Rising

It is 5am on May Day morning and we leave the house to a blackbird chorus. First light has lightened the landscape but the sun hasn’t yet risen. We drive through empty streets, stopping at traffic lights for non-existent cars. Gulls and pigeons flock on the roads, slow to move as we approach. This is their time and we are invaders in it.

The sky is a blank canvas, tinged pale blue and yellow. A three-quarter moon wanes in the west. The clouds huddle on the horizon in peculiar shapes, like deformed giants coloured in angry blue and pink. Over by the priory, a massive mushroom cloud hints at distant rain. Opposite that, above cliffs and wind turbines, a blurred hulk that looks like a brush swirled in water. And in the centre, a wide bow contains the sun.

I’ve avoided the coast as others flocked towards it, but now I surrender. On this magical day, I come pursuing the watery dream of peace I had on the eve of the equinox. The first thing is the roar of the sea. It is the bass note for the haunted cries of gulls and the bicker of starlings. It is a writhing mass of metallic blue, with molten waves surging to the shore. The lighthouses flash and waves break over the piers. It will be high tide in an hour or so and the sea is in motion.

Soon, a vivid smudge of orange appears beneath the cloud-mountain. It brightens, becomes bigger, seeps outwards until the horizon is an orange stripe. The sky around it becomes pinker, lilac. We walk down the ramp to the beach, crossing the sand towards the sea. There are a few other people here to witness the sunrise. We wait, watching as the sun makes its way imperceptibly up through the clouds. Shortly, the tops of the clouds are gilded, until finally the sun breaks free, a molten mass of gold, spilling slanted rays and creating a golden path from sea to shore. Watching the sunrise teaches patience. The sun doesn’t hurry; it does what it is supposed to do and takes its time doing it.

May Day is traditionally a time to celebrate fertility. The land flourishes with the signs of new life and we celebrate sensuality, passion and creativity. Lately, I’ve been filling my head with women: strong women, talented women, creative women. Writers. Artists. Singers. Activists. Women whose lives as well as their art have inspired me. If I peer hard, I can see them, dancing around the Beltane fire, some long gone, some still very much with us. I thank them for the richness of their language, the strength of their dreams, their many examples of creativity. I thank them for what they leave behind – not only their creations, but their company.

It wouldn’t be May Day without blossom and though the hawthorn is yet to show, our path is festooned with trees in full bloom. We are followed from the sea by golden light. Frost on the grass sparkles in its illumination. We stood at the edge of the shore and watched this sun be born. Now the day is ours and who knows what we might create?

Rolling

It has been more than a year since I climbed to the sundial. I would often walk here near dawn, when I had to visit work’s HQ, just across the road, but I haven’t been here since before the first lockdown. We come at midday on a Sunday, the sun unrelenting. The song of a robin accompanies us as we step into the reserve. We pass the butterburr patch, where the flowers are blooming, purple heads tilting towards the sun. Hazel and hawthorn branches clickle and clackle in the wind as we walk a path between them. Then through an embrace of bushy scots pines, until we reach the water.

The ponds are opaque and mucky green. Drowned alders droop towards water that looks thick and lifeless. The water birds are in hiding. We turn to the hill path. Cowslips scatter the grassland and a few primroses have yet to open. Predominant are gorse and blackthorn. The lemon of the gorse and the white of the blackthorn vivid in the landscape. At times they are threshold trees, pointing the way to a meandering path.

A wild wind whips around the top of the sundial. They say we’ll have snow tomorrow, but that seems difficult to believe. The horizon is clear. I see a ship passing behind the distant lighthouse, watch the turbines turning out at sea. It is just past noon and the sundial’s shadow is unequivocal. It’s looking a little neglected: graffiti on the gnomon, broken glass on the ground. A couple exercise by running up and down the steps. Two women and a spaniel join us at the peak. We see a couple of bees. A pair of great tits. A magpie.

In the lonely hours of the night, winter steals back in. Snow flirts in the shadows leaving just a sheen of ice on the morning grass. For the next week it comes and goes, small whirling flakes that appear without warning, while the sun also shines. I watch from the window as I work. One night it stays, gracing the rooftops and the ground with a light covering. The sun shines and it looks like spring, but the cold is bitter.

