The Charcoal Anniversary
by S.C.Cullen
Set in July 2031 a year after a calamitous fire on the Wallington Estate, a young ecologist is tasked with surveying what is hoped is a remnant of heather moor. Armed with metal quadrats she sets out from Donkin Rigg, where beavers were enclosed, towards the heathered hill on which Rothley Castle - an 18th Century Gothic folly, conceived by Sir Walter Blackett, stood before another more consequential human folly caused its ruination. The the ecologist is challenged to comes to terms with the loss of what was, and the experience of what is – while experiencing a challenged to recognise the underlies the loss.
This piece explores a reality towards which we are hurtling - and the contrast between what was and what is – while Nature speaks, and the elements threaten.
One year on dread weights my eyes, as I droop into this bleak realm – the scorched purview of this charcoaled moor. Yet a paprikan defiance rises from my depths, yanking me outward to scour for signs of life. My strife finds none. And spirits soon sink into the corpsed earth. And find myself genuflecting towards a remnant of charred birch, but its puckered bark breaks and falls into my outstretched reach. A sudden shiver of grief shudders through me. As it drops doom follows it down to where, surprised by grief, I find within myself unexpected respect for the oh-so-vital out breath of all the unwelcome neighbours now lost - those immigrant conifers that offered so much we could not see. But dread congeals around a thought. Might the unprecedented burn have perished long-buried seeds of potential – waiting with most other native folk deep beneath the litter from the plantations’ errant rows? I turn back and genuflect again, seizing a little sacrificial char to take, to later try to draw – a way to let creativity tender some life-line onwards into belief of a realm beyond this Armageddon.
Returning my sun-hat to its protective stance I adjust myself around the glare of this derelict sun-dried realm, throwing my cross-body bag back – wrapping myself with the task in hand, like a hug as I trudge on and up towards Rothley Heath, where I am tasked with surveying for signs of life after last year’s rage. I sense some defiance within calling a search for phoenix green! But such hope jitters in fits and starts as black dust rises with each crunch of my lamenting steps.
‘Come by!‘
I start, and turn to shoot a glance around - but catch no signs of life. My fore-brain pivots from the bygone words, frowning down upon such flights of fancy and towards what fear is sure will be coroner’s task. Sweating like a sow, I swig from my insulated metal flask. Grief and water flows (filtered for micro-plastics now by decree!) and I am conscious of it seep to meet my most basic natural need which, these days, is out of reach of a large gasp of humanity.
Somewhat refreshed the muscle of hope now flexes, following my gaze back down to rest, with unexpected joy, on shoots of a tiny mountain ash nestling in the charred lee of an ancient oaken mother tree. With excited relief I drink in its baby fingered-leaves that fuel defiance against despair. I kneel my eagerness, causing a black choke of dust to cloak the scene. I pull up my mask against the burdened air, and rise and walk towards the gutted shrines of burnt out cars, and beyond to meet my task.
‘Come by!
Come hither.’
Part of me swings a fierce frown around to meet the odd words. But another part dismisses them, re-focusing on the seedling of potential that still enwraps my gloom, and with a smile of relief it skips a ‘Told you so!’ grin across my face as I turn back to the little fingers waving their potential in a strange new breeze. That part pairs with the words to playfully tease despair But musing on the alluring words. They resound in me – to the chagrin of my no-nonsense thinking brain.
But soon sweat cools my wheeze – relief from a once-rare northerly breeze – that primes a musing on the maelstrom of Storm Arwen that felled 16 million in Northumberland alone in ’21. Despite moorland drains filled, and bogs re-drenched with relief, this searing heat has risen to has sap all that tries to live and breathe. Now at best the brittle brown of once-white fluffs of cotton grass crisps its accompaniment to the crunch of dried out moss as I trudge on across the Rothbury road to clamber up towards Wallington’s past folly [1] lying crumbled by Rothley’s fire-cracked crags – that neolithic fortress gape.[2] Once upon the oh-too-dry heath I pause to rest my wheeze and hear a burned-leaf dwarf birch crinkle its alarm.
‘Come by!
Come hither.
Please come be….’
Footnotes:
1.On the crag at Rothley Moor Sir Walter Blackett built a folly - remnant of 'a vast ruin’d Castle built of Black Moor stone’, designed by Daniel Garrett in 1738-9.
2.An ancient fortress settlement.
