Fen

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 meant to all those generations of mere-side dwellers, exercising common right, defying abbey rules and landlord ‘right’?

Perhaps not, but the atmosphere this landscape leaks in this deep-cold winter hour, makes me call out again, ‘I love you’, and I know in this moment I will always return to listen to its whispers.

Paul Middleton