Oak Grove
It is so hot that the south facing flanks of the fell are burning, the grass crisping to mustard with only the patches of bracken above the wall lines holding their green. Bruno’s lunchtime walk should be watery and as cool as possible so I take him into the Long Field because Ratherheath Beck runs down its northern edge and, as Ian informed me this morning, this beck has never dried up, at least not in Ian’s sixty years at the farm.
Just after midday, the field shimmers in the heat. The suckler cows with their calves and Joey the bull will move in here tomorrow but for now it appears empty apart from two bickering jackdaws in the centre of the field and a heron, lean and grey, standing at the far end. I follow the line of the beck, staying close to the narrow ribbon of shade threaded beneath blackthorn, hawthorn and tangles of dog rose. Bruno splashes ahead of me, searching for a pool of water deep enough to swim in. Towards the top of the field, he stops, raises his nose for a minute and then races into the grass. I squint into the sun to see what has caught his interest and catch sight of him with a leggy skeleton dangling from his mouth. I puff a hot sigh: Bruno has discovered the desiccated corpse of a hare.
Once Bruno has his teeth into the leathery bone crunch of a long dead animal, I have two options: either I wrestle it away from him or I find somewhere quiet to wait until he has finished. My usual policy is to wrestle, which involves dragging the gristly white body out of his mouth while bellowing, “Leave!” at him repeatedly until he either relinquishes his treasure or juggles it in his mouth, giving me a second to pull it skywards and out of his jaws. More often than not, these mid-walk battles involve me falling backwards into dense vegetation clutching one leg of a deceased animal, while Bruno bounces away with the remains of his biltong-like trophy.
In the midday heat, corpse wrestling isn’t an option so I walk past Bruno to the very top of the Long Field and then through the gate and down the slope into the blessed shade cast by a small grove of oaks. I think that there are thirteen oaks in this grove but today, with my brain heat-fuzzy, I find my oak re-count confused by the presence of two small sycamores so I abandon counting and sit on a fallen branch just above the beck. A faint breeze ruffles the oak leaves and I raise my arms to let it ripple through my t-shirt.
I am never good at sitting still. It takes only seconds of stillness before my monkey mind starts howling through my mental tree canopy, hooting about worries and ruminations and chattering about things that need doing or should have been done. Safe from the sun beneath the oaks, I take some deep breaths, taking careful note of my surroundings to slow the stirring of the restless monkey mind. Mosses soften the fallen branch that I am resting on and lichens speckle the stone wall above the beck. A large white butterfly skips along the shade line at the edge of the grove and, as my thoughts settle, I hear a sharp, persistent hammering high in the leaves above me. I tilt my head back: it must be a great spotted woodpecker I tell myself, peering up into the fluttering green to see if I can catch a glimpse of it. I sit for long enough to cool down a little, listening to the movement of the beck over the rocks in the little gully beneath the oaks and enjoying the breeze in my damp hair.
When I get to my feet, Bruno is chomping his way through the last crackling of his corpse. He is still reluctant to abandon it so I set off along the shady hemline of trees beside the water. As soon as he has finished, Bruno will lollop after me, thirsty and panting, so I walk slowly, wilting in the heat as I go. The inner rim of my straw hat is soaked with sweat and my t-shirt sticks to my back. A lone buzzard calls from high on a blue thermal but the hedgerows are silent: it is too hot for the little birds. Bees hum inside the last few foxglove flowers and I notice the first blackberries, still just tiny, tight buds on the brambles. A soft brown butterfly skips over a patch of buttercups and - as a reflex left over from childhood - I say, “meadow brown” to myself. I see white clover at my feet and a flower that looks like a dandelion but isn’t and my mind is too clammy to determine if it is a hawkbit or a catsear. Bruno is back at my heel by the time that we reach the eastern end of the field and, just as we near the wall, a hare leaps away from my feet, zig-zagging at speed towards the railway line. Bruno raises his nose but doesn’t give chase: he is puffing too hard inside his furry chocolate coat to do more than pad beside me. I pause for a moment, letting the hare get well away from us, and in the space of the few breaths before I move again, I notice that the blackthorns already bear their load of sloes. The berries are bright green and hard and the frosts that signal picking time feel impossibly far off.
“Come on bear,” I tell Bruno, “You can have a drink from the big bucket at the farm in just a few minutes.” And then we turn towards home, making our way across the Third Field and into the full glare of the sun.