waking at night

Tarn Haws by day

Night time sharpens, heightens each sensation, Darkness stirs and wakes imagination,
Silently the senses abandon their defences, Slowly, gently, night unfurls its splendour. Wait, Stop! This isn’t an opening verse, well it is really, one from Phantom of the Opera, but it’s true night time does wake our imagination, we go into survival mode, pausing at sounds, wondering what just fluttered past, a bird, a bat, a .....? But what if we let go, abandon our defences, then what? What really comes to life? Is it just our imagination or is there a whole world out there, one we rarely see. That acre of woodland contains more life than the population of the town we live in, the nearby city, maybe even the whole country. Yet sometimes because we can’t see it, we forget, and when we forget we stop caring.

So abandon your defences, waken your imagination and come with me as the woodland unfurls its night time splendour.

The stile squeaks as we pass through, immediately the dog’s ears go up, its nose sniffing the air, straining against its leash. Turn off the torch, let your eyes settle into the darkness, yours ears prick as the rabbits rustle through the leaves to their holes. An owl hoots, adding to the mystery, we walk slowly forward, anxious not to slip. Don’t just put your foot down, lift it, lower it, gently feeling underfoot before committing your weight, anxious not to crush the shell of the snail crossing in front of us, or snap the twig alerting others of our presence.

Notice the smells, the damp grass, the bark, and something stronger, here near the hole in the hedge. Scratch marks coming through, blades of grass flattened where the badger passed. Then a snort, we stop, terrifyingly still, what is it? The badger coming back? But there’s more, rubbing, scratching against a tree. We move forward, steps moving away. Touching the bark we find hairs caught in the rough surface. At the next tree a long strip of bark pulled away, silver and smooth on one side and brown and rough on the other, pulled by the deer rubbing its antlers and then its itchy back against the tree. Hands flat on the trunk an insect runs over our fingers. Each time we move worms come to the surface attracted by the dew we knock off the grass.

Fluttering nearby, if we had a bat detector we’d know just what it was. There are lots of bats here in this wood, the pipistrelle helping us against the midges, eating thousands every night, while the long eared bat sits waiting for the sound of the ladybird on the flower stem, the ‘water bat’ or daubenton catches insects on the surface of the pond while the clever ‘natterer” waits for the fly to be caught in the spider’s web and eats them both!

All this happening around us and yet we can only feel it, hear it, understand it’s presence. If only we can remember it during the day, we might watch where we walk, what we leave behind, no litter only footprints, no damage, only memories.