The sad beauty of September

The privilege of flanking, the peace of High Park, the contentment of the river… all bring their own joy

- LAURENCE CATLOW

I wonder if, like me, you feel the spirit of place most powerfully by the rivers that you fish and in the woods and fields where you find sport with your gun. And do you join me in feeling this spirit most intensely in the sad and very beautiful month of September, especially on the evenings when the wind has died away and a patchwork of shadow and sunlight slants over the land? There have been several such evenings and one of them found me at High Park.

I was later than usual. I had come to give my birds their tea, which on this occasion was more like supper because I had spent the day flanking on the local moor. It had been one of those days when to be up there high in the Pennines with the sun on your face and the breeze on your cheek had felt more like a privilege than an occasional occupation.

This was at least partly why I was in such a good mood. I was also pleased to find I had judged my birds’ breakfast rations more or less right, because they were responsive to my whistle, gobbling up their supper greedily. They were also the picture of how young pheasants should look in the third week of September.

With the poults fed, I was looking forward to a couple of glasses of sherry before my own supper, but I stayed for a while by the big pen, listening to the soft sound of the beck and looking round me at the steep slopes on either side of the water. I watched the slowly climbing shadows and the diminishing light above them, the darkening berries on hawthorn and elder and the leaves hanging motionless on the branches beginning to turn yellow or brown.

Peace