Time has been on my mind. In these last two years it has stretched and bent, lingered and vanished. Memories pile up, often making me cringe and shrink. But I remember things too, things I liked, things that influenced me – things of another age. Watching Prince Philip’s funeral, I find myself thinking about endings. I wonder if everyone gets to an age where each death, each pause, seems to signal the end of an era we think of as ours. If life is a general knowledge quiz, then I’m getting to the point where I no longer know the answers.

Still, spring rolls on. The hedges are fresh with hawthorn leaves and blackthorn blossom. The cherry blossom buds are about to unfurl. The grass has had its first cut. There are some bluebells in the park and the dandelions are blindingly bright. And I move on too. My wintry paintings move towards summer colour. I send out stories, Some are rejected. I send them out again. I don’t know all the answers, but I know how to keep moving.

Firsts

Spring is a season of firsts. The first crocuses. The first snowdrops. The first daffodils. A piece of tangled waste ground offers the season’s first coltsfoot flowers, lemon discs among frazzled grass. I see my first bee on the edge of the park, frantically seeking nectar, a day after the spring equinox. The hawthorn leaves are unfurling. Daisies and dandelions scatter the grass and crocuses have given way to lesser celandine. There are other firsts throughout the year – the first snow, the first leaves turning – but no season offers as many firsts as spring.

On the eve of the equinox I have my first Covid vaccination. My wife and I visit the local sports centre and have our jabs together. It is quick, friendly and efficient. We walk home light-footed, stickers on our jackets proclaiming we’ve been vaccinated. That night I dream vividly. I am standing at the edge of a canal in a perfect, purple dawn. The landscape is luminous, as it often is beside water at sunrise. Water and land seem to seep into each other so I can’t be sure which I am walking on. I am filled with peace. Later, some tiny birds have been caught in a spiders’ web and I have to gently brush strands of spider silk away from their feathers to set them free – I wake not knowing if I succeeded.

The cemetery is shades of green and yellow. The crocuses are all but gone now, but the daffodils are in full bloom: clumps and trails and sunbursts in and around the graves. I see my first primroses: less abundant and less showy than the daffodils, they form delicate clusters close to the ground. I find a handful of wood anemones and a single spray of snake’s head fritillary. A few early bluebells stipple the ground and pink blossom droops from a group of gracefully spreading trees.

There is a soundscape of birdsong. The great tit is the star of the bird choir, in volume if not tunefulness, with others as a quieter accompaniment. Magpies chirrup high up in the trees. I see a crow in the long grass, a pair of collared doves silent in a tree above, a trio of woodpigeons resting on a grave. Most of the birds are busy in the canopy, staking claim to territory and perhaps building the first nests of the season.

Spring’s firsts never lose their charms. I have seen fifty springs but I still thrill at the first flowers shooting through the soil, the sound of a renewed dawn chorus and signs of new life. Every spring is the same and every spring is different. We can rely on the return of those same firsts, but we will never experience them in quite the same way. The lengthening days give us hope and energy, but I think it is also the profusion of firsts that stir our vitality at this time of year.

The first of our lockdown restrictions are lifted today. We are following a timetable that suggests we will be back to some kind of normality by the summer solstice. Nothing feels much different at the moment. I find it impossible to believe that in a few short months this will be over. I imagine us like children emerging from the pandemic, eyes squinting in the sunlight. I hope we approach it with childlike wonder, rather than teenage rebellion. Those first hugs. Those first outings. Those first holidays. They will be the foundation of a what might be a better future. I hope we savour them.

Trembling

Nature trembles on the edge of spring. The sun reaches for the earth with renewed strength and the wind whips through the land with a renewed spirit. In places, spring breaks through. The lilac crocus shoots in the park that survived the snow have become delicate starbursts with hot orange centres. A single snowdrop and a single daffodil plant are pioneers from elsewhere, not normally seen here. Delicate nettle leaves and the shoots of bluebells have appeared. Five new trees have been planted. Everything is small, tender and pretty. Only the strident call of the great tit and the drumming of the woodpecker have any urgency. It is a gentle start to spring that belies the activity beneath the surface. We are about to experience the most excitable season of the year.

