WRITING INSPIRED BY LANDSCAPE

  They've gone lovely to see them but boy can they talk At last peace and quiet time to myself just sit for a while... ah,  silence is... Music? What shall I choose? No, just sit Let it wash over. Enjoy Mmm. Things to do. Better make a list, Too much. Mind whirring - must prioritise. How to cope? doubts creep in, anxieties rise - seen it before. Breathe deep, count slow, stretch toes, feet, legs, follow through the whole body, keep focused, they said. Savour the moment, feels so... Was that the phone? Is that the time? That's it then - lost it. Maybe tomorrow. Paul Middleton

  Cole Farlow Sinuous strands weep to silent water below mirror of the sky Jaqui

  Photo credit: Vincent Van Zalinge The lone winter hare Crouches in the wet stubble White coat blends with falling snow   Irridescent fly Buzzes in my face right now I swat - say good-bye   Moon rising over Fen Cold glow in the western sky Dyes the grass silver Barbara Grafton

Photo credit: Jean Rees Lyons I had to write to tell you how, one day, making the usual journey home across Lock Ruel to Largs on the converted trawler, Heather, I noticed you standing in the landscape. You looked unreal against a backdrop of bracken and scrubland. Transfixed, holding my woolly, purple hat in place against the breeze chasing a squall against the side of the boat, I sensed the power of your outstretched limbs. I was lost to your knowingness of me. I disembarked and made my way to the bothie on the hillside but you were still with me, trapped by my imagination. Yet, on river banks, flood plains,   jungle paths, here, there you belong, stripped naked by history, wind and weather. Verb-green leavings drape your tangled, half-visible roots like dancers on a sprung forest floor. Living death defying life forever. When I imagine other trees, those seasoned adorners of hillside and valley I find it is you that I admire, praise, long to be with, to watch you shape...

  Cow parsley is good for nectar Come With Me to Look and See: A Guided Walk Around the Nature Reserve Reveals Red-Letter Day Finds During lockdown there may have been limits to our physical journeys, but in our minds we are only limited by the boundaries of our imaginations - so let me be your vicarious ears, eyes and other senses and come with me on a virtual guided walk around Madeleine’s Patch. The weather is warm and sunny with a mild breeze. Our starting point is Madeleine’s Patch HQ (MPHQ), where Madeleine and I lived for almost 40 years before her tragic demise. MPHQ is a mosaic of ornamental gardens, ponds, orchard, meadow and semi-mature hedges and trees that we planted in the early 1980s. This offers a wide range of habitats and niches for a myriad of plants and animals. Are you ready?   Then let’s get started. The first thing we notice is the air, heavy with the pungent peppery smell of rape blossom, which carries for miles. Bees love it an...

  Simone Chalkley: I don’t believe in heaven, but if I did I think it would look like this. When I stand on your shore, it’s as if time itself stands still but ages pass. I remain motionless, yet I’m moving. As your waves stroke my feet with your cool, bubbling liquid and you drag the sand from underneath me, I drift sideways. I feel a giddy swirl in my head. If I close my eyes, I almost topple, yet if I flick them open to regain my bearings, I haven’t moved anywhere at all. How do you do that? I love your trickery. At every beach, you sort sand from stone, small pebbles from large, stone from shell, smashing some but preserving others. I marvel at how you do this without eyes or hands. Plastic wasn’t part of your plan. I’m sorry. Some of   us are trying to resolve that. Each of your beaches differ, but your horizons look the same.  Nothing is like you, sea. The never-ending back and forth, to and fro, ebb and flow of waves gently lapping or wildly crashing. You...

  When I stand next to the Pacific Ocean, I feel as if I am in the presence of something ancient and indestructible, solid, yet forever moving and restless. It is rhythm. Endless, over and over. And the noise that soaks my ears and sizzles on my skin. The constant to and fro, the wet thud and crack of curling white foam as it slams on the shallows one more time. And as one cymbal crash of a wave fades into a shimmer and a fizz on the glistening agate sand, there is another waiting its turn to pulse and beat and slam. Bold, rippling white peaks thrust themselves up toward the sky and then down, fast and unforgiving, releasing cold, salty spray that spreads in the wind and lands on my face like a soft, moist caress. It’s one rare time that I feel no desire to be in the water; it’s enough to be with it but apart from it, only letting its essence touch me.   I wouldn’t survive long in the cold waves and the murky clouds of undercurrent tell me that the depths below are hungry ...

