Ducks and Drakes

There’s a kind of spring weather in England we call “April showers”, when the weather laughs and cries alternately, sometimes offering bursts of snow or hail, skittish as a lamb with blue sky and bright cloud Some of this can happen in May too, as on a morning where I braved its occasional tears and walked in the village of Downley. Here in Wye Vale, the town nestles in a confluence of valleys. Downley is upland, among the low hills of the Chilterns. Modern housing has filled the gap between, even the steep hillside called The Pastures, but the village retains a character of its own.

I stopped for a while at Gosling Grove where there’s grass and trees, with a small pond. Here I saw two mallard drakes duelling fiercely over one duck. They fight with beaks, use them to attack the breast-feathers of their opponent, sometimes drawing blood. Another seven drakes looked on. I imagine them all as would-be suitors: you could easily see which ones had fought from the damage to their breasts. Meanwhile, the only duck kept out of the way primly, quacking her vow to favour the bravest. I saw no sign of early resolution so moved on.

Along a woodland footpath, back of the houses, I saw a sign pinned to a tree, partly obscured by foliage. I crossed through the undergrowth to see what it said: “DANGER Do not enter. Booby traps in area.” A skull and crossbones emphasised the point. A child’s prank surely but I went gingerly after that.

Back in the maze of dwellings, I got lost. My nose dripped with nothing to wipe, it reminiscent of childhood. Two ladies were chatting at a garden gate. Ten minutes later I passed them again. It was the same scene from a different angle. My path had crossed itself in a figure of eight.

Jung talks about a part of the personality which connects to Nature, countryside, and God. Perhaps this explains how I feel different in from when I’m in town, on some purposeful mission. I’m still walking the earth, under the same sky, but here in these hills I connect with a deeper self, an archaic awareness. I find it easy to connect with my past. Gazing at the matt blue-green of growing cornfields, I recall roaming free and alone, aged 5, in newly liberated Holland, care of my aunt.

And yet, when I feel what it was like in those times, in the atmosphere of those memories and not just the incidents, they carry the sense of a earlier still time, some glimpsed Paradise before I was born.

Finally my figure-of-eight wandering, tracing the sideways symbol of infinity, brought me back to the pond at Gosling Grove. Four drakes had tattered feathers at their breasts and necks. The duelling was not finished. Any drake getting too close to the lone duck was instantly challenged. Would they go on till nightfall?