In the Mountains Green E-Book

Peter Owen Jones

• Herausgeber: Clairview Books
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 126

Beschreibung

'As a boy, I would walk out into the fields alone. Looking south, I set my eyes on the far ridge, wondering, not knowing, what lay beyond it. What world existed there? Now, as a man, I stand on the top of the Downs, up on the mountains green. To the south, the land folds down to the sea, but to the north the boy is there looking back at me…' In a series of joyous, reflective and inspired diary pieces, Peter Owen Jones takes us on a voyage through the yearly cycle – a journey of inner and outer discovery. With the variety and colour of British seasonal life and the beauty of the Sussex countryside as his backdrop, Owen Jones observes the magical in the everyday – in the birds, bees and butterflies, but also in people. With lightness of touch and good humour, he calls for an awakening to the world around us, to ourselves, and ultimately to meaning in life. Originally published as a series of separate articles in Sussex Life magazine, the essays gathered here provide a delightful glimpse into the life of a nature-loving country parson.

Leseprobe

IN THE MOUNTAINS GREEN

Harvest to Harvest in the Southern Wilds

The Diary of a Country Parson

Peter Owen Jones

Clairview Books Ltd.,Russet, Sandy Lane,West Hoathly,W. Sussex RH19 4QQ

www.clairviewbooks.com

Published by Clairview Books 2024

© Peter Owen Jones 2024

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Inquiries should be addressed to the Publishers

The right of Peter Owen Jones to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 912992 60 7

Cover by Morgan Creative featuring photo by Kodachrome 25 Typeset by Symbiosys Technologies, Visakhapatnam, India Printed and bound by 4Edge Ltd, Essex

Contents

Foreword

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Picture Credits

For the butterflies

Foreword

As a boy, I would walk out into the fields alone. Six fields to the west, the land sloped down and a ragged stream ran at the bottom, under a beaten-up bridge. On the other side of the bridge, another field stretched upwards and at the top was an abandoned copse; black earth, black-trunked trees. Next to the copse stood a lonely barn full of old hay, which smelt of rats and owls. Standing just in front of the barn, looking south, I set my eyes on the far ridge, wondering, not knowing, what lay beyond it. What world existed there?

Now, as a man, I stand on the top of the Downs, up on the mountains green. To the south, the land folds down to the sea, but to the north the boy is there looking back at me. You know I was so lucky, so lucky, just to be able to leave the home garden, to slip through a hedge and enter this other world, changed and chanced by the seasons – one day rain, the next pure blue.

On this island here in the north-east Atlantic, our lives are held in the vessels of the seasons. The paint is ever changing. Nothing is still. We stand in a moving world.

The writing in this book represents around four years of articles for Sussex Life magazine. It is a huge privilege and I am utterly grateful to be one of their nature writers. I can honestly say that in this undertaking I am as close to home as I have ever been. It is perhaps not a good idea to be held too tightly in the grip of home, the vice of comfort. No, better to remain alive to the invitation of the wind blowing the door open, the crow at the window. The natural world has taught me how immensely fragile this existence really is.

I must thank Sevak Gulbekian at Clairview Books for publishing this small volume; Imogen Lycett-Green for her skill and patient editing; Helen Bain for her early proofreading; Tall Paul for his encyclopaedic knowledge; all who live in Firle, Glynde and Beddingham for their love, support and continual encouragement; the Ram Inn for the Rioja; and Brasher boots for keeping my feet warm and dry.

Peter Owen JonesFirle, January 2024

JANUARY

It is present when you wake, announcing itself in a change in the colour and consistency of light. Even with the curtains drawn there is a quietness which has seeped into the room. You pull back the bedclothes and stand barefoot, stretch maybe and rise. You open the curtains slightly with your fingers and there it is, a white world.

In Sussex there are only between ten and twenty days a year on average when snow or sleet is recorded. But there is little distinction made between a very light flurry, which lasts for a minute or two, and a heavy fall of snow, which can remain on the ground for several days.

Over the hills of Scotland snowfall rises to over eighty days a year.

A heavy fall of snow ushers in a whole host of changes. The roads sound very different, schools close, a whole new race of beings emerges on corners, in gardens: beings with no legs and carrots for noses, some of whom have brought their own broomsticks. And of course, the news is full of footage of cars skidding down hills, snow-ploughs, drifts as high as hedges, blocked roads, and stories of the valiant who made it to work. Yes, reality has shifted.

Surely the most delightful aspect of snow is the depth of the quietness it brings, once you have seen it there between the curtains, the backyard white, the garden covered. I would surrender everything else, all that apparently needs doing. I would dress up warm, dig out the gloves, two pairs of socks and head out. Early morning is the best time, before everyone else has barely stretched and rubbed their eyes, especially if the snow has fallen in the night, when it is still resting on the twigs of trees. Trees fall asleep in the snow. I always head for a wood or a copse, a place where there are at least some trees, but a woodland is best. Now even a familiar path becomes almost unrecognizable. The world has shifted shape, changed in form; branches leaning lower, the rutted track smoothed. And around the edges of woods and out towards the fields, the journeys made by rabbits, badgers and stoats are there etched in footprints, their presence now visible in a way they would not normally be.

But most of all there is a complete quietening of the aural world. A heavy fall of snow muffles and compresses sound to the point where we can hear our own breathing, our own presence. What it briefly offers is an unrivalled stillness. This is its gift that first hour in the morning, and it is almost rare. And with global warming it will become rarer. This journey into a deep quietness, deep stillness, into this dreaming.

The natural world is a busy place and we become accustomed to it: the sparrows shouting in the hedges, the rooks bargaining with the sky, the constant trembling, shaking of wind and rain, the ceaseless turning of the sea. And Sussex has so many wonderful woods, heathlands and forests, and these are the guardians of this brief and heady silence, held there under a white and even snow sky, there in the hour before the sun rises. Because once the sun rises, this world is gone.

