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One may liken the English landscape, especially in a wide view, to a symphony, which it is possible to enjoy as an architectural mass of sound … without being able to analyse it in detail or to see the logical development of its structure. The enjoyment may be real, but it is limited in scope and in the last resort vaguely diffused in emotion. But if instead of hearing merely a symphonic mass of sound, we are able to isolate the themes as they enter, to see how one by one they are intricately woven together and by what magic new harmonies are produced … then the whole effect is immeasurably enhanced. Only when we know all the themes and harmonies can we begin to appreciate its full beauty, or to discover in it new subtleties every time we visit it.
W.G. Hoskins, The Making of the English Landscape (London: Penguin Books, 1985), 20.
Unable to sleep, I get dressed and go downstairs. In the kitchen, the dog snores and the refrigerator turns itself on and off. The fire bubbles its gas-driven flames as the house machines hum. Beyond the curtains the street is black and deserted. Dogs everywhere are asleep. Prowlers prowl. Burglars burgle. Here is Dylan's night-time town of Llareggub brought alive again. He must have written that play through many darknesses like this one.
I put on my coat, close the front door quietly, and cross the dead street. It's a full moon tonight, and its beams bounce off the windows to light up odd crevices of the buildings. Only a few houses to pass and then I am through the gate and into the field. The groaning of the heavy metal five-bar wakes up some of the nearest sheep, who raise their heads sleepily and gaze around. I stand in the centre of the meadow and raise my face to the moon, which lights me as it lights everything else around. It’s good to be outside on such a night, but a little frightening too. I feel part of something but I’m not sure I understand what it is.
Every shape here is the product of something else. The course of the stream is dictated by the geology. The smooth ridges and furrows of the field were created by a hundred years of strip-ploughing. The hedges planted by humans, their forms bitten around by animals. The narrow tracks created by the daily passing of cleft hooves. In the daytime this field looks like bright green corduroy seamed with hawthorn and hemmed by water. Beneath each row of hedging the ground is brown and dead, suffocated by the heat of heavy lanolined bodies dozing in the shade during the day and dreaming their way through the night. Occasionally a ewe or a lamb does not awake – and then scavengers come to remove its eyes, its intestines, and the other softer parts. Generations of flies, or a farmer and a tractor, will dispose of the rest.
The stream cleanses the feet of two such meadows, each sloping down toward to the shallow running water where animals and trees dip to drink. Cress rises from the stones, willows bend and reach across. Sometimes, but rarely, children sit in the branches to drop boats made from leaves, twigs, paper and plastic into the sluggish current. Sheep come to scratch and nibble at the shoots they can reach, creating with their grazing an orderly and geometric topiary.
I walk for a while in the light and shade of the field, feeling the firmness of the turf beneath my feet and being very aware that I am only the most visible one of many presences moving through the domain of the night. Then, feeling the need for company, I go home and log on as a guest to join the throngs at LambdaMOO where I enter a different kind of darkness.
I am fascinated by the way the English landscape has been formed by the many farming and industrial practices of this country.
To find out more, see the BBC programme Land Lines and the organisation Common Ground.
