Gales of sensory excitement in the fen

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/30/wicken-fen-cambridgeshire-country-diary

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The last breaths of a Caribbean hurricane blew into the fen. Each gusty squall felt like a giant blowing out the candles of a birthday cake with a mighty whoosh. Among the trees and bushes, he sent the squat sallows and buckthorns rocking on their stumps like so many battered punch bags. High up in the exposed willows, spear-shaped leaves were tugged taut to attention, quivering on their stalks, dropping back on the in-breath. The one big oak, still in full leaf, was shaken up and gave an ominous gravelly roar, like a tidal wave dredging up pebbles from the seabed into its throat.

In such turbulent conditions, birds could be seen but not heard. Mute woodpigeons were hurled flapping across the sky and raggedy flocks of jackdaws and rooks rode the breeze without a caw. One bird alone cried out from the swaying bushes. A Cetti’s warbler sang its name, cetti, cetti, cetti with penetrating power and pitch, as if a sound recordist had thrown the amp to maximum, adding distortion and feedback.

Out in the reedbeds, someone had thought to cover only half of the Victorian wind pump’s sails with tarpaulin, and so it spun two sheets to the wind. The wood-slatted doors on its base had been pegged back, exposing a rumbling belly of clanking cogs.

My feet trod noiselessly out along the boardwalks, for the roaring reeds had muffled all other sounds. The head-high stems played jostle-my-neighbour, forming windswept alliances as a dozen or so crashed one way, and a handful elected to bend the other. As the wind eased down, I heard seasonal tones within this thundering noise. The bowing reed stems were still filled with summer sap, but where autumn had shrivelled the leaf tips, they chafed and scraped, producing a scratchy, paper effect.

By late afternoon, the gale had abated to a stiff breeze. The reeds went back to whispering of storms past, present and yet to come, a soft murmuring perfectly rendered by the words of an ancient Greek legend: “Midas has asses’ ears.”

@DerekNiemann