Walking the perimeter of my local woods it’s easy to miss the subtle downshift in the soundscape from the rushing vehicular hiss of the motorway to the hushed shadows that break to open pasture. It is on this open facing side of the woods that badgers have chosen to excavate their burrows amongst the coarse local stone that slowly emerges in the autumn once the summer greens begin their retreat. The path narrows for a short distance, forcing the rambler to concentrate momentarily on their stout booted feet, before opening again onto level ground.
The badger sets mark the mid-way point of my usual circumnavigation, and with views that reach all the way to monument hill in the nearby park, it’s hard to fault their aesthetic and architectural choices. I stopped here some weeks ago to shoot long exposures of the wheat fields that roll down to the dual carriageway. A long heatwave had burnished everything to rough textured gold, which I imagined would translate into an ocean of shades and subtle contrasts once expressed in black and white film. A woman passed by followed closely behind by a playful Labrador. She was talking loudly on her phone and seemed surprised to see m and I must admit her sudden expected appearance did momentarily shatter the pastoral idyll.
She was speaking on her mobile which was held below her chin on a horizontal fashion that I do not understand, dividing her attention between the conversation and navigating the narrow path. In that brief overlapping second I remember thinking of the encounter as a kind of double exposure, inadvertent voyeurs, passing cars, two images expressed in a single negative. The woods are not a quiet place, but they are a good place to be quiet. For this reason, I do somewhat resent other people intruding into my experience of woodland quietude. A word I recently encountered refers to this as “aloneness”, of being alone with oneself without feeling lonely, happily introverted. Occasionally submarines need to surface to take on supplies and oxygen and I like to think of the experience of being and aloneness operate in much the same way. I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that a lot my pastimes require a certain amount of aloneness – painting, photography, woodworking, writing poetry and so on. But there you go…
Having taken the long exposure shots (my first) using my Canon T90 with a 10 stop filter, I took a closer look at the badger sets. For the third time in my life I discovered a badged skull, unearthed during a spring clean and left to bleach on the spoil heap. The first I ever found was while walking with my parents. My father showed me the uniquely hinged jaw and explained how to tell the fox and badger skulls apart. I still have this skull, which now sits on a shelf above my desk. The second was discovered in Yorkshire while hiking a winter trail with my friend Tristan. This time I left everything alone, not wishing the disturb the set nor deprive another wanderer of an interesting encounter with the dead. I snapped a quick pic.
