In his song is heard the first brokenness and uncertainty of the transition. The transit from the grip of death into new being is a death from death, in its sheer metempsychosis a dizzy agony. But only for a second, the moment of trajectory, the passage from one state to the other, from the grip of death to the liberty of newness. In a moment he is in the kingdom of wonder, singing at the centre of a new creation.
The bird did not hang back. He did not cling to his death and his dead. There is no death, and the dead have buried their dead. Tossed into the chasm between the two worlds, he lifted his wings in dread, and found himself carried on the impulse.
We are lifted to be cast away into the new beginning. Under our hearts the fountain surges, to toss us forth. Who can thwart the impulse that comes upon us? It comes from the unknown upon us, and it behoves us to pass delicately and exquisitely upon the subtle new wind from heaven, conveyed like birds in unreasoning migration from death to life.
D. H. Lawrence, ‘Whistling of Birds’, 1919
Snowdrops are well known little white flowers, which indicate the first return of spring. The early Catholics in monastery gardens, who first named most of our plants, called them Our Lady of February, from their first opening about the feast of the Purification or Candlemas Day. This became more corrupted into Fair Maid of February. They continue to blow till March.
Thomas Furly Forster, The Pocket Encyclopaedia of Natural Phenomena, published 1827
The water is shattered by ripples as I approach the pond: a flock of small ducks has exploded away. I make a quick count: nine mandarins. They are exotic escapees, here to stay, and here to breed. Alder Carr, my secret woodland place since childhood, is perfect for them. Swampy and inaccessible, it is full of leaning, falling, hollow trees to nest in.
It’s a dark day at the beginning of March. The trees reflected in the water are upside down, all the life shaken out of them. I used to find winter trees depressing, they seemed such gothic skeletons – but I was not the kind of girl who wanted to paint her bedroom black, and I grew to love them. Now I wait for the seasons to decorate them with the white iron-filings of hoar frost, with stencilled flocks of fieldfares, with the catkins so teasingly described by Birkin in D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love. The black tracery of winter trees will give way to leaf-buds that unfurl in a drench of chlorophyll, and seem to host all the birds of the air as migrants arrive in surges and falls. Warblers from Africa, tiny birds as elegant as the leaves, will perch among them, pick off insects and begin their songs.
I look closer. Tiny animated dots on the twigs draw my eyes to the tops of the alders. I tune into the clamorous twitter of squeaking silhouettes. Without binoculars I think, siskins. When I put the glasses to my eyes I breathe deeper, knowing for sure. I see a single duck feather in the water. It is curled and buoyant in its sheen of grease. Every filament reflects light and colour. Adrift, it seems to belong in this element with as much life as a swimming bird.
Next day, I have to face the news. We drive over the hill to where the incinerator chimney of Addenbrooke’s Hospital insults us with its usual rude gesture. I find the hospital’s corridors so confusing, I’ve sometimes lost my temper here. Do staff and patients ever get to know it like the backs of their hands, like the animals that tread the same path night after night: a highway to a meal, or an escape route? On the new estate beyond the hospital I once saw a hare dash purposefully into a cul-de-sac that simply wasn’t there a few months before. In the clinic I hear murmurs of fear and patience and complaint. I receive loud, rude, brusquely scientific and kindly insistent words.
I bide my time as winter endures. Walking through thick, low cloud I can hear spring. There are skylarks high above. I see a smidgeon of yellow, budgie-bright: a yellowhammer sings a childhood rhyme. There’s a single pair of lapwings on the heavy clay plough land, plaintively defending their eggs from the crows.
Spring light shines and dims. Lambs drop warm from the womb and lie tucked up in rain and hail. Long-tailed tits begin to spring-clean the exterior of our house, collecting the gossamer threads of spider webs to weave an elastic, mossy dome, lined with 2,000 feathers and concealed with lichen. But such an early nest does not have the benefit of leaves on the trees for camouflage. I find it ripped from its mooring, emptied by a predator.
