A plaintive summons from the foot of a gorge calls a bullfinch to its mate. But where exactly are these shy birds? Hard enough to spot as they flit through wet woodland draped with streamers of moss and ferns obscuring all angles. Even trickier in a place where sounds bounce off the stone walls.
Water music is ever-present down here and the river streams songs according to substrate. On the soft silts and clay of the bottom there is barely a babble of brook, but through pebble beds and boulders, an aeration of chortles and glugs. After heavy rains, the flows begin to pound, reminding me of boys who drive with their windows up and the volume up higher. Thunder roars endlessly over the weir in front of a brick building where generations of deafened millers toiled.
All of this river ambience was augmented over the winter by the planned and unplanned buzz of chainsaws. Scheduled works to fell and dismember diseased ash trees went ahead. So too did unscheduled action after the storms, to render safe other trees, snagged or poleaxed by the gales. One tree trunk must have fallen afterwards or been deemed innocuous, for it is spread still across the path. Showjumping for dogs.
The loudest, most terrifying noise of all was recorded down the opposite face of the gorge. I would hope that nobody was there to witness it, for the event would scare anyone witless. A full-sized oak fell out of Bedlam, a hamlet that sits on the lip of the drop. It peeled away, the unmooring of its roots revealed by an inverted plate that was rimmed with bare nubs like the broken ends of spokes. Below that (when it should have been above), a century-thickened trunk that must have thumped on hard ground with a deadening boom. And to cap it off, evidence of a firecrackering of severed fingers as the king of trees lost its crown, the boughs and branches shattering on impact.
Now, like so much outdoor furniture, the oak will rest there upside down for decades to come, while the silent busyness of decay works on.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