∗

I always try to sit in a window seat if I can on trains, and especially on planes. On this particular flight the plane had just started its descent into Rome and the pilot’s voice came across the intercom. But instead of the usual run-down of what the temperature was on the ground and how long it would be before we landed, he announced he was going to play some classical music. The reason for this, he said, was that the cloud formations today were so beautiful. He was right. The engines slowed to a hum as we floated into a wonderland of pavilions and cathedrals lit yellow, bronze and pink, through corridors and between great seas. It is impossible to forget, this gift.

The plane was moving through a great gathering of cumulonimbus clouds. These are towering clouds that can reach heights of eighteen thousand feet, the same height as cirrocumulus, which is a strata cloud that forms the waves of a mackerel sky. In the winter months on this island, the cloud base regularly sinks down towards the earth and the highest hills of Sussex are often rendered woollen. The trees empty and the fields under the slopes sleep in a lowly green.

There are several different types of mist and fog, each giving their own beauty. In early spring and late summer, there are one or two days where Sussex is smothered in advection fog. This forms when cooler air lowers the air temperature close to the dew point, which is normally lower down. The best way to see advection fog is before breakfast. You will need to rise early and walk through this moving mist up into the sunlight, the blue sky above it. Up onto Butser Hill or Mount Caburn, from where the waking world beneath you, cars, trains, are invisible now, almost unimaginable under a white and shifting sea. Radiation fog is an evening fog that slips into the dusk, muffles the street lights. You can often see upslope fog emerging over the wooded slopes of the Downs. It forms when moist winds are blown towards these hills, and as the air is forced upwards it cools into ribbons of mist. Then, of course, there are the sea frets, the thick sea mist tumbling in over the water. When they arrive, the temperature can drop ten degrees in five minutes and empty a beach in ten. But there is another side to the sea fret. Once several years ago an evening fret poured in from the coast, spilling over the tops of the Downs, the mist flowing into Firle. Above it a full moon hung in a clear sky, lighting up every single droplet and turning the trees, the houses and the church into silver.

‘Haitchy’ is an old Sussex word for misty. The weather forecasters, however, are inclined to be dour, almost downcast when it comes to describing mist. Mist is murk, it dulls, it broods with a melancholia, or it is freezing fog and comes with a weather warning. January can be a noisy month, the winter storms gritting the windows, the wind bringing a rough sea into the trees. But when an anticyclone arrives, an area of high pressure, everything calms and maybe there will be a few light blue days and white set frosts. But my favourite January days are the grey days, the days when the land, the fields and woods are still, blurred in mist. It is an in-between time, the dreamtime.

∗

The soil is black in the Fens, in the flatlands north of Cambridge. There are very few wild trees; there are some wonderful orchards but barely an oak, just the occasional sycamore. The sky in winter was often one layer of white cloud. Sometimes it would be there unchanging for days on end. Out beyond the towns and villages the combination of the black soil, the white sky and the occasional winter bones of trees left me feeling I was marooned in a black-and-white photograph, on a planet without reds and blues, yellows and greens.

There are perhaps two weeks in January which, in terms of colour, are the most muted of the year. Apart from the sapling beeches, the deciduous trees are leafless and even conifers are buckled into a darker green. They have yet to flush those soft numinous new needles which begin to appear in March. And while the Sussex heathlands have a little gold left over from last year’s bracken, the countryside is predominantly grey and brown, the fields in low greens. When all this is placed under greying skies, the distance, the woods and meadows take on a fabulous melancholia.

Under January skies the tidal rivers of Sussex run dank and brown. I was walking up the westward bank of the Ouse from Southease towards Lewes, and what little winter sun there was couldn’t clear the water. Just as I was settling into the claggy few miles ahead, a vision appeared moving fast above the water. It was a dazzling blue, a Mediterranean summer beach blue, glinting sapphire, lapis and turquoise, and running a crack of light right through the middle of winter. I hadn’t seen a kingfisher for several years, and when they appear you catch your breath. Magic becomes reality.

Kingfishers are one of the most colourful of British birds. Here we know it as British, but the kingfisher we share this island with is also present in much of Europe and as far east as the Solomon Islands in the Pacific Ocean. There are just over one hundred and twenty species of kingfisher on the planet, and the largest is the kookaburra from Australia. Most of the world’s kingfishers don’t eat fish or live near water. To distinguish the kingfisher on our island from the others, ornithologists know it as ‘the river kingfisher’

The majority of river kingfishers don’t survive their first week out of the nest. The nest is at the end of a long burrow dug by the parent birds into a sandy bank. Here, from the beginning of April, the female lays between six and seven eggs, sometimes more. The fledglings leave the nest at around four weeks. Their growth-rate depends on the supply of fish, mainly sticklebacks and minnows. An adult kingfisher needs to eat its own body weight in fish every day, and each growing kingfisher chick will consume between twelve and eighteen fish a day, meaning the parent birds will need to catch around one hundred fish a day to feed the average brood.

In good years a pair of kingfishers might raise three broods. Only a quarter of these will survive the first year and only a quarter of all river kingfishers will live for longer than one breeding season. They are especially vulnerable to hard winters, when sadly many of them die. Winter is the best time to see them, but you will have to find them first. If you hear that someone has seen a kingfisher ‘down on this bank’ or ‘near that bridge’, then wrap up warm and sit and wait – the likelihood is that they will return. And when they do return, they will raise you out of the mud of winter and give your heart some glistening blue.

FEBRUARY

I had only ever heard it once before. In the heart of winter. There, spilling through a mid-morning mist that hung over a colourless field, January wears rags. It was one of the most beautiful birdsongs I have heard.