These unfamiliar words land in my system with a jerk. To check again I swivel – but again I see no-human soul. Fear-fuelled defiance shakes my head, refocusing towards my quadrant drill, yanking the metal fling – the first full square quest to map this impoverishment. The parched matt grass betwixt besandled toes mingles its wither with the brittle of charcoal twigs of heather stalks. I mop my stinging eyes as searing heat drips salt into the wounded view. And, as I have since infancy, I plop down in a futile search of bilberry to quench my thirst for hope. I land my sigh, sensing the lack of snaking whiffs of fear. No adders here! Nor slow-worms sliding through my outstretched legs. But then, to my joy, I spy half a slow-worm’s tail, dropped in Pompeian haste beside sun-baked bedstraw shrivelled brown.
But delight soon plummets down into the heat’s intense gaze that finds no laundry-soft cotton grass. No violets. No tormentil. No common ling[1] - that lost heathering that once blanketed the moor. No skylark, nightjars, or merlin prey. Nor green-hairstreak flutters in this grave-black realm. Any remnant of birch, willow, oak or hazel just shiver their seared timbers in this odd breeze. I sense the deep creep of high alert darting out from my amygdala. As it reaches my legs I scramble up into the wind on which I now smell a change. As if from my alarm, the by-gone words arise again.
‘Come by!
Come hither.
Please come be…
…as part of Our family…’
Footnote:
1.Ling is a local word for heather.
I feel fraught fear in every fibre scan this broken realm until my eyes cast northward, into black clouds engulfing Simonside! ‘Wait. No - closer still ! South of Fontburn.’ I pant to my taut self. And for a moment I am rabbit-like – frozen in high alert. Then I thaw in a flare of rage at the peril of Rothley Lake’s majestic trees [1] standing still, despite the fires, between me and this galloping calamity – those beeches that have trapped centuries of the sigh of humanity’s toxic out-breath.
‘Come by!
Come hither.
Please come be…
…as part of Our family.
Come within, now,
and sit!’
Footnote:
1.Initially enclosed as a deer park, in the 1760’s Capability Brown (originally from Kirkharle) designed pleasure gardens for Sir Walter Blackett two miles north east of Wallington. Sir Walter later added a fishing lake.
As if from within my gasp, words fill my depths – somehow now changed towards their welcome. In a flash my thinking brain comes back online, calculating my escape. I reach to grab my oh-so-smart phone to call for help. But finding no connection here I scramble my gear to sling the bag of things around myself – an oddly reassuring fling. And with dream-like inability to run, I trip on fear, and scramble on all fours to right myself towards I know not what – save a mad dash from the outskirts of Valhalla. Clambering up I can’t help but see the peril of voracious clouds roll down from Ewesley Fell. Part of me screams in silent shame at the wanton greed I know, while another plans how to heave my asthmatic lungs back down the pitted hill. Then, as if from ash beneath my blackening flight, the haven of these haunting words rise to meet my desperate plight.
‘Come by!
Come hither.
Please come be…
… as part of Our family.
Come within now,
and sit
And understand
where you fit! ‘
Stumbling on my disbelief, part turns to see if someone taunts my trial, but no human soul is witness to my retreat. Only words accompany the crackling beneath my feet. Then, arising, as if from within the crisp dry heath in unison with my rising fear.
‘Come resist
the marcescent cling [1]
to worldly things…’
Perhaps because my parts now hear, the missive words move on as I try to jog my mind to see beyond the blinding fear. Sapped by reality, my defences start to tally my climate creds. ‘My new second-hand electric car! My vegan lunch…’ I list aloud, groping – again – for a life-line through my new iPhone.
‘Come,
step closer in and see…
that even here
tranquility
is already toxified…
seeped deep with bits
of your desire
for more and more,
so endlessly ‘
Footnote:
1.Marcescent leaves remain attached to a plant when withered.
Pocketing that ‘necessity’ I scramble the blackened wall, back to the road - my legs tattooed by ashen twigs. Again I fold into a failed gasp, panting my plight I grab my merciful device - less used since leaving Toon.[1] I gasp again, desperately inhaling hope. I rise from blackened knees to run on, narrowing my horizon to a vista I can bear. As Donkin Rigg comes into view up-splutter memories of my work and with it the inbreathe of past delight tracking fat fellers beavering away - saving humanity from its fate.
‘Your endless want
still pollutes
Our air, our soil,
our drying streams’
‘Oh I agree!’ I shout, wincing away the feel of my new phone against my burning thigh. And back comes that tickle-shock of delight, when – after the fires of ’26 – the National Trust faced down denying twits by releasing beavers from their cage, into all their water ways.
