Frome, Somerset: Dippers and fritillaries and pink campion create a deep satisfaction when accumulating associations with a regular haunt.
The Magic of the Stone Bridge
Enchantment surely fills the eyes of first-time visitors who come upon a little stone bridge over the stream. People might marvel at the judgment of hands in building, wedding rock with rock, face against face, or arrive on a brighter morning when sunbeams chase each other under the arch and cast sparkling reflections of water on the underside. Watching the brook break out of its tunnel and skittering over the pebbled bed, hastening through even in times of sluggish drought, can quicken the pulse.
Yet for a regular visitor, the view holds deeper layers. This summer, a boulder by the foot of the bridge was named the Dipper Stone. One afternoon, placing palms on the ledge, the author leaned over and came closer to a dipper than ever before and perhaps ever will. Standing in its classic stance, the dipper did not like forced intimacy and sped off downstream with a pointy tail and scudding wings.
A Storied Landscape of Wildlife
That bird shot past what is known as the fritillary glade. There, in the enervating peak of the July heatwave, butterflies were all beat and flutter, energetic insects defying a world of listlessness. The fritillary dance remains a seasonal memory, dimmed with the dying of its backdrop, though it will likely return next year when growth brings back the glade’s summer look.
The fleeing dipper also passed the campion patch, a vision in pink that was once succeeded by pepperpot heads and ripe seed spilling into cupped hands, though there was no blush of campion on that ground this year. Resident naturalists who return again and again to a place create what writer Robert Macfarlane calls a storied landscape—landmarks crowded with the ghosts of things observed. There is both pleasure and satisfaction in the return of spirits to familiar haunts, alongside equal delight in sheer serendipity and tales to come of the unexpected.
Today brings the possibility of staying sharp to catch another glimpse of a dipper along the stream, or perhaps not.
