Feral 2

Frog and I like to go out one day a week – just so that we can be together and away from our responsibilities and concerns. Because I walk the dog every day in the countryside and am often on my own, I tend to want to visit cities and towns and, dare I say it, do a bit of shopping. Last week however, because the sun was shining (at last), we decided to head up to Exmoor.

    One of our long-term projects is to get to know Exmoor better. We know it a lot less than we do Dartmoor, and so does everybody else. It doesn’t suffer from the surfeit of tourism that Dartmoor does and one is sometimes lucky enough to go for a walk and not meet another soul. (Ironically, I’m much more likely to do that walking round home than on either of the moors.)

    Although the moors are very dramatic and give you the same sense of space that the sea does (but without the reflective light), I’m not a great fan. I can’t help seeing them as the semi-desert they are. They are a human-made landscape, in that once upon a time these uplands were covered with trees. Prehistoric people burnt the trees in order to encourage grasslands, in order to encourage deer (which they could eat). What with the deer eating any new tree shoots and a slight worsening of the climate the trees never grew back, and the soil – as well as the flora and fauna - became more and more impoverished.

Moorland (in this case Dartmoor): space, relative solitude and a grim beauty, but a paucity of flora and fauna

The main thing the moors have going for them to my mind are the prehistoric remains – stone circles and rows, barrows (grave mounds), even a Bronze Age village. In addition, strangely, Dartmoor is the only place in Devon where I – and others - still hear cuckoos. (No one knows why that is, apparently. The dramatic decline in cuckoo numbers in this country has not yet been explained.)

The remains of a Bronze Age village (Grimspound) on Dartmoor

I’m with George Monbiot, as laid out in his inspiring book Feral: searching for enchantment on the frontiers of rewilding which I’ve written about before. I think we should stop allowing sheep to graze uplands and allow the tree cover finally to regenerate. With the worldwide worsening of the environment, those wild spaces we do still have need to be brought back to peak condition, for the sake of our souls as well as our physical health.

George Monbiot's inspiring book

The other problem with the moors is the weather. They are always twice as cold, twice as wet and twice as windy as anywhere else. And it was the wind Frog and I had to contend with last week. In spite of their covering of hats, scarves and hoods, our ears still hurt. Nevertheless when we got to top of Dunkery Hill, the highest point on the moor I think, we had a 360-degree view, with the sea to the north and east and Dartmoor to the south-west. We then headed west to look for some barrows.

    Wind and space are a fatal combination for Ellie. They turn her what I’ve now decided to call ‘feral’ in George Monbiot’s honour. She rediscovers her inner wolf, circling one at speed, growling and attempting to take a chunk out of one’s leg. I’ve written about this before as well and how terrifying it was to get to grips with, in that according to the trainer Leanne (who had infinite sympathy for dogs and none at all for humans) I had to have Ellie on a running lead the whole time and then when the fit came upon her clamp my foot on the lead next to her neck, bring her head to the ground and immobilise her. In other words, instead of fleeing the danger, I had to go right to the heart of it. A valuable life-lesson no doubt.

    ‘If you don’t manage to do this,’ said Leanne, ‘you’ll have a problem dog and you’ll have to give her up.’

    Of course I managed it. It wasn’t so much the prospect of losing Ellie that I minded – that was quite appealing: it was the thought of admitting defeat, especially to Leanne.

    So, as we walked back to the carpark, mercifully sheltered now from the wind, Ellie had one of her turns. These days they’re much less extreme than they were when she was younger and much easier to deal with. We just clamped an ordinary lead on her, and she immediately recovered.

    Yes, I’m all for rewilding the moors, and ourselves, but in Ellie’s case I make an exception.

The prettiest (and possibly most biodiverse) part of the walk, on the fringes of Exmoor next to the carpark: a rowan tree in full berry and a peaty stream

Slug pellet update

Thanks to a follower, I now have a link to a petition to ban harmful slug pellets:

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/ban-slug-pellets-that-kill-hedgehogs-and-pets

If you care about the issue, do please consider signing. I’ve used the site before for other petitions and never had any trouble with security.

On the site, you will also find more information about slug pellets and the harm they do.

Penny

Our last dog Penny, the one before Ellie and our second dog, was a dear soul, a rescue animal with whom both Frog and I fell instantly in love when we went to the rescue centre to find a new companion. We both had the feeling that she was talking to us, asking us to take her home.

 

Penny, the rescue dog

She'd obviously had a troubled life and to start with whenever we left her alone used either to wreck the place (scratching all the doors and windows) or tear the catflap off the door, chew round the hole, squeeze out and charge off down the road looking for us - or, on one memorable occasion, climb on to Frog's car and walk all over it leaving scratch marks. 'The little sod,' he said. He loved her really.
    After a year however, with us gradually increasing the time we left her alone or using tricks designed to reduce the stress for her such as pretending to go and then coming back immediately, she settled down, her only vice chasing deer - well, she was a lurcher (part greyhound).

    The rescue centre thought she was about three years old when we got her but they didn't really know. We thought she was younger than that. One day after she'd been living with us for six years she and I had just returned from a walk when she started pacing and panting, obviously extremely agitated and not well at all. I rushed her to the vet 15 minutes’ drive away on to whose floor she proceeded to vomit vast quantities of blue slug pellets.
    A couple of days later, after the vet had done what she needed to do (I can’t quite remember what - stomach pumping? feeding her charcoal?) we were able to take her home, apparently cured. But she was never the same again.

