To listen to on your way through: Gem Club:
Lands and
Red Arrow
On one late autumn afternoon with the sun disappearing over the hedgerows, leaving a redish sky turning vaguely purple, I sit on a train. Crossing the countryside at high speed, where the chilly breeze can be seen pushing on the hedgerows and tree stands in the far distance.
A brown leaf clings to the train window momentarily, I stare longingly out of the window into the middle distance weighing up my thoughts: where am I going. This train journey could actually be an eternity if I wanted it to be. I know I only have this hour in the day to myself to think about everything and resolve numerous questions that have been posed on me.
Across the distance, the wildlife stares back, some fields with sheep and cows others where the winter crops have been sown already. The farmer is out near Haysden Lakes, walking his sheep up the field towards the pens. I could have been transported back to the 1920s with that bog coat, cain and hat.
I'm wondering what else does that farmer do in the day, I'm trying to explore other avenues of people lives. All of us on the carriage commute straight through and see lots of things on route, frequently repetitive, yet everyday a slightly new twist in the tale. The free newspaper tells of the 'rush hour crush' sometimes I see these forming as one commuter nods to other. Only when the trains go completely wrong do we really chat to each other, but a silent acknowledgement everyday goes on between us.
Out of the window beyond the books and newspapers in front of me, the fence line dissolves away and is replaced quickly by a new image as we move across the landscape. This dream state between imagining another life in the villages and fields I go through is shattered as we pull into train stations, resetting my thoughts. Realligning us with reality we pull out again, the urbanisation of our lives carries on as we move through swathes of open countryside. One town going through the motions of its day as I move between each place on my day.
Does the average commuter take note of the trees that are now missing, or the types of trees that are growing on the banksside we pass under it? Through the tunnels, the geology has been chased out. In to the open air again, a scare crow could be standing firmly in the field with an oast house or thatched cottage just beyond the ridge, where the owner cooks a homely meal for the family, two children and a pet.
Just maybe that house instead just has one person living in it, a lonely existance doing all that work to go home to little in reward of other peoples company. Still the clickity click of the train hurtles past the cottage, the thought is brushed aside rapidly as new things come into view. Men in orange jackets walk the line checking and fixing track sections, where do they go at the end of the day? I pass them everyday, do they live in my home town, maybe they have that caravan round the corner...knowing how small town is, the six degrees of freedom is usually only three or four.
I start the walk out from the town and back down the lanes towards home. I myself live on the way into town with a regular row of semi detached and terraced houses side by side. But what if for one moment I kept my dreamy head on and wandered out on a route I used to walk home. That one meant covering rural lanes and an old peoples home secluded away, the back garden had long grass - munched readily by sheep in certain times of year. That was years ago though, still it reminds of the day I had a deer stare back at me, (it was only small, probably monkjak) its eyes clear and crisp before turning its tale and bouncing its way through the forestry.
It would have been quite profound though, if I had had one of the full sized deer that clipsed passed me in the car, to stand and stare on my rural road home, its feet making a faint sound against the solid road. Antlers full and proud, if I'd have been in another country, a moose might have stepped over the piles of leaves, three feet high, before acknowledging me silently to go on its way. Still my deer carried on into the foliage to leave me to walk home after a long day, I wonder what it had been up to whilst I was sat in the office?
Night is drawing in and the city lights come up for the festivities, but I'm miles from the city and this rural lane to home takes me through the foggy places that hold history to their core, but only the landscape knows what has been and gone in that place.
If only trees and stones could talk...as Karl Jenkins said 'In these stones, horizons sing'.
