A Lone Reverie at Twilight.

This evening’s walk took me by way of The Hollow. I had a sense that something was different; it felt as though The Hollow I was seeing wasn’t the one I usually see, but something more primal, something in which invisible presences were going about their business, as they have been doing since time immemorial.

There’s an unusually dark spot about two thirds of the way downhill – a stretch of lane about thirty feet long over which the tree canopy is denser than anywhere else. As my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, I saw a shape moving around in the air. It was a lone bat, much bigger than the ones I see beyond my garden. It wasn’t patrolling long stretches of the road as the others do, but was staying within the confines of the dark place. And so I stood and kept it company for a while as it weaved and fluttered, rose and fell, swept from left to right and back again, and made continuous circles around me. On one pass its wing tip almost brushed my face.

Eventually I moved on – around by the pub, up Lid Lane, and then along Church Lane as far as the field that gives a view west to the Lady B’s cottage. It was the same there, the same feeling that the veil between levels of reality was thinner than usual. The gentle breeze at ground level was but a pale reflection of the higher wind that was driving the marbled grey clouds determinedly northwards. There they seemed to be gathering into a heavy mass of folded, blue-grey energy over the Weaver Hills.

A lone cock pheasant was patrolling the field close to the south hedgerow; a lone white moth fluttered around my face for a while before resting on a nearby twig; the lone ash tree in the north hedgerow was waving its branches gently with the movements of a dancer; a lone light appeared on the Weavers, and then disappeared again. I stood for some time with all these lone companions, and when I turned to go, the ash tree whispered loudly. I turned again and whispered back.

As I stepped onto the lane, I had just the briefest feeling that I was completely free to choose which way to go. I could turn right and walk south to go home, or I could turn left and walk north to go nowhere. On this occasion, I chose home.