Country diary: with a delicate flutter, the season has turned

Wenlock Edge, Shropshire: Autumn is the time to feed addictions, obsessions and enchantments

A comma butterfly settles head up on the trunk of a crabapple tree. We are on the turn: the harvest moon, a big brass lamp, rises through oaks above the Severn Gorge and lights the ghostly breath of mist caught in hazels arching over lanes; bats jink against the blue even-glow of a sky stretched taut as nylon and a hawkmoth purrs against your cheek; out in the stubble fields, before the ploughs return, there is a stillness that smells of sleeping horses.

In woods by the priory, tawny owls recite the most beautiful of old forest languages with an excitement not heard during laconic summer nights; leopard slugs the size of severed fingers draw silver roads through cut grass, and earthworms slip backwards under torchlight; a toad, badly injured, walks stiff-legged from an unseen trauma towards some dark place where it can retreat into the jewel inside its head. Put out of harm’s way, it was found later, flattened on the road, paying the harvest debt of John Barleycorn.

Mornings are nippy, washing over faces like stream water as mizzle slips from branches into the soil, leaving an ochre residue in the crowns of lime and birch, as if some great thing brushed against them as it passed through last night. Puffballs and ceps have bitten chunks missing like foam-rubber toys found under a hedge.

Gossamer tripwires of orb-weaver spiders glint as the sunlight enlivens, animates, shines the surfaces of stone and wood like shoes, magnetises insects to tremble with new powers; they – the wasps, bees, hoverflies and true flies – come flying in to rooms of light, chasing intoxications of fruit, nectar, pollen and unmentionable juices, in this the season to feed addictions, obsessions and enchantments.

There is a quickening of creativity in the air, a nation of the imagination, something bright as gold, loamy as humus, dark as shadow, free as fungal spores; these colours composed on the wings of a moment poised in a glimpse of being.

A comma butterfly settles head down on a crabapple tree. We have turned.

Paul Evans

The GuardianTramp

Related Content

Article image
Country diary: wildlife-sustaining bramble hedges need our protection
Claxton, Norfolk: A conservation group is calling for legal restrictions covering many hedgerow species to be extended to bramble, ivy and honeysuckle

Mark Cocker

06, Oct, 2020 @4:30 AM

Article image
Country diary: in a flutter over a butterfly egg hunt
Exeter, Devon: The brown hairstreak’s egg has a crystalline beauty that resembles a miniature growth of coral

Charlie Elder

21, Jan, 2019 @5:30 AM

Article image
County diary: a perfect warm, windless morning on the fell tops | Country diary
Pikestone Fell, County Durham: Clouds bubble up on the horizon, bringing a welcome breeze as we rest against the wall at the Elephant Trees

Phil Gates

16, Sep, 2020 @4:30 AM

Article image
Country diary: it's stockpiling season on the forest floor
Middleton Park, West Yorkshire: Jays and grey squirrels fill their caches in readiness for the lean times to come

Richard Smyth

07, Oct, 2019 @4:30 AM

Article image
Country diary: butterflies instinctively make chemistry sexy
Wyre Forest, Worcestershire: The male pearl-bordered fritillaries were laying pheromone trails low along the track

Paul Evans

06, Jun, 2018 @4:30 AM

Article image
Country diary: a butterfly boom out of the barren land
Crook, County Durham: Fast-forward half a century and few casual visitors would suspect that this was once a scene of industrial dereliction

Phil Gates

04, Oct, 2018 @4:30 AM

Article image
Country diary: apples and mistletoe, yin and yang
Orchards in autumn are places where magic finds a space to express itself

Paul Evans

10, Oct, 2018 @4:30 AM

Article image
Country diary: a curious tern of events
Pagham Harbour, West Sussex: One by one, flock by flock, birds move from the mud and settle on the surrounding banks

Rob Yarham

13, Aug, 2019 @4:30 AM

Article image
Country diary: catching flies with the shimmering fireflirt
Pulborough Brooks, West Sussex: It hovers and snatches at a fly, its tail fanning out in flickering bright flashes of orange-red

Rob Yarham

11, Sep, 2018 @4:30 AM

Article image
Country diary: the lesser searcher is the greater discovery
Spean Bridge, Highlands: I came looking for chequered skippers, but the big thrill was the sight of a rare bronze beetle

Matt Shardlow

25, Jun, 2019 @4:30 AM