The bressummer beam is knotted with age and drilled through by beetles. It comes from a lightning struck oak in the field behind the house. It is of this land.
When I moved here, I was not of this land. Needing to relocate I came to a village to which I had no ties, no friends, no family connections, no history. It is a small Suffolk village of 140 households. Its life, at one time, revolved round the farming cycles and seasons.
As old families die out so do the stories of the land; the field where a fight broke out with a neighbouring parish, the old horse ponds now ploughed out, the battles over boundaries, the Barnardo’s children who grew up here.
I think about this as I walk myself into the land. I walk here every day letting my story weave into those other stories, the shepherd, drover, labourer, soldier, drunkard. All passed this way. Tracing their steps through old tracks that criss-cross the fields, I rarely meet anyone but a few dog-walkers. Most of the time the land lies empty.
From my house I walk into Swan Lane past an enormous ash tree, a Queen tree as I think of her, long limbs arcing across the lane, anchored by buttressed roots that run along the bank. Sometimes I lean against her, willing her to escape Chalara, but I have seen her canopy thinning and watch each year as Turkeytail fungus billows out, eating her heartwood. Along the lane elm, maple, ash and thorn lean drunkenly. They look between thirty and forty years old but trace down to the ground and they join in ancient stools, betraying their age.
I follow the lane to the village. I know where the stoat hunts and the wren scolds, where blackcap sings in summer, where hawthorns welcome winter redwings. In March I walk at dusk, Venus flirting with the moon, after my evening lifting toads from the road, slipping them, squeaking and amorous, into the pond. Sometimes the water heaved and bubbled with toad song but their numbers have fallen and only subdued calls greet mild spring mornings.
I walk below oaks where the turtle doves call, follow in the footpaths of deer and badger, and wonder about the people who came before. It is the intimate understanding of who shares this land that helps me belong. Over the years I have learned the shape and rhythm of the landscape. I can find my way in fog and dark, can recognise the silhouettes of trees, each distinct, from a mile away. We need a language to tell of the land, to know the ancient rhythms, the ebb and flow of seasons, the small stories played out through the centuries.
As people die, as nature dies, their place in this landscape dies too, unless we know their stories, their memories, their knowledge. Our time here is only a memory.
I put my hand on the bressummer, feel its rough face, trace the rings of its story now merging with mine.
Love the Local
I wanted to share my love of this land, to encourage others to learn its ways, to know its nature. So I set up a Wildlife Group and we take fortnightly ambles around the parish, noting wildlife in all its forms. We are developing a curiosity for our neighbours and have set up a project page through i-naturalist. Now we record all forms of life from mammals and plants down to insects and fungi. The global community within i-naturalist helps us identify more unfamiliar species.
Last year we recorded 163 species having started our project in August. Birds are under-represented because the website relies on photographs being loaded and few of us have been able to take any of suitable quality. But as several people take part in British Trust for Ornithology’s Garden Bird Survey, we also have those records. This year, as spring awakens wildlife, our recorded species are creeping from zero on 1st January, reaching 46 at the beginning of April. Already the spring migrants are coming in, chiffchaffs first in March and now the blackcaps.
The group have also undertaken conservation work to restore and maintain habitats such as the village green and the churchyard. We are investing our time in our community – our community of people and of nature, and in so doing, we encourage a Belonging to our Parish and to each other.
