Under the sun

“It was cooler in the beech wood amid the grey, smooth-barked boles. I sat on a crispy carpet of last year’s leaves in a world of dappling shadow”

Country Sights and Sounds
John Shelley

IT WAS a Paul Henry sort of a day, with towering, cliff-like clouds as heavy and steady as rocks in a sky of summer blue. I did a Paul Henry sort of thing and sat and watched them a while. They were scarcely moving; they might indeed have been painted in their places.
The sun was warm. Too warm. I planted marigolds in gaps in the garden, where they wilted in front of my eyes. A speckled wood butterfly danced like a windblown leaf, hoping to attract a mate while keeping rival males at bay. It is early for him to be on the wing, but in another two or three weeks there will be many of his kind. When the insect settled to bask in the sun, I knew he had the right idea. This was no time for work; it would be raining again soon enough. I took my camera and went to look for the deer.
It was cooler in the beech wood amid the grey, smooth-barked boles. I sat on a crispy carpet of last year’s leaves with a high bank at my back, in a world of dappling shadow. I wanted to listen to the sound of the wind and simply watch. I had followed a sort of regular deer highway a considerable distance to get here, but had found only the occasional sign of the animals; the occasional slotted hoof print in new mud; a latrine heap of still shiny, fingernail-sized droppings, each with a pimple at one end, so that I knew the animal that had left them must be a young buck.
It was the small herd of females that I wanted to find, but they had evidently moved on. This week or next, the first of them will be giving birth, doing so in the same places that have been used for generations. We would imagine these would be well known, but they are not – not by me anyway. The does become extremely wary and secretive now. When they feed, they do so a good distance away from where they will have their fawns, and when they travel to and fro, they stick close to dense cover, ready to slip from view at the least sign of danger. Now I knew another place where the deer weren’t; that narrows down the places where they might be. I have three weeks to find them, or another year will pass with this mystery unsolved.
I was ready to call it a day. Beyond the trees the lake was shimmering invitingly, and I could just about hear the wavelets rippling mirthfully at the rocky shore. On a day such as this, with broken cloud and a steady breeze, there would be trout to be had. Evening tea on a west-facing island beach and a final drift into the sunset to fish the evening rise. An easy cruise home with starlight tipping the waves. Docking into the noises of the night with bats circling my hat. Later, perhaps. (What would it be like to be really free?)
Having given up on the deer for the day I moved out from the shade of the trees to sit in the sun. Despite a good dose of rain, the thin blanket of calcareous soil that covers the underlying limestone was dry enough to sit on. Grey stones showed through the meagre grasses. I looked at the rich variety of plants and marvelled again at the brilliance of wild flowers.
White clover - none of the red variety here – not white but rose-tinted cream; the rich blue (can it be called blue?) of tiny milkwort; the purest yellow of yellow rattle; all drawn from the endless miracle of mother nature’s paint pot.
I lay back to look at the clouds with aptly named quaking grass trembling above my head. A tickling sensation at my left arm, having started out so comfortably, grew steadily to become a persistent, prickling rash. Ants. They had discovered only one arm, the one nearest their nest, but a number of them had been to work while I daydreamed. I turned their home stone to watch them scurry out of the light into sweet darkness, each with its precious infant load.
There would be another chance to find the deer this evening. Work first.