Seasonal Terms

On this last day of August it's been hard to escape hearing the word Autumn. And seeing fallen leaves on footpaths and brightly coloured berries hanging from trees usually prompts such thoughts. There's also the end of summer holidays and the depressing thoughts of returns to work.

But autumn spring and summer are human constructs not understood or recognised by nature. Winter is a closing down that is clear enough. But once life starts in spring no two weeks are similar enough to deserve the same limiting word. Different plants and animals thrive and draw back according to rhythms and sequences that are not universally shared. Each week has its own character from the Coltsfoot in March  and then Wood Sorrel in April to the deer rut in October. But there are many other landmarks on the way and they are not the same at all levels. I always think of the Cow Parsley season as just one example. Maybe we should have a Burdock fruit season or a Hogweed Seedtime.

Admittedly they don't always roll off the tongue as easily as Summer and Autumn but that's the tyranny of language, over-generalising when it can get away with it.

Refreshing

When the previous day was wet and gloomy it's the most rewarding experience to be out early on a fresh sunny morning. It's the light of course and the intense way it reveals colours.

Down below in the wettest woodland plumes of water vapour rise like bonfire smoke.

Signs and Times

Walkers groups have done sterling work over the years. Footpaths need to be kept open and any indication that landowners might be making things difficult should be resisted. Public access is now legally protected but some who wish to keep us off the land find ways to get round the regulations and that's where experienced old hands are useful. Among these are the members of the Peak and Northern Footpaths Society.

The names on the small notice attached here go back a very long way and much has changed since G H B Ward was a major figure in access campaigns. The question might be asked : what is its role today? Many campaigns and battles from the old days have been won. There are still public access issues especially on private land. But here and for many miles around the land is public. On some of the new issues that have arisen the PNFS and other groups such as the Ramblers seem to have little to say, or if they do it gets said where others can't easily hear it. I'm thinking here of the stakeholder groups of the conservation charities and of the Local Access Forums where members are pre selected by officers and where minutes are either not available or are only sketchy.

The PNFS does not take a position, for example, on the campaign by cyclists to get access to footpaths in addition to bridleways. I have often suspected that they lend their support to conservation people who go in for very intrusive management such as the farm management of public land on the moors which would go further than commenting on access implications.

On the question of cycling I can't see why they should hold back. Surely if they mean anything in this century they should be taking a firm stand, one way or another. Of course they may be more reluctant to take on young bikers than tweedy landowners.

Some walkers on Blacka Moor see the new signs that have been going up as more than the minimum requirement and feel that there is a danger that they go beyond simply useful and become another way of managers publicising their role. There have certainly been a lot of new posts gone up lately. It would be helpful to know what they thought of the flagstones on Blacka.

And what about footpath blocking by these characters?

Them or Us?

Not to make good use of these lingonberries when there's a record harvest should make us feel guilty.

And it's one of the easiest preserves to make.

Not sentiments shared by a letter writer in this week's Sheffield Telegraph. She thinks we should leave the wild fruit for the birdies, and tells us she has railed at people taking all the blackcurrants (?) on a bush near Fox House, leaving nothing left for the wild birds. I think it may be blackberries or even bilberries she's referring to - could even be a sub editing error.

I have no sympathy with this point of view and will continue taking bilberries, lingonberries and blackberries from Blacka. It's not just that my heart has been hardened by years of experience of birds stripping my garden fruit ruthlessly while obstinately ignoring the slugs and snails that are everywhere and easy to find.

The fruit on Blacka - close to Fox House - is always more than enough for bird and man. And this year has been truly exceptional. I watch the birds, often assembled in family parties, taking the fruit until eventually they decide they've had enough. Towards Christmas the fruit disappears and the birds have moved on, not because of a shortage but because that is their regular seasonal habit. Some migrate others drop down into the lower land where bird tables offer temptation. One exception to this is the flocks of migrating thrushes passing over during winter months though they prefer the tree fruit on Rowan, never much targetted by foraging humans; even then the berries around suburban gardens tends to be more attractive to them.

Great crops of bilberry and lingonberry like those we have are a feature of managed landscapes that have been benignly or accidentally neglected. Blacka's character is one part way along the road of natural succession. In between the over exploitation of intense livestock grazing and, once that's removed, the succession to woodland some fascinating and delightful examples of nature doing its own thing make life interesting. SRWT as we know want to carry on imposing their human will on a land that resents and resists. Two years ago a strip was cut to near ground level as a firebreak, a pretty ineffective one, Lots of berries started to grow after a while but so did scores of birch trees which they now plan to cut back. It was predictable. Further back, not part of that management, is the most productive area of fruit with just a few birch growing. Lesson: the more you manage the more you have to manage. All gardeners know this. Why garden what you choose to call wild land?

Gormless

As cows go she's got everything in the right place and will do a job. As large herbivorous animals go she's stupid and has to be told to get out of the way, lacking the awareness of her surroundings and the keen intelligence of a wild beast, all  that comes from a constant need to put survival first.

Beauty comes into it too.

Fetishism

The heather fetishists on Twitter are slavering seasonally over the purple monoculture as treeless hills are briefly daubed with low-cut glad rags to celebrate the bank holiday weekend.

Tweet one

We know why they do this. In a few weeks of over indulgence they see a justification for 11 months of persecution and exploitation. Jobs for managers. Driven grouse shooting may be worse but it's a matter of degree.

Tweet two

Common heather = boring heather. Worse when it's responsible for anti-tree management.

Trackside

 

Poor visibility but still things we only see just like this in later August.

Above outside the fenced in livestock enclosures. Below inside.