On Fowl and Finding Out.

I decided to take a small detour on my walk today, to visit the old stone bridge over the river which is the boundary between Derbyshire and Staffordshire. I wanted to see how much the level had been affected by the warm, dry spring and summer we had this year, and found it to be in fine fettle and pretty much the same as the last time I went there. (Even the mill race about 200yds on the Derbyshire side had running water in it which quite surprised me.)

But before I reached the bridge I heard the sound of a duck quacking to my left, and peered through a gap in the trees and shrubs which line the road at that point. I saw that just beyond the bank of trees lay a large, still pool on which ducks were swimming peacefully while one of their number was preening itself on a rock jutting out of the water. But of course, much as I like ducks, it wasn’t the birds which captured my attention; it was the pool.

It lay in a depression surrounded on all sides by mature trees and had a small island in the middle. Such places draw me to them as a bee is drawn to a flower and set my imagination running. I find them dripping with enchantment; they carry the promise of magic and mystery; they might be the portal between this world and some other. This is the domain of the Lady of the Lake, and the Lady of the Lake has been the figurehead at the forefront of my imagination since childhood. In my one and only novel, a goddess masquerading as the child Annie appears in just such a place to take the protagonist on a journey through time and alternate dimensions.

And yet I’ve lived here for more than sixteen years and didn’t even know it existed. I half imagine I could go there again and find that it doesn’t. I’m even tempted to wonder whether an esteemed lady from a higher plane encouraged a duck to quack today in order to show me something special.

Am I now being unconscionably fanciful? Maybe, but the predilection to be fanciful is driven by imagination, and imagination is surely one of the most rewarding of human faculties.

*  *  *

On a more prosaic note, I had another first today. I saw five cock pheasants flying together over my garden, a sight I’ve never seen before. I sometimes see two or more cock birds walking across the field in close proximity, but pheasants don’t fly all that much and I’ve only ever seen the males fly singly, usually if they’ve been startled or are flying into a tree to roost overnight. A flock of flying pheasants is most unusual, so is this another indicator of change in the offing? I don’t suppose I'll ever find out.