Field Notes

Every visit to the field is an encounter and this morning’s was an actual human one. I mean, I pass people most mornings at some point during my visit to the field, say good morning, occasionally bump into my old school teacher from when I was 7, who’s out walking her greyhound, sometimes an old school friend. I know a lot of other people’s routines around this field and we all know we’re there for the same reason. I have a dog, so I generally blend in nicely to this picture.

But this morning I met a fellow field dweller. Not someone with a dog or some walking boots, no running gear or bike, not even a newspaper, this was clearly someone not on their way to or from somewhere, but here.

I decided to walk right the way round the edge this morning. Following the boundary, past the train line, alongside the motorway and right round to the far edge of the field. A place very few people include in their walk. Along this stretch I was, most of the way, eyes in the hedge, picking about to see what things I could find along this border. This section of field has in the last few days been raked over by the farmer. What was an area left fallow, now looks like it’s being prepared for something. Everything felt a bit bare and brown.

Looking out across the field I tried to make out something over by the footpath, like a pile of something. I half thought it resembled a person and then disregarded that thought. No-one sits by hedges, unmoving on the floor, in this field. No-one apart from me.

I carried on further, deciding to go back along the hidden path within the trees that I had spent so much time the other week. I wandered through noticing some of the finds I recognised from the other day, undisturbed and familiar. This took me sometime. A place rich with finds with a slither of wild. Thoughts getting tangled in the ivy with the plastic bottles, travelling down into the dark of the burrow holes and floating up with the gusts of wind in the trees. I start to feel a little drunk as I emerge from the path, back out into open field. I’m distracted by my own thoughts when I almost stumble on the figure crouched against the hedge row. He’s perched on something, a log I presume and completely still, looking out across the field. A face of rough stubble and shaven head. We make eye contact and he says good morning. Down by his side sits a carrier bag, next to his feet, in his big boots. Dressed in what might have been working type clothes.

I wonder to ask him, but just keep on walking. The questions carried along with me in my head instead.

Why are you here? Where should you be? Have you come here before? What are you hiding from?

I wonder why I make the assumption that seeing someone sitting in this field, is to escape something, to hide from something else. It does, it does to me, feel like a place you might go to escape, to be away from something else.

The half term predictably took it’s toll on my field visits and my utter idiocy (losing the ‘new post’ button, huh?) definitely put me behind writing my blog posts. Anyway I’ve sent the kids back to nursery and school and the wonderful Robin has reacquainted me with the all important button, so hopefully I can continue without too many more bouts of stupidity.

I did manage to steal a few visits over the holidays and had some revelations. Mainly, the Red Kite is not, after all a Red Kite. It is in fact a Buzzard. The Sunday before last I caught him hoping around on the floor under the pylon, then up he swooped onto his regular perch and then again off he went over to a post on the far side of the field. No forked tail, no Red Kite.

It’s funny, because since this sighting and realising his true identity, I’ve not seen him, but his presence lives on in the persistence of my binoculars, which I haven’t left behind since.

My visits are starting to take on a bit of a rhythm. Now I am no longer a walker but am embracing my new role more as explorer, I’ve found myself taking up some strange behaviours. There’s an alternative call, away from the well trodden paths and into the shadowy undergrowth. The tights are suffering!

Two hours I spent traipsing up and down inside a thicket of trees at the bottom end of the field on Sunday. This is not normal behaviour, says the reasonable person walking by with their dog (in my head). But in the name of exploration, this is perfect relief, scratching that itch.

There’s a little path, so faint but still, there. It’s an old path maybe from a different time, before the current situation of the field or maybe there are still others that find cause to walk a path that is much more impractical and secluded than the existing one.

Finds are rife and littered amongst a covering of sticks, dried leaves and ivy, is stuff. A piece of this and a snippet of that. A pen lid, a slipper, a piece of bark, unidentifiable broken coloured plastic.

I sift through as I make my way along the path, hunched over and engrossed in the possibility of finding things, clues. Then I swear something brushes on my side and I jump a mile in the air, with my heart racing. Shit, nothing, I’m aware suddenly this place can spook me.  It’s chaotic nature seems to present possibilities somehow, but the chaos and unpredictability, it’s accessibility with moderate seclusion, definitely play a part in this somewhat mild, if gently simmering, sense of self danger.

Imagination is what it seems to tempt.

No Red kite today but a sky lark in full swing. Competing with the roar of the A1 morning traffic.

It’s a noisy field, in fact it is a field that separates almost everything. Factories, train-line, motorway, allotments, orchard, housing development, school and rubbish tip.

For some reason, behind the rubbish tip is were I ended up today. Picking up a subtle but definite path into the bushy undergrowth, I crunched my way in away form the designated path, trying not to get my tights snagged on rogue brambles as I went.

A path that leads to nowhere but the corner of the field, it’s borders, marked out on both sides by the metal palisade fencing. On the south side the train-line, on the east side the rubbish dump.

A patch of what? Trees, branches bare against the blue sky, scattered with the odd old birds nest. Underfoot is uneven and slightly spongey like there might be layers of something underneath this greenish mossy covering. I can’t think what it could be. Over by the train-line I spend some time scanning the various bits of rubbish. Little bottles, miniature bottles, like the single shot type. Loads of them, generally strewn about the place and the occasional larger type. Spiritual feeling of a different sort today. I wait a while, generally soaking up the atmosphere. Take an empty bottle in my pocket for a memento and head on up the hill. Watch the skylark directly over my head, through my binoculars and then photograph a bottle cork pinned on to a bit of barbed wire.

Thank you for your offerings today field.

I visit this place once a day. Arriving around 9.20am. A hectic drop off at School and nursery, pick up the dog, then on to the field.

Down a muddy footpath with fantastic amounts of dog poo to have a good self righteous tut at, past the barred and gated allotments and then out into (this morning) blinding sunshine.

This place is suburban, available, convenient in it’s location. One can’t really imagine adventuring here, no need for special hiking boots or supplies, no need for any forward planning.

It can be a bit windy.

And it does have a nice view over Baldock and St Mary’s Church (a church is always a nice focal point in a view, right) but the church spire is out done by the towering grey pylon, right in the middle of the field.

This pylon was my focus this morning. Yesterday I came, as everyday, suitably unprepared, with a wad of escaping poo bags exploding from my pockets, a crappy camera phone in hand, one glove off, one clutching a recently filled bag complete with smelly deposit.

All of a sudden I got a stab of excitement to see a large brown blob, perched on the lower half of the pylon. Red kites are frequently sighted here now. So my completely untrained eye, suspected as much. Damn, nothing to see it with and a growing frustration at myself for the binoculars, lying at home in the garage somewhere.

So today, I did some forward planning and dug out those bins. But surely, he won’t be there today.

9.30am – trying to get a picture of a passing train to London on my crappy camera phone and there perched up on the same beam. He sits.

I am so pleased with myself and having binoculars that I feel quite elated. Like this moment is just for me. It’s spiritual almost.

I watch him for a bit and he doesn’t do anything in particular. In fact his still, air of quiet contemplation, gives me a weird sense of my own impatience. I fiddle around with my phone in a ridiculous way, trying to get a picture through the lens of the binoculars, with limited success and then carry on up the hill. Seeing him (no idea of the gender of this bird) feels like an experience, or an encounter at least.