Photo credit: Erik Christensen I sit at the reed bed edge, feet drawn up barely clear of the water, invisible, or not too alien, hoping to blend in. The air is saturated with scents: plants, Ouse ooze, the traces of unknown creatures. My odour must be strong to the locals whose voices and furtive movements startle me in the deepening dusk as I try to quell my fears of the unknown. I must be a little crazy. Everyone said it or made it all too plain in their eyes as I emerged unperfumed from the shower to assemble my gear in the warm kitchen.     My hunter’s kit: lined waterproof cape, hat, walking boots, torch, mobile, compass, snack bars, a full flask of tea. Lastly, my car keys on the enamel keyring I bought on impulse, little knowing it would breed an obsession. My husband grinned, kissed me, wished me good hunting. Now I crouch here, undetectable to human eyes at least, my eyes adapted to the falling dark, my ears attuned to the murmurings, rustlings, calls familiar ...

Photo credit: Paul Middleton One New Year’s Day, in deep frost, teasels shining in the watery light of early morning, I scrunched my way along the bank, revelling in the crispness of the air, the sunlight filtering through the rising mist. I peered ahead for the familiar bend in the watercourse, old friend yet always deep-fen-shy of prying eye, flanked by triple-modelled banking of early drainers, holding back the inland waters from flowing over hard-won fields, once quaking, now barely yielding a ripple to answer passing trains unless I venture to the birch covered bog land beyond. What is it about this autumn-hue reed bed, new-turned peat and beet-green mosaic that holds me? What draws me back once more to ponder on the glories of winter sport, fishing riches and summer regattas played out in times past across the distant mere, now echoed only in flax crop’s spring-blue haze and seed-resurrected dyke-side flowering? Can I really enter that world, or imagine what it really mea...

Photo credit: Jan Meeus I sat on the ground digging up my lawn with a trowel. I didn't feel the soil crumbling though my hands, the blades of grass sliding through my fingers, the soft breeze ruffling my hair or the sun warming my back. I didn't hear the commotion or your anxious calls. Instead, I was plugged into my headphones as an audiobook took me to foreign lands and intrigued me with complicated relationships. If I'd only sat up and taken the time to smell the damp earth and appreciated the beauty of my garden instead of considering my work a trial to endure, things could have been different. It was when you finally landed next to me and I saw the fear in your eyes that I pressed pause. You flew a short distance and called to me.   I ignored you, but you persisted, flying back to me and then a short distance away, calling out in alarm. I glared at you,  ‘ What is wrong with you today? Can't you see I'm busy?' In the end, I put my trowel down and re...

One of the challenges in our season of writing was to create a love letter to something in the natural world, which had a particular impact on our writers. Who would have thought that we would get a love letter written to the oyster.   Photo credit: Jan Johan ter Poorten My Love of the Oyster I have had a relationship with many oysters in my life, but never more than when I worked for the lyrically named Seasalter and Ham Oyster Fishery Company in Whitstable, Kent. This was not the classy seaside resort it is now, but in the early 1970s it centred on a slightly run-down harbour with a fishing fleet and small coasters bringing in goods from the continent. My working home there was the wooden oyster company building, which was accessed by a track past the sheds where they boiled whelks and cockles. The smell of the boilers as well as the general smell of rotting shellfish bits in the piles of shells was the aroma of productivity. I visited the place some years later and starte...

 WRITING INSPIRED BY LANDSCAPE Woodcut: Felix Packer Welcome to the first post on our blog, featuring texts written by a group of people intimately connected to the Fens landscape. The group first came together over a period of five weeks to write about their experiences and interconnections with the natural world. The landscape was inspiration for fiction, poetry, memoir, life-writing and short textual experiments.   The environment became increasingly important to people during lockdown and those escapes from our homes into the landscape were often an emotional sanctuary from our fears, loss, and the pressures of a swiftly changing world. Living as we are through an escalating history there has always been the solace of the seasons, the comfort of the countryside.  Have we learned to look and listen again? Maybe we are connecting with the landscape, birdsong, trees in the way we did when we were children, full of wonder, curiosity and gratitude. The group was led b...

Illustration: Barbara Grafton I am lying on my front at the river’s edge. My hands and forearms, their shapes distorted, are deep in the water. The river weed, snake-like, winds around them. I feel a tremor, half-fear and half-delight, as a minnow darts between my fingers. The river smells of the earth and the sky, of living creatures and decay. I move my head closer to the water, unfocusing my eyes, submitting to the blur. I hope a Water Baby will rise to meet me, or the Little Mermaid will beckon me to slip into the depths, and I will be carried far away.   In the background, a hum, sharper calls like the shrieks of tropical birds, laughter, instructions, warnings - nothing to do with me. Time slips by like the river that carries my imagination. As I withdraw them, my hands and arms are cold, the skin whitened. I may have chased a sister or my brother, menacing them with my icy touch.   We are at Nursling Mill where the track down to the River Test has been marked by ou...