Midsummer Magic

June

Tiny chub flit around our toes, pearled with eggs and glimmering. The day is still light. A heron on the bank watches and then lifts into to the air like a slow breath in. The Earth’s magic had drifted alongside us every step of our evening and we had chosen to end our Midsummer walk at the ford, crossing it barefoot as a blessing on the longest day. We had set out with spanakopita and watermelon to picnic on the bank of Duxford Old River. To enter Chimney Meadows, you take a challenging little worn out path along the River that conjures images of long-skirted adventurers cutting through jungle, then cross into the wildlife reserve at Shifford Lock: before you is an ancient landscape and vital refuge for wading birds.

My partner had told me about the bird hide. He sometimes passes it on his long runs and had assumed it was a private set up, owned by a wealthy local ornithologist. But it is the wonderful []. A crooked bridge transports you to an eight-sided hut fitted with shuttered oblong windows, a portal to the natural kingdom. Sitting in this wooden cocoon, you might imagine fantastic beasts roaming the plains surrounding you. We saw a lone reed warbler, calling out from the highest point of a low bush; and then a cuckoo flew across the horizon. A visitor from the hidden world.

We considered ourselves the only humans in this wilderness, but without warning a trail of twenty or thirty walkers appeared on the path: sea scouts on an overnight hike to Oxford. They passed us like a mirage, disappearing one by one into the undergrowth.

On the final passage back to the start of our route, we were accompanied by faery creatures of air and land. Swooping scraps of darkness told us tales of the bat people, never lingering long enough for us to fully understand them. Then, entering our final field, the land suddenly began to hum and we witnessed the dance of a thousand tiny invisible grasshoppers.

We returned to the village with cool, wet feet, charged with magic enough to face the heat of the sun hurtling towards us.