Bog Myrtle & Peat

Cattle gathered on the in-bye fields to lash their tails as the clouds piled up behind them. I had meant to look for a roe buck, but by eight o’clock the sky was setting into gel and the first flecks of rain were flying through the thistles. Hares took my lead and forged a path through the grass, cooking up a storm of crane flies. A steep granite face loomed above me, and I spied across some likely spots through binoculars.

Heather bobbed ominously on the higher ground as the wind grew in confidence. A fine red doe emerged from the bracken with a sense of quiet urgency. She paused once to itch her ear with a hoof, then vanished from sight into the scree where her kid was waiting. I haven’t seen any young roe yet this year, but they surely are all around us.

After ten minutes, I followed the trotting progress of a vixen through a bed of bog myrtle. The hunter slid like a knife through the scented stems as all life drained out of the sky and darkness came rushing in almost two hours early. Rowans flopped their new leaves in the wind; silver palms clutching bouquets of cat-sharp blossom. I headed for home on the crest of a downpour.

When the rain finally came, it hammered the yard with a brutal clatter. Slates drummed, and the wind swirled moaning through the sheds. I lay awake in the blustering, humid darkness, unable to separate dream from reality. Images of a roe kid came to me, lost in a jungle of flag iris and marigold. When daylight finally came, it summoned up the pulsing throb of a cuckoo through the open window; an echo from the muggy darkness of some Congolese rainforest. The sound threaded itself into my unconscious brain, as grave and dispassionate as a metronome; Mr Kurtz’s fob watch ticks on.

Unsure where the night had washed me up, I gazed out of the bedroom window as dawn broke. The landscape had been tossed like salad in a bowl; the colours were fresh, sharp and clear again.