Moon walk

Draw the fucking owl.

I got asked an unusual question down the pub a few weeks ago.

“Do you want to go for a moonwalk?”

This isn’t the kind of offer I usually get down the pub of a Friday evening.

“Sorry, what?” It’s my mate from the pub committee who I’ve mentioned before: musician, carpenter and procurer of hessian sacks.

“Moonwalk. Full moon walk. Light of the moon, stroll in the woods, you know? Bright enough to go without headlamps. You up for it?”

Said in the tone of “come away, o human child”.

Am I up for it? Does the Pope shit in the woods?

Never have I needed a full moon walk more.

Said in the tone of “for the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.”

_

Meet at the pub for a swift sharpener.

That’s the group chat message on the night of the walk. For an instant, images of spiky birds and pencil sharpeners flit in and out of my synapses.

Then I get it. Swift, as in fast. Sharpener, as in beverage to sharpen the occasion of it all.

One of my walking companions has a hip flask of whiskey. I’ve never much liked whiskey but outside in the woods under a full moon sky, the oily charcoal of it hits just right. A full moon calls for potions like these: a flask of whiskey and a warm draught, say, of sage, honey—and mushrooms.

The moon threatened at first not to make an appearance but eventually emerged: a double moonbow and a halo of colours through clouds.

“It’s bright enough to read.” My friend the carpenter produced a volume of Yeats and read a line, fingertips tracing words in the moonlight.

“I went out to the hazel wood, because a fire was in my head.”

We followed the footpath out past the church and along a greenway. The greenway skirted an old farm, long abandoned.

“There’s a woman in the village who remembers this farm had Roman columns in it when she was a girl, just the stumps of them.” That’s my neighbour, another walking companion. “They used to hop from one to the next, for a game.”

“There’s another farm nearby with Roman ruins,” added the carpenter, “but they keep it pretty quiet. They’ll let you go and have a look if you ask nicely but they don’t want it to be listed.”

Of course they don’t want it listed, I thought to myself, because that would stop them doing whatever they like to it.

A tawny owl called, off down in the river valley. My neighbour told us how you can tell the male and female calls apart and about the time he accidentally disturbed a barn owl and it swooped down low over his head, big as a greyhound.

Everything looks and sounds bigger in the dark.

Earlier this year, lost in frustration and unable to work on my book idea, I dreamed a golden owl was suspended outside a round porthole window. It was trying to get in, smashing the glass. I worried it would do itself an injury.

“No!” I shouted in my dream, waving my arms to ward it off. “Fly away, be safe.”

In my dream, the owl turned and soared off. For a long time, I worried my inspiration had too.

My neighbour was still talking about owls.

“I’ve seen lots of otters this year too: it feels a portent, a sign that the path is right, when wild creatures like this cross it.”

We’re aiming for a stone that marks a Neolithic burial chamber—a hoarstone—at the high point of the hill. The hoarstone sits in dense woods at the top of a steep avenue of beech.

“It’s an old seventeenth century gallop, this avenue,” someone remarked, as we climbed.

A pheasant exploded indignantly out of the beech wood overhead, stirred from sleep, rattling its ululating call into the night.

At the hoarstone, we all rested a hand for a moment on the largest piece. The moss on it was so thick I couldn’t feel the rock underneath it at all.

“This is the capstone, the pillars are sunken underneath it. No one’s ever excavated it. Folks say it’s bad luck to move it.”

We stood quietly for a moment at the top of this ancient limestone hill, under thick tree cover: the long-ago resting place of people just like us.

On the walk back, we passed an absolutely enormous tree, girth the size of my living room.

“Is it an oak? It must be, it’s so big.”

“No, it’s a sycamore.”

“What about this one? This is an oak, right?” I stroked the shaggy bark.

“No, that’s an ash.”

“No! Look how rough it is.”

“That’s what they get like, when they’re really old.”

Then through a grove of aspens along the river:

“Aspens are a kind of poplar, you know. Their leaves are the kind that quake in the wind.”

My friend held a leaf up to the sky, striped in ragged fringes of deepest navy against white.