Violets (my favourites) appear. I get down and inhale the brief, potent, ionine scent. I do this every year, but I no longer murmur the names that spring inspired: Violet, Sylvi, Eleanor, Leonie, Esther, Jay. I walk up the hill out of the village to open farmland where mile upon mile of intensive agriculture lies upon ancient settlements below. Channels have been drilled for potatoes. The freshly turned soil is warmer than the frosty air; white horses of mist gallop along each furrow.
I am put under the knife. Immediately after the operation we have the warmest, brightest April. I have three weeks’ recuperation. I get the chance to sit back and watch spring do its thing in amazing detail. It is pretty. It is Walt Disney. It is murderous.
Birds in plush spring plumage criss-cross the garden, intent on courtship flights and chases. Mostly I watch unseen. Two robins fight frenziedly. Their squawks are furious and terrified. I watch the weaker bird get wedged under a wooden panel as it flees. The victor starts to peck it to death, and I intervene. Tree-creepers spiral up the silver birches in a scratchy, ponderous dance. A male kingfisher attracts a female to a perch. Over and over again he offers her a fish. For a while she maintains an oddly stiff and stubborn stance. I watch until she accepts the gift.
The pond is heaving with amphibians and ducks. Gross knots and balls of male toads bob about, clasping a single female. A female mallard can’t escape the drakes. They chase her through sky and water, and they chase her when she dives.
I step quietly towards the frogs, but they make themselves invisible as soon as I approach. There are already clumps of jelly, bulbous and resilient and fresh, protecting thousands of eggs. I touch the cold jelly with two fingers, and realise I don’t really mind it all carrying on without me. There was a time when seeing an act of mothering made me weep.
I have witnessed a mallard duck drowning a rat to protect her brood. I’ve seen a doe rabbit attacking a stoat. For years it seemed as though nature was getting on with it perfectly successfully, and I was the odd one out. But of course wild lives are as precarious as they are strong. The natural world I observe is merciless, but it’s a place where I feel happy to belong.
Jo Sinclair, 2016
First Milk
Today I carried a newborn lamb
hung by his hooves,
over the farm gate,
into the deep straw manger I had made.
And there I made my first mistake,
I named him:
‘Hello Waldorf’ I whispered,
and sprayed blue paint on his wet woolly back,
still steaming in the cold March air.
In the next makeshift bed
pallets were bound with old twine rope,
nets of hay hung from a rust hook,
and Waldorf’s mother bleated for him.
I crept up behind the ewe,
rolled her onto her back,
and pulled at the sore swollen teats
until they fired hot savage spurts of colostrum
into my Pyrex jar.
With my plastic syringe
I dribbled the first milk
onto my wrist
and gripped Waldorf between my legs,
head-locking him
until he gagged
from my surrogate pipe.
I wrapped him up in a muddy blanket,
dipped iodine on his umbilical cord,
held him close, my triplet runt,
and pretended my heartbeat
would send him to sleep.
Adelle Stripe, 2012
A band of woodland cloaks the slope up to the brow of Newtimber Hill. At the top it opens out on to chalk downland. I am walking today and the light is lemon clear, t
he sun, taut as a drum, stretched tight across the sky. There is a refreshing nip in the early spring air; I can see my breath.
The path meanders through the trees then climbs towards a gate. The sun greets me in a full, warming glow. I bask for a few moments; there is a joy to being in the woods at the start of spring. As a child I came to this same hillside – Sunday afternoons, duffle coat, mitts, red cheeks; that old duffle coat like the slopes now felted green.
The wood descends in a cross-hatch of branches scratched and inked in with rooks’ nests. Before me, undulating downland, peppered with dandelion, hawkbit and birds-foot trefoil. All is harmonious, humming with new life.
