Scorched earth

As the heat rises, I walk earlier and earlier in the morning. Even at six-thirty the ground feels hot and my nostrils burn slightly with the dryness of the air, laden with an overturn of straw and wheatchaff.

All around colour seems bleached to a golden dryness. The critters that have passed through earlier have left their tracks in the dust, or have escaped to some kind of other world as they curl up on in their shells on the dry stalks.

A time of harvesting, the combines hum and whir in the distance, overriding the bird song. On another level I watch the ants who are also gathering, storing and preparing for harder times.

I’m alone but the mark of human activity is omnipresent in the shorn fields, the sculptural bales and the noise. Only the spiders seem to break the mold, weaving their labyrinthine structures, establishing their portholes.

The walk leads me to think of the other-than-humans around me, wondering at their lives, until the onslaught of the production line and the shrieks and squeals of the couped up pigs bring me back abruptly to the village.