The Life of the Little Brook
After days of heavy rain the little brook had become dimmed and occluded by a great muddy morass. But now the muffled wind with its waft brought the sound of a slow trickle, having found a heavy boulder it made its first song. Around the bend the waters hasten musically over many stretches. How it came to be is a perennial mystery to me and the rest is darkness. It would seem that the brook had become crooked from taking the path of the least resistance but it’s just like life itself. Blue my trusty companion and I must now follow its course on its journey and relish the incomparable pleasure of discovery as through the woods we wander where whispers and sighs begin to feather through and listen to the wild harp sounds as the wind weaves its way through the telephone wires.
Amidst the trees along the bank the shaggy ink cap toadstools (Coprinus Comatus) were shedding their ink. In times gone by it was harvested and commonly used as a writing ink. On the surface of the water a frail bubble chain waltzed along as a water shrew sitting at the water’s verge slipped into the brook covered with a silvery skin of air, while Blue ran back and forth hurrying me, raising howls like he owned the place. Where the brook enters the wood the air has a kind of whispery quality. Here the scent of the pheasants was thick and luring and Blue was gone from my sight amidst the bracken, but across the vivid smear of pheasants strayed the taint of man, but the solid sound of the stranger’s boots had something of the conqueror in them. Blue halts in his tracks and throws his head back as a feeling of joy warmed his being, he bayed long and loud and like a new-born loves the sound of its mother’s heartbeat I love to hear Blue’s voice. With his belving tongue he returns to my side, he shook his long dangling ears tickled by a buzzing fly, which then feebly stumbles into a spider’s web and is fanged by a monster in her gossamer web. But warnings abound, the bracken is often the haunt of the sinister tic lying in wait for a warm-blooded host passing by.
In the fretted tree tops above, the rooks were swayed with every billowy breeze that blew. Soon the birds descended to join the many starlings swaggering consequentially to search the fields and mole hills for grubs and worms. With cawing sound the blackbirds, lapwings and field fares join the throng, for the rooks love a crowd, later being joined by the grey wagtail which is partially clad in grey, but the grey is enhanced by a beautiful waistcoat of sulphur yellow.
As we rest a while I watch in wonder a ticker-tape of falling leaves and marvel at the tiny creatures in the little wells of water that lay beneath them. Yellow from the ash, elm and willow, buff from the oak, scarlet from the bramble and rusty brown from the chestnut, but I also observe the last tawny coloured leaves of the wild cherry tree as they flutter to the ground. How beautiful the trees are at the fall of their vermillion leaves, there is an abundance of life here in the woods in each and every season. I observe the squirrels as they busy themselves gathering nuts to hoard away for the colder days of winter, and I too will hoard special memories of happy times spent here with Blue.
As we cross a little bridge the brook surreptitiously flows with its waters high and clay-stained tumbling in haste down its narrow course, but then at its journey’s end streams into the canal and I observe the shifting flickers floating out, fading into calm. The little brook sits amongst the land like an egg in the palm of a hand, but now the last sun whitened wisps of clouds trailed away and the rovers of the night will soon be foraging under the bright light from a gibbous moon, two thirds to the full. As we make our way home Blue sniffs the night wind as we watch the clouds drifting across the moon.
The fairest to me of all delights that makes this earth a heaven is the joy of wandering with little Blue, a perfect harmony of a man, his dog and nature. A truly immersive experience with Blue, my faithful friend on whom I know I can always depend.