When I am about to create something, there is a flutter in my chest. Excitement at the idea that is just there, waiting to be born. This is the liminal moment – the moment before creation begins, when I tremble at the edge of possibility. There is excitement that it will work out exactly as I envision it, flavoured by a hint of fear that it won’t. I wonder if this is how nature feels on the brink of spring, knowing that her most creative time is about to begin. A twitch in the roots of the trees, a throbbing in the soil, a note in the song of the birds: the world, trembling with anticipation at what is to come.

Tiny cleavers and a single white deadnettle with pendulous flowers fringe the path to the dene. Hollies dominate the still-naked trees, gleaming in the sunlight. In the dene, spring waits. The burn is a trickle. Alder catkins sway at its edges. Silver birches dazzle. It feels like spring should be further along than it is. I walk down the avenue of linden trees and glance up. A kestrel hovers. I watch it through the branches until it gives up and flies off. A single clump of snowdrops lies on the edge of a pathway of purple crocuses. Dozens of shoots are waiting to bloom into daffodils, and a few already have. A great tit flies across my path. A small bird that might be a young greenfinch follows it. The two-note call of the great tit strikes the air. On the pond, the ducks are snoozing, hidden among the reeds. Two moorhens preen on a shared rock.

The river trembles on the point of a turning tide. A light mist hangs over the landscape. Out on the flats, fishermen dig for worms and crabs. Gulls cluster on the rocks and forage at the edge of the tide. Great hulks of driftwood are like giants’ bodies lounging on the sand. Someone has left flowers beside a driftwood memorial. Slightly upriver, an enormous cruise ship looms over the marina. It would usually be sailing the Mediterranean or the Caribbean, but it is waiting for the moment it can cruise again. In the meantime, 3,000 passenger cabins stand empty. One of the crew jogs back and forth along a deck below the many balconies.

It is my fiftieth birthday. I tremble on the edge of another decade. There’s a kind of excitement at reaching this age and wondering what the future might bring. I know that I have most likely lived longer than the years I have left but I don’t regret that. My concern is only how best to use it. Memories flash through my head unbidden, often from the earliest of years, and remind me that I wouldn’t wish to be young again – not for a minute. I look forward to seeing how I will grow into elderhood. My mind is full of dreams and plans, including all the creations yet to come. Life has a habit of surprising us, and as I stand on another threshold, I feel that tremble of excitement about what is to come.

Imagining

The first brave crocuses have broken through muddy grass. Small lilac spears that look too fragile to live. There is a shift in the light and birds are more visible. The sparrows squabble again in the privet at the end of the road. Blackbirds strut beneath the hedges in the park. A young birch has been planted in memoriam of a lost brother. Trees nurse new buds on spindly fingers.

Candlemas day is grey. Heavy sleet and rain drown any hint of spring. I spend the day at my desk, working, watching the rain batter the window. Folklore says that if this day is wintry, it means winter has ended. That will prove not to be true. In the following week the wind, rain and sleet hardly stop. Soon, we get the snow-fall that has eluded us this far.

Candlemas is for dreaming of new beginnings. It is for hope in the face of uncertainty, because we aren’t yet sure that spring will come. The land is still covered in snow, ice or mud and we can’t yet guess what it will sprout. We can only look at the world with the innocence and wonder of a child and envision what it could be. This year many of us are weary, not only of the privations of winter, but of the curtailment of freedoms and the shrinking of our world. There is hope that things may move towards some kind of normal, some time this year, but we don’t know what that normal will be. If ever there was a need to imagine a new world, it is now.

A week after Candlemas and the snow begins with drifts of tiny spheres. What it lacks in size, it makes up for in noise: like pebbles flung at the windows. It leaves a dusting on the roofs and pavements that don’t get the morning sun. The air is freezing. The fire is on and we bundle ourselves up again. By afternoon, it is icy underfoot. There are wispy showers all day – and some heavy ones – but it isn’t until night that the silent, heavy snow falls.

