Owling 1

Owling: It’s clear and still. 4ish. The children will be home a bit later than usual and I have a while free for owling. I call my friends, the farmers, and leave the car by the farmhouse. Warm lights and wood smoke hanging in the cold of the evening. I climb the steep fields out of the valley, a turn in the land soon folding the house out of sight. A breeze rattles the hedge in the top field and I shiver. I’ve reached the farthest gate and look down the rough pasture to the wood below. The barn is tucked away to the right, next to an old oak and a dying ash. There’s a threshold somewhere here, a membrane tautened between trees, and as I climb the lichened rungs atoms shift and I slip from human world to owl. I head left, away from the barn and to the line of old beeches that edge the wood. Darkness is coming and in the half light I crouch by the bramble thicket arcing just inside. Earth and moss and rotting leaves. I can see the barn from here and the ragged gap in the corrugated iron that I know she uses. A little wren chatters crossly above my head. Blackbirds claim their roost. Sighs and rustles and the rhythmic creak of a dead tree in the next field as a bullock scratches his unbearable itch. Damp wicks its way through cloth and skin and settles nearer bone. Fingers stiffen. Time and feathers still.

And suddenly she’s there and the world is holding its breath. A wraith, a will-o’-the-wisp, a white winged soaring spirit bird sweeping crossways against the darks of the woods and fields, h(a)unting this hidden valley. I’ve been given a glimpse into the oldest story of all, and I never heard a sound.

For more information about Owl: a script of sorts and the Society of Wildlife Artists Natural Eye Bursaries 2021 see

swla.co.uk/news/the-natural-eye-bursary-award-exhibition-2021