“You know that poem The Binsey Poplars? That was about the poplars on the edge of Port Meadow down in Oxford. ‘All felled, all are felled.’ I’ve never been much of one for Gerald Manley Hopkins but that’s a great poem.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. He’s a bit Jesus-y. But I do love The Windhover. The one about the falcon… ”

“Was it a falcon? I thought it was a kestrel.”

“Ah yes, the windfucker!” My neighbour chimed in.

“What?”

“In Norwegian, that’s what they call it. The “windjammer”. It means “windfucker”. That’s the name for a kestrel.”

Another pull on the whiskey flask: the smoky flavour of night air and dark woods.

“Ah woodsmoke is the best, isn’t it? I slept out once in a yew grove and burned a single yew log on the campfire: just one, for the sweetness of the smell. You have to be careful though. It’s so toxic. It’ll kill you, that sweet smell.”

Walking on and thinking about the sweetest woodsmoke of all, the one that’ll kill you. I heard the call of the owl again, further off this time.

Joel once told me there’s a meme online about how to draw a really complicated owl. It’s like one of those Joy of Painting Bob Ross videos. Like, first, you draw the small circle for the owl’s eyeball. Then you draw another line here for its brow.

Then you draw the fucking owl.

That’s my book. One eyebrow at a time, but I still need to draw the fucking owl.

Another explosion from a treetop perch, another aggrieved pheasant.

“That’s the same one! He’s so pissed off with us, circling him and disturbing his rest.”

We’re almost back in the village now and the sky is clear.

“What is it? The one that’s shaped like a house?” They’re discussing the few visible stars. “Zephyrus? I’m not good with constellations.”

“That one, see the flickering one? It must be a planet. It must be Mars, it’s all red and flickering like mad.” That’s me, yet to offer an accurate observation on anything but determined to contribute.

“No, it’s Betelgeuse. See? There’s Orion’s Belt. Look how close it is, that’s how you can tell.”

If you can see Betelgeuse in the night sky, you’re seeing the star’s light from about 700 years ago. The world must have been pretty dark back then: lit only by campfires and moonlight.

According to NASA, in 2019, Betelgeuse spat out a gas plume several times the mass of our moon. The resulting cloud blotted out such a massive chunk of Betelgeuse that scientists called it The Great Dimming.

You know that famous quote from Sir Edmund Grey at the beginning of WWI? “The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.” Everyone thinks it was Churchill who said that first, during WWII, but it wasn’t.

At the moment, it certainly feels like the lights are going out. I wish all that meant was a nice, clear sky at night to see the stars and the moon, and go for a walk in the woods.

“This was just what I needed.” The walk was almost over, we were nearly back at my neighbour’s door. “I wouldn’t go out alone but thanks for taking me with you.”

“Ssh,” said my friend, the carpenter. “Look.”

“What?” I stopped, nerves tingling. I didn’t see anything.

“Right there. Don’t move, you’ll scare it, see? It’s massive. Four legs, big, bushy hide. It keeps its head tucked well under…”

_

A week later, a quarter moon ago, the weather turned colder and it snowed. The trees were mushroom clouds on barren snow-dusted fields.

Joel and I went for a hike in Snowdonia. We parked the car by a sign that said “Snowdonia Dark Sky Reserve”. The night sky there, when you can see it past the clouds, is undimmed.

In Oxford too, the council tried to turn off street lights at night. They dressed it up as light pollution reduction but really it was a cost saving measure. They gave it up when people pointed out that they hadn’t really considered crime rates. Women already don’t like walking alone at night in Oxford’s city centre, everyone said. Now you want to turn off the streetlights too?

On the drive back from Snowdonia, the roads were dark and flooded. Too much rain, topped with snow melt.

Passing slowly down an unfamiliar lane, the beam of the headlights caught a large tawny owl sitting in the middle of the road. Joel stopped the car and it turned its hyper-mobile neck to stare at us unconcerned.

Its eyes and feathers flared golden in the car’s beam.

After a minute or so, it spread wings and rose, languid and unhurried, into the branches above us.