I Started Early, Took My Dog
Wilderness Notes #1 And the Owls Were Out this Morning
I started early and took my dog. Each blade of grass was glazed with pearlescent dew, the field around me shimmering like the soft silver within an oyster shell. The small leaved lime had lost its leaves, almost overnight, and so we walked along a yellow brick road of bronzed gold, Connor nosing in the ferns, his nose coated in water droplets.
It felt as if we were in a tunnel - the thin, flickering spindle formed from the beam of my head torch, and a wider, amorphous one, as we were enveloped by the mist.
The owls were out this morning. Two called like boys trying to scare each other in the woods, their voices floating between the trees, childish ghosts with a catch in their throat. Then suddenly, right above our heads, came a loud and eerie boom, and there was silence. These were not like the tawny owls in books, with their soft twit, twoos.
Connor didn’t even react. He may not have recognised the sounds as bird calls, since they were nothing like the frightened alarm drills of the tiny birds that he always optimistically tried to chase. He was busy, nose down, following the faint scent left by a passing deer.
I remembered yesterday’s walk - in the light - seeing a couple bent over a bush wrapped tightly by a bramble. They eventually extracted a small dog with a large stick in its mouth. I smiled and when they responded with frowns, I looked again, and saw the dog was holding part of a skull and the green-tinged spine of a roe deer. Now, in the faint light of my torch, I saw toadstools, puffballs scattered beneath the conifers like a trail of bread crumbs that seemed to lead me towards a stag’s horn. It lay at the foot of a fir. As I drew closer, I realised that it was a wood blewit, its gills curled upwards like antler tines.
In the pale light of dawn, the dying fungus gleamed like old bone.