Then I see a movement, a sudden squiggle of a movement along the woodland edge. Squirrel? It is the colour of a dull penny, the russet of autumn, a creature out of season here to tease me; stoat. Long, perky, berry-eyed, his lightness unsettles me. I waiver mid-stride, unsteady on the slope, hoping not to make a sound. I see the black-tipped tail as the stoat wriggles along a line of scent like a toy pulled by a string. He hesitates, tastes the air and then, with fluid deliberation, bounds down the hill into the bramble and old man’s beard.
I stand mesmerised. At my feet a bee-fly inspects the close-cropped turf of an anthill, her proboscis needle-sharp, wings a fuzz of air. I smile and walk on, following the stoat’s trail, sure that I will not see him again. But I’m wrong. Out of the brambles the stoat shoots in hot pursuit of a baby rabbit, a ball of beige, wholemeal pastry before it’s cooked. I bite my lip, wince. They disappear and the tangle of stems quivers and squeals.
But it is not over yet. A few moments later, from the thorny stems the stoat flees, pursued by the largest of rabbits – almost the size of a hare – hard on his tail. Soft fur and muscle, hind legs thundering, the vibration of rage. Giant rabbit after small stoat, down the slope they go, the impudence of the stoat overwhelmed by the fury of his prey.
It is, perhaps, no surprise that the stoat ventured out so bold this early spring day. A young stoat, overconfident, hungry, perhaps lacking in skill. Today he has learnt something. There is no sign of the young rabbit; it escaped to live for now. All is well in the world of rabbit.
A raft of cloud crosses the sky, teased out over the drum of the sun as a green woodpecker whoops over, sewing the air between down and wood with invisible thread. I continue along the path towards the light.
Alexi Francis, 2016
In early spring, before there is much spreading of leaf or opening of flower in the woods and lanes, there is a good deal to be seen in and around an old pond. By an old pond, I mean one that I have known for years: one that does not dry up in summer, though it may then have less water and a broader shore. To-day it is very full, owing to the snow and rain of winter; but the water is very clear, for the leaves that almost filled it in autumn have all decayed and gone to form that fine mud at the bottom in which so many small living things find food and a home.
The great screen of Reeds at one end of the pond, that keeps up a steady rustle as the wind shakes it, is showing little sign of life; but if you look down among the dead stems you will see many new green shoots showing in the shallow water. The Reed is the largest of all the British grasses; it has a way of sending out shoots in to the water from which new stems arise; and after a time the pond will get filled up by it, and we shall have to look for a fresh hunting place. The big blackish bird with the red forehead that has rushed out from among the Reeds with a loud cry of ‘cur-ruck’ is the Moorhen. Probably there is a nest hidden there.
Under the Reed-shoots, and in the mud at the bottom, may forms of pond-life have passed the winter quietly, but are now active again, some of them making up for a long fast. The grownup Frogs that in autumn buried themselves in the mud, woke up in March and set about the laying of eggs in the pond. Though at first these were very small, they soaked up so much water that they soon became as big as peas, each a ball of clear jelly with a darker, solid centre which we may call the yolk of the egg, its most important part.
These eggs – of which one Frog produces a thousand or more – are soft and sticky, and all cling together in a great mass which now floats at the surface of the water. If we are able to watch them day by day, we shall find that the blackish yolks soon begin to lengthen. A good plan is to take home a small portion of the jelly-mass and place it in a pan of water, with some fresh pond-weed, so that we can watch the changes closely. We shall see the yolk become long and narrow; soon we can make out which end will be the head, though when the head is formed, at first it has neither eyes nor a mouth. But it shows that the germ is alive; and a day or two later is gets outside of the jelly and clings to its surface. Then eyes and mouth and gills appear, head and body joined are finished off by a long tail, and we get near to the proper Tadpole form. The little animals grow rapidly; so that, when a large number have left the jelly-mass and are swimming in the clear water, the pond appears to be full of Tadpoles.