I wake to snow that is deep enough to creak when I walk on it. There are already early footprints on the pavement. I follow them to the park, where parallel tracks of foot and paw let me know that someone has been here before us. A thrush is singing and there are soft, musical calls echoing in the silence. The sky is filled with drama. Clouds of dark grey and clouds of vivid orange. Full-bodied violet puffs and airbrushed smears. I can hear the distant cries of gulls. A crow takes a bath, tunnelling its beak and body through the snow. Throughout the day snow flurries turn the sky from blue to grey.

Recently, I’ve been drawn to painting wintry scenes, but on the evening before the snow came, I felt a shift towards spring. I spent a few hours submitting short stories for the first time since last summer. New – and old – writing ideas have begun to tickle at the edge of my imagination. I wonder what my new world will be like? More movement…more writing….more art….It isn’t yet clear. It’s not yet time to throw off the blanket of winter. I’ve heard the whisper of spring but I’ll sigh contentedly and turn over for another hour in bed. I have a little longer to dream about what my new reality will be.

For almost a week, the snow is enticing, but then it begins to turn to ice. It is hard to walk. I find a sparrow, dead on the pavement and I wonder if the cold killed it. It is a miserable day, with icy sleet and a biting wind. But it washes the ice away. The next day dawns bright and sunny as if the snow hadn’t come at all. Great tits trumpet from the trees. In the park, I look for those crocuses that had sprouted feebly just before the snow. They had sprouted at the promise of spring, only to be smothered in winter once more. But they are still there. Not only that, but there are more of them. Perhaps under the snow they imagined their way into being, but they are no longer fragile shoots, they have grown into flowers opening at the touch of the sun.

Stilled

It seems we are in the still of the storms. For three days there is rain, lots of rain. It is steadfast and soft. I still walk in it, past the greyed river and lush green gabion slopes. It gets me wet but not unpleasantly so. Elsewhere, rivers flood and snow falls, but here there is just the soft rain that fades away as quietly as it has come.

We walk out to the glitter of frost and the chatter of starlings on chimney pots. The sun is strong in a gentle sky. The land has been stilled in ice. Large puddles are opaque expanses of glass. Gutters have turned white. The pavement is crossed by frozen trails from the run-off of drainpipes. In the places that the sun hasn’t yet warmed, the ground is dusted white.

It’s Saturday and the streets are full of people. Older couples pass us on their way to and from the local vaccination centre. Young people congregate at the skate park. A queue of cars heads for the town centre. We move into the peace of the dene, where leaves look sugar-coated and the grass sparkles. Raspberry leaves are cross-hatched with ice crystals. Frozen puddles surround the roots of trees. Two tiny violets are vivid among the ivy.

Despite a chittering of tits in the trees. it seems like a birdless landscape. There are people: at least five family groups and a few lone dog walkers. It might be an ordinary day – not a day in lockdown. The pond is frozen. Children throw chunks of ice from the edge onto the middle, making loud clunks. It’s no wonder the ducks are hiding somewhere in the reeds. A huge cruise ship is moored at the marina, blocking the horizon. A man is training a new puppy on the grass.

The world of people rarely slows, even, it seems, when we have been told it should. I have come out today to rid myself of a week I’ve found particularly hard. To spend a few still moments with the earth, without having to think about that thing that consumes us all. There is the trickle of water in the burn. Daffodil shoots pushing through the frozen ground. A moorhen’s call and a pair of gliding crows. On our return home, we can hear the slow drip of frost melting, and some of the puddles have already thawed. The starlings are still chattering on the chimneys. Somewhere else the world is busy, but here the stillness lingers.

Breathing

In a winter that hasn’t much felt like one, we came close to a white Christmas. It was Christmas Eve, and we had almost reached my favourite part of the movie Meet Me In St. Louis, where Judy Garland, clad in sparkling headscarf, sings Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. Just as she was about to begin, the flakes began to fall. They were thick and fat, but they melted as soon as they hit the pavement. I paused Judy and went to the door, to revel in the falling snow. Across the street, one of the neighbours sat in her window and filmed it on her mobile phone. For a while there was the silent magic of falling snow against a twilight sky. Soon, the fat flakes became tiny balls and the snowstorm was over. I listened to Judy sing about us all being together someday, and thought back to March, when, walking in the dene just before the first lockdown, I had heard Vera Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again floating on the air.