    She seemed to become more and more tired, not enjoying her walks, not even getting up to greet us in the morning, and then a few months after the poisoning she started to have fits.

    ‘I think this is it,’ said the vet. 'There's nothing we can do except operate on her brain and that would be traumatic for her.'

    We brought her body home and even though it was dark and 10 o’clock at night Frog started to dig her grave: it was his way of working through the grief. As he sweated and laboured, and Penny's body lay on the grass, I looked over to the western horizon and saw a shooting star. I knew it was a sign, and the next day there was another sign when a cloud of sweetness hovered above her grave. 

Because of the large quantity of slug pellets that Penny had managed to ingest, Frog suggested that someone had laced some bait (a dead rabbit?) in order to kill perhaps badgers. A horrible thought and one that's possibly not legal so (with the encouragement of the vet who had seen several poisoned dogs around that time) I reported the incident to the police. Unbelievably, it is legal – with certain provisos - for farmers to spread slug pellets on their fields. Which is what - to my horror - has happened here recently, with three nearby fields around which I walk most days (with the farmer's permission for which I am grateful) so treated.

  

Blue slug pellets scattered over a field next to our house. With the recent rain most of them have now sunk into the mud which is why they are quite widely spaced in the picture. Whether this is better or worse for wildlife I don't know.

    

The day after I first saw the slug pellets, I found in the middle of another nearby field a dead buzzard. I didn't touch the bird (and could hardly bear to photograph it) but it didn't appear to have any wounds or reason for its sudden death - and you don't usually see dead wild creatures out in the open. I wondered whether there was a connection between the bird and the slug pellets.

The dead buzzard I found

I wanted to do something, so Frog (who works as a technician in the sciences department of our local university) told me about the Predatory Bird Monitoring Scheme which studies environmental pollutants in birds of prey. Yes they were interested in my buzzard, but they didn't want it if it was full of maggots. Unfortunately when we went back this morning, it was (and, no, I couldn't quite bring myself to photograph the maggots).

So, why am I telling you all this? I suppose I wanted to give you a more accurate picture of life in the country. Yes, we have lovely views, space, silence and clean air, but we also have death and destruction, just like anywhere else.

A writer's life in rural Devon

To call myself a writer seems both pretentious and limiting.

    I have written books and articles in the past and I hope to do so in the future. I have earned money from my writing but not for several years. Sometimes I have what I think is a good idea and do a post for this blog; at other times, I neglect the blog for days, if not weeks, if not years.

    While writing perhaps occupies a lot of my thoughts it doesn’t at the moment occupy a lot of my time. I spend a lot of time doing other things – dogwalking, tending my veg garden, doing the accounts and admin for me and Frog as well as all the other jobs necessary to keep house and self going (with Frog’s help of course).

    I suppose the answer is that writing is my core. Writing is probably what excites me most, what gives me the most satisfaction, what gives me faith in a higher world. And, as Frog says, writing is an affliction not an occupation. To call myself a writer explains – and maybe excuses - all those quirks of my character that make me feel a bit of a freak, such as my need for only the minutest amounts of input (people, activity, sensory stimulation) but large amounts of processing (ie I like spending a lot of time sitting on the hill with the dog looking at the view). Or perhaps that’s just my age.

    All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I’ve changed the subheading of the blog (from 'Walking and writing - mostly' to 'A writer's life in rural Devon'). If you’ve a better idea as to what this blog’s about, do let me know.

On the hill above the house: one of rural Devon's many lovely views

A new and slightly less imperfect way to be

Every day I think about my parents and the debacle around my marriage. (See 'Not that simple' for a brief explanation.)

I should have been more confident. I should have been more loving. I shouldn’t have cared so much. I should have cut myself off from them. I shouldn’t have cut myself off from them. I should have tried harder to be reconciled. I should have replied to the criticism in their letters. I shouldn’t have read them at all. I should have got married first and then told them. (I never of course considered not marrying Frog. That would have been suicide.)

My relationship with my parents poisoned all my relationships – with myself, with the rest of my family, with friends, with Frog. It's probably a large part of the reason we never wanted children. I’ve written a memoir about the events, and a novel. I’ve had several years of counselling and hypnotherapy. I feel as if I’ve been dragging a heavy load for most of my life.

Now my parents are dead, and I’ve still not solved the problem. There’s only one answer left: I have to let it all go.

Jung, I believe, said that he never actually cured his patients. He simply helped them to leave behind their difficulties and move on. There was no perfect way to deal with the situation. I did my best at the time. All I can hope now is to find a new and slightly less imperfect way to be.

Frog and I married 39 years ago on a beautiful early September day. As Frog ever the optimist said, because my parents didn't want to be involved we were able to do it in our own way – in the Devon village where he’d been living, with a couple of friends and a handful of family members. My lovely brother J gave me away and Richard, the landlord of Frog’s local pub, was best man. We went to Richard's pub afterwards for a meal.

During the six months between April and September when my parents tried to stop me marrying, I feared that they would kidnap me and try to ‘reverse brainwash’ me as parents were doing to their children caught up in so-called cults. Now we were married, and I was safe. Finally, I had the law and the establishment on my side.

I could, and can, start again.

An anniversary walk by the sea on Saturday. (The strange shape in the hedge on the left is Frog with a bag on his back, investigating a cattle trough.)

Just married: walking away from the church together*

 * Sorry about the strange colour of this photograph - it is very old