‘Come wander!
Please …
… come be…’
How quickly wetlands flooded their estates! In just five years the liquid gold flowed into local farms. Water! Enough to quench droughting thirst, and douse wild-fire flames. At a crackling underfoot I turn and trip on the twisted corpse of brittle birch that throws up a cloud of ash into my mouth. I scoff and try to spit black scorn into the gorge between want and need, into which we - humanity - have stepped.
‘Come in step with Us…
and see.
Please,
… come be
with your family…’
Footnote:
1.Toon is Geordie dialect for town, commonly meaning Newcastle
My drive pushes burning legs, fear clambering over my lumpy throat. In a breathless stagger as I hold back tears, and lurch on with throbbing feet. Not looking down at shredded toes, in-step with fear that I can taste I turn my face from despair, towards the glimmer of wetlands close by.
'Come close in -
and hear Our voice -
Stop! Wait!
And maybe ‘Please forgo…’
To quell
the yearnings deep within
where
a wanton cry begins.’
This welcome drops into my depths, as metres off, car lights flash, and my escape slowly creeps my way - crunching over the crisps of charcoaled potential I had first grasped. The car opens itself towards my need. So I can swift myself through its open door, flinging my bag to the fore as the seat adjusts around my fear-hunched self. Aware black clouds may soon engulf me, I have a need to press, not ECO, but SPORT to escape with speed.
‘Question
what you think you know
About your sense of want
and need
the deepest stirrings
deep therein
that motivate
your worldly path’
As my dash throws up another cloud that mingles with humanity’s bad breath, I pant at the car to call for help. A disembodied voice responds. No-one can come to nature’s aid - a twister’s ripping Ashington. I close the call, and scream in rage. ‘Is our glorious re-wilding all in vain?’
‘Come by! Come quickly…
Please,
come rest.
And find a different way
to be.’
Come, wait,
and turn around and find
different parts
of yourselves’
I screech right onto the Rothbury road, and into a flood of relief that throws up a startling thought. If we, indeed, are Nature too, have we become autoimmune, attacking part of our selves, if we mistreat the natural world?
‘… as in the gap
we - Nature - fall
misshaped
into catastrophe.’
‘Catastrophe.’ I hear it in French - compounding the réalité my brain is battling to reject. Speeding from this beavered swamp, relief untwines my anxious core. I breathe in our strategy - that the beavers could save Wallington - from Delf Burn, Hart Burn, to the Wannie [1] and beyond.
Footnote:
1.The River Wansbeck is know locally as the Wannie.
‘Come pause - and think
Have you grown
around the shape
of wanton bloat?’
At quite a pace I sweat my electrified escape, recalling the race to sacrifice what we knew so well, and let the inelegant hulks beaver away to dam Wallington’s fate. Water flooded Capability’s lower reach [1] – and this stopped the River Wansbeck breaching Morpeth’s cobble-streets downstream again.
‘What’s want ?
‘Want?’ In search of shelter from my fears I brake with a screech beneath the growing sway of Cambo’s vast beech trunks. Still in a shake, I quench my wanton thirst, gasping at the challenge the words pose - which I feel it rising as my foot begins to twitch with peril’s fuel translated into speed.
The unrequited question of ‘want’ loiters, agitating my mind – igniting memories of the terrifying conflagration that consumed Shaftoe Crags last June. My mind’s eye see flames crackling north – only to hiss at the swollen Wannie banks. The raging flames failed to reach their lick up to the glorious Hall – that would surely make Palladio’s wink!
Footnote:
1.The lower reaches to the south below the house were levelled off down to the Wansbeck for Sir John Fenwick, the reckless Jacobite, reputedly to exercise his thoroughbreds. It is still known as the Gallops.
‘What’s need?’
I feel deep fibres agitating within. ‘Need?’ With energy no-longer consumed by fear, my foot twitches, lifting off the speed into relief. I gently coast my way towards the lee of giant trees around the Hall. I feel myself begin to breathe grief at all I’d seen, until I hear a tap tapping on the roof. For a moment compassion hears it as Nature’s fearful tears – until I hear it as the first drops of this unseasonable catastrophic storm.
‘But now you share
our Wallington.[1]
Come by.
Come wander.
Please,
come sit.
Come find yourselves
in Nature’s fit.
Footnote:
1.Sir Charles Trevelyan, an outspoken Labour MP, announced in 1937 that he would gift his Wallington Estate to the National Trust.