Close to sunset on Christmas Day, when dinner was eaten and gifts opened, I walked with Winston into the town centre. The hush of Christmas Day is usually like no other here. Every business shuttered and no people around. Just a life size decorated Snowman gazing down the empty street and a silence that is profound. But this year the silence isn’t a rarity. This year there have been weeks of silence and empty streets. Some of the shops are now empty permanently. The first lockdown is like a dream: hard, shocking but with a good smattering of optimism and community spirit. I remember the shriek of kittiwakes nesting by the river. The red-haired woman who drove her pony and trap on empty roads each day. The bloom of birdsong that filled the two minutes silence on VE day. Back then there was fear, but there was also the possibility of what we could do with the ‘meanwhile space’ we had been given. Winston barks at the snowman and his bark echoes back at us. Gulls watch from sentry posts on the rooftops. A half moon is visible in the darkening sky. It was a short walk, but I am already numb with cold. As we turn for home it seems as if all the gulls have taken flight and are circling in a feathered tornado before settling to their roosts.

On New Year’s Eve, we moved into the highest tier of alert for Coronavirus in the country. It didn’t make much difference to us on our last walk of the year. Roofs were coated in ice and our breath shivered in the air before us. Trees were silhouetted against a pink and blue pastel-striped sky. The crows followed us around for peanuts. I heard the call of great tits and the woodpecker from above and gulls massing in the distance. Soon, there was a blaze of orange in the west. The year’s last sunset had a flamboyant palette. Later, I would be woken at midnight by the usual roar of fireworks, despite the restrictions, but the sunset was fireworks enough for me.

The new year rides in on storms and hope. We are battered by rain, hail, sleet and snow. The wind moans along empty lanes. We are promised cold and perhaps another Beast from the East. We are told that the virus is out of control and tougher restrictions still may be needed. On those grey days when the light hardly touches the landscape, the world seems stark and unforgiving. But in between the grey, the sun struggles through. What appeared stark becomes nuanced. This year has shown us in horrifying ways what it is to be without the most basic element of survival – the breath – and how quickly that can change everything. But it also gave us a taste of what it is to breathe freely, in unfettered time and in unpolluted air. We had no choice but to live in the moment, because we didn’t know what would come next.

A few days into the year and we are in lockdown once more. The messages are serious, the numbers who have the virus are the highest since the pandemic began. Fear is whipped up by the news and community spirit is fraying at the edges. We are encouraged to stay at home. A TV pundit suggests we keep our Christmas decorations up until Candlemas for some extra cheer. The weather still fluctuates between storm and sun. From my window as I work, I can see the clocktower of the town hall across the river. The shifts in landscape bring me joy. Sometimes it blurs into mist and rain; sometimes it is clear and burnished in sunlight; in the dark the tower is lit up in different colours. The snow that lies further north and south has passed us by. But our first trip of the year to hydrotherapy takes us into a landscape softened and made luminous by snow. Out here, I can breathe in the space and light and forget for a moment the oppressive news. Out here I can remember that I am starting this year in a much better place than I started the last. At heart I’m an optimist, still inhaling hope with each breath.

Seeking light

The lights have become a ritual of the quiet hours. Moving around the house at dawn-break, lighting the Christmas trees and turning on strings of fairy lights. And last thing at night, hours after sunset, settling the house into darkness. It is a ritual I find comforting. I am seeking light in the darkest days of the year. I enjoy the Christmas trees in people’s windows. I watch the bloom of sunrise and the sweep of sunset.

Winter hasn’t settled yet. One morning I wake to roofs stippled in frost. The grass in the park is moulded into frozen spikes, mosses have become miniature winter forests and leaves are sugared with ice. Freezing fog cloaks the river in a soft white haze. The last leaves shiver from the trees, crackling as they hit frozen ground. I hear a loud, unfamiliar cheep in the stripped poplar. The woodpecker is back. I haven’t seen him since spring, when his drumming filled the air. Now he circles the boughs of the poplar, foraging for food.

