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.