At this stage of growth, they are much like fishes, for they breathe by means of gills which extract air from the water; they swim like fishes by rapid movements of the tail from side to side. As they grow larger they lose the fish form: the head and body become round and a pair of tiny hind-legs breaks out from the base of the tail. The front pair is coming also; but at present these legs are under cover and do not show. Then, as the legs grow and get strong enough to use, the tail becomes smaller, and by and by is not there. It has not dropped off, as some people will tell you it does, but has been absorbed into the body. The gills go also; and the young hopping Frog now breathes through its nostrils and lungs as we do. For a time, it will hide among the damp grass and weeds near the pond, and wait for heavy rain, when it will feel that it is safe to go farther away in search of a moist corner where it can find plenty of insects to serve it for food.
Edward Step, Nature Rambles: An Introduction to Country-lore, 1930
Highfield
As the footstep crackling, winter retreat ends,
the blackthorn shows its warrior nature.
White blossom speckles
its dark skeleton like stars,
which brave the still and frosty dawn.
The dog trots and sniffs, trots and sniffs,
raising a paw to combat
chilly steps.
Muzzle nudging dank, over-wintered leaves
reveal a snowdrop’s green shoot,
a tentative finger raised
to test the air, still unsure.
A robin hops, whispers on a branch,
inconceivably close.
Orange light appears on this daybreak,
the colour of warmth, bringing hope
and a glimpse of future days.
At this time, it opens the mind to
the possibility of Spring.
The imagination warms and heads
groundwards where leaf mulch
gives way to humus and then cold soil.
The bulbs, stirring from the
warmth held deeper,
sense a new feeling in the wind
and are compelled to meet with it,
shrugging off the cool,
earthy layer for
new life and the welcoming air.
The tree has
wisdom in its roots,
tapping deep into the warming subsoil,
tuning into the core.
Bare branches reach forth, testing the sky,
talking to their roots
which tell sap to rise.
A surge begins in every plant
and beneath my feet I can feel
the ground awaken.
Spring is a silent dawn
which should roar
into life
as winter’s night passes.
Alan Creedon, 2016
Snow storms again, and Hay Fair.
At 5 o’clock I went up the Bron and by the field path to little Wern y Pentre. The old people talked over some of the parish tragedies which I have heard of,
the supposed murder of Price of Cwmrafan by Burton, his would-be son-in-law, by day on the high road near Cabalva, and the digging up of Jane Whitcombe’s baby at the Bronith, a baby which was supposed to have met with foul play. ‘It’s bad to get them,’ said old Williams shaking his head, ‘but it’s worse to do away with them.’
When I rose to go the snow was still falling thickly in enormous feathers and was growing deep upon the ground. I had not brought an umbrella and kind Mrs. Williams insisted upon my having her shawl to put over my shoulders. What kindly people these are. The leaden sky was awfully dark and low and seemed loaded with snow. I went down by the fields and wandered over the fields wide of the stiles, so much in a few minutes had the snow changed the look of everything. The sheep and lambs were running about in confusion crying piteously and all taken aback by the sudden storm. When I got to Penllan I could not help being struck by the change in the village. I had left it bright and sunny and green smiling under a blue sky. Now [after] an hour and a half it lay apparently deep in snow, snow on the village roofs, snow on the Church and Churchyard, snow on the green trees, snow everywhere. And over the village stooped low the terrible black leaden sky like a pall drooping lower and lower. Nothing could be more dark and dreary and depressing. But the trees were a beautiful sight. They were loaded thick with soft feathery snow in the most fairylike and fantastic shapes.
Monday, Lady Day [25 March 1871]
Reverend Francis Kilvert, Kilvert’s Diary 1870–79
Lady’s Wood in Cambridgeshire is a Wildlife Trust reserve and my nearest woodland. Each spring I watch as the plants and trees that have endured frosty nights and thin, crisp blankets of snow begin their cycle again, with a burst of new growth and fresh leaves to gather the life-giving sunlight. Animals that have slept through the cold winter begin to emerge, birds start to sing and invertebrates that have lain dormant in sheltered nooks venture forth in search of food.
Spring Page 3