The frost trails milder but more turbulent air behind it. On another morning, we are blown to the dene by a boisterous wind that feels as though it has a storm within it. There is a watery yellow line on the horizon and the clouds are like layers of broiling waves that obscure the light. The sky is on the edge of rain. A pair of wind turbine foundations docked at the marina rise amid tree skeletons. Most of the trees are bare now. White dead nettle and tiny new cleavers push through fallen leaves. The glossy-leaved holly has shiny berries.

I find myself looking for light in the colours that remain. I look for it in the fresh green of ivy, swaddling the trunks of alders. In the bright yellow of Mahonia blossoms and the more muted bones of ivy flowers. In the yellow-green of willows kissing the pond. Most of the ducks are resting today, but the black-headed gulls squabble, scream and soar on the currents. Suddenly the sun breaks through the clouds. Immediately the landscape changes. Covered in golden light, colours become more vivid, shadows appear and lengthen. Later, the sky will darken and rain will come.

Winter returns later in the week, as we travel down the motorway to Winston’s hydrotherapy. The landscape seems bleached, layered with shades of white and grey. Purple-grey clouds loom above the horizon like echoes of the hills before them. The fields cup rolling clouds of white mist. Icy puddles are like mirror-glass. Soon the orange of sunrise lends colour, until it is leached from the land once more. Canada geese fly low over the landscape.

It’s almost time for the sun to be re-born. The nights will no longer take us further into darkness, but will move towards light. In the meantime, I will seek light in the evergreens that garland the winter landscape, in the glint of a gull’s eye and the ripple of a reflection. The light isn’t gone, it has only retreated, so that others may have a summer too.

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Myrtle the Purple Turtle has been a light in the darkness since she first appeared as a story told by a mother to her daughter to combat bullying and to encourage us all to ’embrace the shell we’re in’. Mother and daughter Cynthia Reyes and Lauren Reyes-Grange, have just published Myrtle’s fourth adventure, Myrtle and the Big Mistake, which deals with the subject of harmful gossip in a gentle, caring and sensitive way for young children. Beautifully written and illustrated, this book also has the added bonus of suggested discussion topics in the back to open a dialogue with children on the subject. Available through the usual outlets and you can visit Cynthia HERE.

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Songwriter Will McMillan shares another point of light in what many have felt to be a dark year, by sharing a song recorded by him and written by Barbara Baig. It is a song about strength and love, and they have chosen to share it as widely as possible so that it finds those who need it. You can find it HERE.

Rewinding

Halloween blusters in like an unrepentant politician. Wind tears through the canopy, whipping the park into a frenzy. A multitude of privet branches bob like scolding fingers. The lindens, almost shorn of their leaves, sway back and forth like grass skirts. Clumps of bronze seeds wave in the stripped branches of the ashes.

The crows appear. This year’s pair of youngsters are still hanging around near their parents. While the adult birds will approach and wait patiently on a nearby perch, the youngsters are pushy for peanuts. As we walk, we unwittingly play Grandmother’s Footsteps. I stop and look behind me to find they have edged closer. When I turn they hop further away. Winston is very tolerant and only rarely chases them.

A gull cackles. There are three herring gulls worm-charming on the field. It is hard to tell now what is grass and what is leaf. The ground is an autumnal checkerboard. A Moses basket has been abandoned in a quiet corner. Not cradled by bulrushes, but by stinging nettles and dead leaves.

It has been one of the quietest Halloweens that I remember. No decorations. No trick or treaters at the door. No ritual or celebration. The remembering of those who have passed has a particular meaning this year, even if I haven’t lost anyone personally. And on this night when divining the future is usually traditional, it seems folly to try to predict what the coming months will bring. I am filled with nostalgia, as I often am at this time of year. Recollections fuelled by damp, golden afternoons, wind-whipped leaves, rustling pavements and the long-ago scent of candles flickering in turnip lanterns.

The Halloween winds soon fade into days stilled and obscured by mist, but the wind returns mid-month. We walk out to the dene under a dull sun blurred by glowering cloud. Much of the autumn colour is in heaps on the pavements now, but a few trees still glow with unshed leaves. The last of the rosehips and haws shrivel on the branch. Stripped trees are still hung with red berries as though decorated with festive beads. Mahonia bushes bring cheery yellow to the withering landscape. Crispy leaves crackle on branches like quiet applause. The pond is thronged with birds. Mallards, moorhens, tufted ducks, herring and black-headed gulls float and bathe and stake their claim on bordering rocks. Pigeons and gulls line the bridge. All the action is on the pond, the smaller birds well hidden.

