By the time summer comes, the chirping of birds softens.Trill and call, if you look
Attempting to entice a friend worked.So now they feel safe and relaxed and don’t need anymore
Impress. Wildlife emphasis changes.
For me, summer means insects. The scorching summer we are experiencing now means that many things, including birds, mammals, snakes and lizards, are inactive. Like us, these animals, adapted to the cooler northern climates, find it difficult to withstand the harshest sun. But the bugs seem fine. At least you’ll be able to handle it better.
The North Downs is my home. I spent hours in open hills and yew forests. They shape many life experiences. You know, I have a place where I spent hours (everyone has a “spot”, right?). I think about it. Looking good. I often do nothing. This is heathland, grass and wildflowers cut by rabbits, and just behind them are low chalk cliffs.
I sat there for both good and bad reasons. This was the place I visited when her grandmother passed away. This was the place I visited when my father was diagnosed with cancer. This was my go-to place when my best friend moved to Australia. This was my go-to place when a long-term relationship finally came to an end.
I was drowning in self-pity here. I sorted out what I had to sort out.
All I did was research and inspect every nook and cranny of this place. This was therapy for me. This place is a sphinx full of mysteries, but this sphinx has no mysteries. It was so called because the Celts were thought to have a “thin” place, where the distinction between the material and the spiritual became thin.
This is my thin place, where the body and soul are connected by breath.
Let’s go for a walk.
I’ll take you to my place Walking is not about aimlessly walking around. It is following a path, a thought, an idea. So I will show you my place and the road that will lead me there.
We are already starting on the hillside. Don’t settle for that. You have to go up and down several times before you reach your destination. In early summer, warm-climate migratory birds have arrived. If you look towards the fence, you will see a flock of swallows resting. They too feel the heat reflected from the soil and feel hot and humid. The North Downs are made up of flint, chalk, clay and mud, which at this time of year have been hardened leaving only pale scars on the thin loam.
As you walk, you will pass hikers. They’re walking the North Downs Way, so a few miles should be covered. However, this does not affect gait. You have to walk at an appropriate speed. There is no such thing as fast or slow to walk. Our walk should be properly paced. It turns out to be perhaps slow and barely, but regular and tailored to our needs. The one that allows us to glide. In that respect, we are different from hikers.
Our route winds around sharp clumps of hawthorn and wild rose, taking us to the top of the hill. The lawn is bright yellow – the lady’s bedstraw and crosswort. In the spring the area was teeming with cowslips, but now they are gone, and all that remains are stems scorched by the summer sun and dropping their flowers.
From a high place, this time we go down the hill.By mid-summer, you’ll find plenty of wildlife
Marjoram – Clusters of small pink and purple flowers. dried as oregano,
Picked and mixed with other nettle leaves (marjoram is a member of the nettle family)
family) to make a nice wild beer.If the color of early summer is yellow, the middle
Summer is blue and pink. Viper’s Bugloss spear is the most raised
It was once used as a remedy for kumasi bites.And the trumpets came out, folks
It lives with insects that swarm on stems and dense flower heads.
go down the hill. Luckily we are protected on the sun side by a fenced ash plantation, once used as a pheasant feeding station (still a rusty feeder tied to a tree). ), now providing shade from the midsummer sun.
Now everything is growing and has reached maximum growth.Continuous
The July heat squeezes everything out of the land: nectar, pollen, gluten.there is
It is also the relentless beat and hum of insects.sometimes it sounds like
caught in a crowd. Itchy red lumps appear on arms and legs in 1 to 2 days
Time, the victims of the insect’s ferocious feast.
As you walk downhill, you will find many orchids blooming on the chalky ground and pink pyramidal orchids. Common flowers such as dandelions, speedwells, buttercups and daisies form carpets and potentially vast daisy chains. A love talisman for all ages, or a means of testing whether an entire nation likes butter.
I have some bad news. Now we are at the foot of one hill and have to walk to the top of another. As I said earlier, don’t settle for a half-baked start.
Follow the shallow grass crevices up the hill to reveal white chalk underneath. It looks like a stretch mark on a pregnant belly or a delivered belly, but you can see the presence of life in it. Here in the Downs lives my favorite butterfly, the Marble White. This butterfly is steadily spreading north and is actually a member of the brown butterfly family. But most of it is found in the wild grasslands of southern England. Another favorite of mine is the little scarlet pimpernel. Small flowers with dark purple and yellow centers. But its pale red petals look great against white chalk. Look for them here, look for them there, you damn elusive Pimpernels.
I’ll be there soon. Late summer is the perfect time to spend time on the exposed hills. Most of the flowers we can see now have white petals. Like the chirping of birds that quiets down after spring, the flowers seem to have calmed down now that their purpose of luring bees and other pollinators has been achieved. they can calm down now. And we can calm down quickly too. Just halfway down this hill and you’re there in no time. The grass is also losing its vigor.
Now that summer is coming to an end, the grass we step on remains flat and brown. It is changing.
A transition is happening.We have moved from indoors to walks in the great outdoors.
outside. We’ve been up and down hills.Flowers have changed – from
yellow, pink and white. It’s all steadily reversing.
Maybe that will happen when you reach your destination, and maybe that change will happen within you as well. We feel tired and exhausted. Your thighs will definitely hurt and your back will sweat under the pack you’re carrying. The perspective has changed, the outlook has changed.
Then we arrive at our destination.
The choke I mentioned earlier. You can put down your luggage, have a drink, and maybe even eat a sandwich.
Arrived.
Our roads have changed, our landscapes have changed, the natural landscape has changed, and we have changed with it. We have shared that transition as equals, helping and abetting each other. This place has shaped our lives, what it means to us, to all of us, and to our actual existence.
Welcome to summer.
Stephen Tucker
I started my outdoor career in live-action role-playing, camping in the woods with a foam rubber sword.
Living in the countryside, we were always surrounded by nature. During the school summer holidays, our mothers would go fruit picking and we would spend some time camping, exploring, scrambling, using our hands on the farm to ride a tractor, and spending time on the farm. spent
Then Ray Mears came along and we started doing it properly.
Coming from an artistic background, I have always been interested in how we see the world through the lens of a camera or through our minds.
My time is spent walking the chalk roads of the North Downs, a living part of a real living landscape. The connection between our own existence and being part of the environment as much as everything we see shapes my view of bushcraft.
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