Upper North Tyne valley,
Northumberland.
(Written 21st June 2021)
Walking along the edge of the meadow this afternoon, if there is an edge to this abundance that spills freely across the horizon in all directions, it seems I am walking in a universe amongst universes. The hay meadows on the upper margins of the fell are at their peak. They have become palaces of hidden jewels, brimming with grasses and wildflowers that billow in the wind in rippling sheets of movement, tracked by undulating swallows on the wing.
The grasses bristle in a jostling of golden spires, dotted with neat globes of red clover, purple crowns of self-heal and the bulging pods of yellow rattle. Pools of oxeye daisy dance like a myriad of suns lifted to the sky. The warm air clacks with the elusive zizzing of grasshoppers, randomly starting here and stopping there, while stonechats carry on rasping conversations from the tops of thistles, purple intrusions that rise like bent pokers above the swathe. The airs hangs with a dusty fragrance, impregnated with a kick of honey. My attention is pulled upwards like a string to a buzzard mewing above the bordering oak trees, overseeing the whole.
There is a restfulness of sorts, in this place of summer freedom and maximum growth. I am savouring midsummer while it is here, the energy and openness of all that is flourishing. Everything has reached its fullest expression, responding to the pull of the sun. Light radiates over everything that is here to lift towards it and be lit. The elements of soil, warmth, light, space, air and moisture all conspiring of their own natural accord, the enabling collaboration between them fulfilled. Flies drag past lazily on their zip wires, and beyond the meadow, over the hill, cattle lie heavily at their stations, resting in the damp tussock and a sea of bog cotton like early snow. The edges of the wind are softened by a casual warmth, blowing loosely over the fields and stirring them into billowing, golden seas.
Nothing can be added that is not already here, unless by the seeing of it, looking more deeply into the heart of the meadow and being willing to read all of it. For it is true, that the more I look, the more I see, beyond the apparent sameness and repetition of grasses and flowers and all that can be named, to a whole unknown complex web of life, a language of relationships hidden from what can be apprehended by the limitations of the human eye, or knowledge for that matter. I cannot speak of the tangle of bacterial growth spreading invisibly beneath my feet, or of its mysterious totality and connection with what lies above.
But I can see the coins of hawkbit, flushes of betony and greater bird’s foot trefoil, and the stars of eyebright, their shy, small presences tucked into the thatch, adding depth and structure to the meadow in simple ways, lending themselves to the accumulation of flowering, and the air and light moving between so many waving forms. They have their own quiet contribution, no less than the froth of meadowsweet in the field margins, the glorious purple of wood cranesbill, and the thistles breaking into white crowns of softness, their seeds blown far on the wind, freely given.
To stand still in the summer’s warmth by a meadow at its peak, is a simple gift, a cup of life to drink from, and deeply, of all that is given to us in the time that we have. The meadow reminds me to receive and appreciate what is already here, and yet the humility to not know everything, to forget the names of flower species and to recognise how little I really know about the world beneath my feet. We are always at some kind of threshold and time continues to tilt away into an unknown future. Summer light will soon dip beyond the trees, and the meadow will be cut and baled for winter storage. We are all setting seed for winter.
But for now, I am touched by the tenderness of so many small things, the surprises of the heart that are revealed like hidden flowers in a meadow ready for the sun. Perhaps all our hearts are flowers reaching for that tender place of opening, rising up to be known and seen in all our beauty and fragility. Don’t we all want to feel part of a meadow, individually seen in our completeness and yet singing together, a great chorus born on midsummer light, waving and happy?