Yesterday, we put up the Christmas decorations. This is early for us, but we felt the need for a little cheer. The lights of autumn won’t be with us much longer, as we move towards the darkest weeks of the year. Way back at the beginning of the year – months before all our lives changed – I found fear in the darkness. That fear is fading, but I have learnt to appreciate light in a way that I didn’t before: the expansive days of summer, the golden mornings of autumn, the icy sparkle of fairy lights. I recall the infusion of light on a winter solstice two years ago, when I met the dawn at the mouth of the river and I glowed in the sun’s rebirth. The embers of that light will remain through the darkness, there to call upon when we need it, waiting to flare into life once again.

Glowing

We crunch and rustle along pavements of copper leaves. The sky is filled with diluted denim clouds, the sun a foggy disk slightly brighter than the sky. A strong breeze agitates the leaves. We walk past the war memorial, scattered with curled leaves, the shapes of old wreaths ingrained into the stone by dirt and lichen. Past the stone mason’s studio, where brand new tombstones await epitaphs. Through the iron gates and stone frontage of the cemetery.

Bindweed trumpets wind and bloom along the clipped privet. A few hogweed flowers have not yet withered. Clumps of grass finger out of the dead leaves. The base of a shattered tree hosts a massive crop of fungi. A squirrel, who may have been feeding on it, streaks past and up a neighbouring tree. But there is another squirrel in the grass who hasn’t yet spotted us. Her companion chitters a warning and soon both are beyond reach.

There is still a lot of green in the cemetery, but those trees that have turned are showpieces. Horse chestnuts and maples and lindens and beeches. Yellows and bronzes and coppers and reds. They are beacons of light nearby and in the distance as we walk.

A mischief of magpies crowds on top of one of the graves. There are at least ten of them and I wonder why. When we get closer I see it is planted with a fiery-leaved rowan, still laden with berries. The magpies are feasting on those that have fallen. They aren’t alone. A couple of jackdaws hop nearby and a mob of crows, one of whom nonchalantly grooms himself on top of a gravestone. There are gulls too. One of them eyes us from the top of a tall tombstone. Others squabble and squawk in a rowdy flock. Some of them have the traces of juvenile plumage and I wonder if these are teenagers looking for trouble.

There are points of communion in every special space. Here in the cemetery, there is the fallen tree where fungi grow. The graves that bloom with snakeshead fritillaries. The place behind the chapel where bluebells and cow parsley froth and hoverflies shimmer. In autumn, it is the place of the three maples. They stand in a row, in a slight clearing. Leaves like butterscotch and lemon and honey glow on their branches and form golden pools on the ground. Cow parsley leaves and tiny saplings poke through the leaves. There is a small, dead tree beneath the canopy, gnarled and bent, wrapped in a tendril of ivy. A broken tombstone, its stone cross laid gently against its base. Standing beneath the three maples, the sun gilds the leaves and takes you to another place.

We leave the gilded shelter of the three maples and walk up a narrow path. The sound of a bird singing makes me pause, because until now I have heard only the rough sounds of corvids and gulls. Listening carefully, I realise it is the full song of the blackbird, but sung so quietly that you would not hear it if you weren’t stood next to it. I look up, into a holly tree and immediately see a male blackbird perched there. For a few moments we look at each other and I hear the song again. It isn’t the bird I’m looking at that is singing, but another higher up in the tree. I wonder why it is so quiet. Perhaps I have stumbled on some secret thing. I listen for a few moments then leave them in peace.

There is a funeral about to begin at the crematorium. Two female vicars in billowing vestments stand at the door. A handful of masked guests wait outside. We pass quickly, to the shelter of a towering beech, its trunk like elephant skin, its boughs trailing petticoats of autumn hues. I think of our early morning dog walks, when the sun is just peeping above the houses, bathing the park in golden stripes of light. We wander out of the cemetery on a path of shining beech leaves. The sky is still grey. We are expecting storms this week. But the fire of autumn is glowing within me.