Bog Myrtle & Peat

I read about the Celts, and I think hard upon their religious observances. Now is the time of Imbolc, the ancient festival which marks the end of winter. I try to observe that day myself and hope it will provide some focus to the changing seasons. But Celtic time is cyclical, and each year is coiled precisely on the loop that went before it. It’s hard to jump aboard a roundabout that’s already turning, and lacking any all-important sense of precedent, I’ve tried to make my own.

Five years ago, I looked to celebrate this day by walking to the grouse on the hill by the house. I flushed them in a dozen against the rising sun, and that was a fine way to mark the end of winter. I told myself that’s what I’d do in every following year, but I knew it’s also chancy work and grouse are getting hard to find. I didn’t like to build those birds into my routine for fear they’d let me down, so on ensuing Imbolc days I’ve walked the woods to find more reliable markers like thrushes in full song; I’ve stepped up the riverbank listening for dippers and each cast has shed new light upon the day and the turning season. But I’m still dissatisfied – Imbolc’s not an easy ride; I haven’t found the thing I’ll do, although perhaps the thing I’ll do is keep on reaching for some fixed sense of renewal as winter dies and the soil boils with molework.

Before the dawn of Imbolc 2022, I went to the merse at the farm’s foot. Even in that early darkness, I could hear wigeon calling above the mud. Herds of curlews turned unseen above the whinbanks, and above these birds I was strongly impressed by a tangle of ash tips and chestnut branches high above me in the mild and unlit sky. These were good things. I was ready to feel the seasons change, but as I came to the shore I disturbed a dozen redshank. 

Half-seen in the bleak horizon, one of these birds rose up to a height and for no good reason he began to sing his display song in a lapping, monotonous chant like twelve birds singing at once. It’s a sound that used to hang above me at primary school and the short walk home from the village to the farm in the days when redshank were common breeding birds here. I heard him dribble his lust in the darkness and recalled this place as it was in the early 1990s; the harbour packed with cockle boats; the pub spilled with folk and the scrapyard grumbling under the playpark, knowing that all of this has gone now or changed beyond recognition. It made me laugh to hear that song again as if all these recent failing times had only been a dream.

The bird sang for ten seconds, then he fell into the more realistic wail of wintersong. Because just as a village can falter in the space of three decades, redshank don’t breed here anymore. A few will sometimes sing like this out of season, but that male will fly north or south or somewhere else to breed for real. When the time comes to sing full song and cover his mate, he’ll be many miles away from here, and what I’d heard was no small titbit of spring to come; more a blunt reminder of springs that have gone and won’t be back.

There are some species we refuse to go without. Talk of losing swallows or curlews and people sit up sharpish. But even those who lead the charge for famous birds agree that ground is lost between the beacons. I love these redshank dearly, but I couldn’t tell you why they’ve gone from here. I suppose it’s some of all the same old troubles combined. Big areas of the merse have been drained and some of it planted with trees in the last three decades; trees which redshank abhor. The richest ground has gone to silage crops which kill the chicks before they’re born; the best fields near the village are covered in people walking their dogs, and let’s not forget that we have badgers now in ever-bulking numbers. There are many reasons why the redshank have gone, but even if there was a single act that might restore them, I rather doubt we’d perform it. It’s hard to think of anyone who even knows that “redshank”‘s what they’re called, much less fight for their survival.

So as this morning lightened and the sea slipped slick between the channels, I was struck again by another realisation of tragedy. I hate to read myself and find I write in nasal and complaining tones, but that’s all I seem to do nowadays. I should find something brighter to recall which touches more than solastalgia, but in writing to mark my devotion to the land around me, I’m never far from putting my foot in some new reminder that we’re a long way from home. Perhaps that’s another reason why I’ve found it hard to lean my weight on Imbolc; a festival based on cyclical hope. The poor idea was meant for continuity – it’s horrified to come full circle at the end of the year and find it’s left with less than it had when it started.

If I’m really keen to find some way of making sense of the season’s change, I might do well to wait two weeks and place my faith in the Roman festival of Lupercalia instead. At first glance it seems like a straight swap, one for the other. Lupercalia is turned towards continuity too, but that’s where the similarities end. Because sensible Rome insists upon time that is not coiled but linear – a small change perhaps, but one which laid down precedents for progress and this final, desperate career into crisis otherwise labelled as Now.

So I blame you, Rome, because the only reason why Lupercalia improves upon the failings of Imbolc is because it caused them. And for all those Roman gods imposed a sense of order, there’s something frantic and panicked about Lupercalia. It’s an urgent, fearsome festival which charges up-front for sexual extras in a currency of dog’s bodies and goat blood. You wouldn’t act like that if you were confident that all would turn out well in the end. Lupercalia lays a single-minded insistence upon renewal funded by destruction, and that’s pressing now because yes, we’re almost spent, and what we’ve bought will take us somewhere that we’ve never been before. I chose Imbolc by instinct, but all five of my senses insist that Lupercalia is far more fitting for nature in modernity.