrots if that happened, as a goodly portion of the crop looks to be ruined every year now anyway, but with the water, the birds are returning. And with everything else in a tailspin, that has to be a good sign, hasn’t it?

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The last Friday of February – 2019

Small blue car, Glasson Basin

It was unseasonably warm, this, the last Friday of February, temperatures nudging seventeen degrees and a spring tide almost cutting off the village of Glasson. The little blue car and I are here again for our annual groundhog day. I first came in 2014, but that morning was a cold day, a winter’s day, and there was ice on the car park. Today was summery, balmy and weird. There have been years when I didn’t get the top down until April. That’s natural, today wasn’t.

I’m dressed for winter, five sensible layers and a hat. I have binoculars, camera and a Lion Bar. The plan is the same as always: walk south across boggy meadows to Cockerham Marsh, then pick up the Lancashire coastal way which leads us back to Glasson, then a brew before we paste it back home.

I’m not feeling too good, a bit of a cold breaking, so my head is woolly and there’s a fatigue hanging over me, but I’ll manage. Yes, the weather is weird, and I’m tying my coat around my waist before we’ve gone a mile, but the warmth in it is undeniably cheering. A few weeks ago we had snow.

Bank End, Cockerham

Cockerham Marsh never fails to impress, one of Lancashire’s jewels – the glittering expanse of it, the greenness and the dendritic channels all patiently fished and swooped over by oystercatcher and curlew. There were murmurations of dunlin and starling too, animating a sky lit generously by a low winter sun, and with all the warmth of spring in it. I’m thrilled by the rapture of birds here as they wade and gambol out of reach of man. As I watch I find myself wondering if, when we’ve poisoned ourselves from the last corners of the planet, the birds will find a way to survive and preserve in themselves what is truly beautiful about the world.

And then it’s the coastal path and the green sward by the old abbey where the land stops and tumbles sedately into the sea, then the call of lambs in sheep-thick meadows, and the final push up a summer-sleepy Marsh Lane to Glasson. All of this in February.

The Lancashire Coastal way, Cockerham

I get a brew at the Lock Keeper’s Rest, by Glasson Basin, settle on a bench in the sun, among the born-again bikers. I’m joined by an old dude who tells me it’s a shame they closed the pub. He speaks with the direct intimacy of an old friend. He’s just lonely for a chat, I suppose. He goes on to complain about the salt water he’s had to drive through on the way into Glasson, as if it’s someone’s fault, and how it’s no good for a car. Then it’s the price of a pint and a football ticket, his opinion amply expressed by a weary shake of the head. I ask him how long since they closed the pub, not that I’m interested, but it looks like he’s settling in and thus far it’s been a bit one-way. He seems not to understand the question, bites his lip and looks at me askance, as if I’ve offended him and he bumbles off to sit alone.

On the drive home there’s a near accident on the humped bridge over the canal at Garstang, a learner driver is approaching it cautiously, but then caught unawares by an insane hardcore wagon which appears suddenly, rising like Poseidon from the deep and steaming over the bridge at full tilt. The wagon screeches to a halt, inches from disaster, sends up a cloud of dust and is unable to move unless the learner reverses, but the learner is frozen with shock, as am I.

The hardcore driver is not a patient sort and is effing and blinding at once. The passenger gets out, the learner hastily slides over. The hardcore man continues to sully the air with foul and insulting language: You can’t drive, you’re an idiot, you shouldn’t be on the road – that sort of thing.

“Learning, mate,” says the passenger, hands wide, in a placatory tone, then points out the L plates. You know? Cut us some slack. Be patient.

But the hardcore man takes this as a challenge to his superiority. The cab door is flung open, and a tense standoff ensues. The queue for the bridge is dozens of vehicles deep in both directions by now, but we must all await the pleasure of the hardcore troll, captive audience to his vile strutting. Does he commit assault on an innocent man? mangle his car for good measure and expect us all to applaud him? The learner car backs up as quickly as possible in order to avoid fisticuffs. The hardcore man, still puffed up hurls parting curses, then thunders away to wreak havoc elsewhere.

I follow the L plate into Garstang, thinking to myself the learner will probably never want to get behind the wheel of a car again, scarred for life by an ill timed encounter with the troll. A troubling day of sorts then, mostly beautiful, but in a weird sort of way, overlaid by something surreal, courtesy of my being under the weather, and there’s an aftertaste of threat that’s been hard to shake – the un-seasonal weather suggestive of climate catastrophe, and the latter incident indicative of an increasing and vociferous intolerance among our people.

The principal threat to the natural world of course has always been the human being which seems incapable of acting in harmony with it, while the biggest existential threat to the human being, apart from an asteroid impact, has always been human beings themselves, and their propensity to act first in preservation of their own misguided sense of superiority, to the detriment of more altruistic virtues.

Anyway, mind how you go and beware of those thundering hardcore wagons.

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Dunlin

They were dunlins I think,
A great cloud,
Like a ponderous comet,
Come to graze the marsh,
Far beyond the reach of men.

There seemed a million birds at once,
All wheeling in the pale blue
Of a spring morning.
Slow, sinuous waves,
Curling.
Waves within waves,
Black as smoke,
Then peeling to silver,
As they traced the contours,
Of the hidden world.

Each was the pixel part,
Of a greater being.
Each pair of eyes,
Shared host to a second sight.
And as I watched I felt a yearning,
Haunting and formless,
As if for a lost love,
Whose name I could not recall.

Meanwhile, behind me roared the road,
As the day warmed,
And the shops opened,
And the empty fast food cartons,
Scraped their drunken paths,
Along the promenade.

I bought new jeans and a hat,
And entering my code into the machine,
Became one pixel part,
Of another kind of being,
Also greater than myself,
But void of insight,
And a mere shadow,
Of the dunlins’ finer dance.

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