Plashy utopia of the rain inspectors
by Paul Evans from on (#10GGQ)
Wenlock Edge, Shropshire In the season of snipe, six stand together, winged probes the colour of the winter marshes
The snipe are not skulking, they're invisible. Six stand together in the rushes beside Venus Pool, six winged probes the colour of winter marshes, so extraordinarily beautiful they cannot be seen except for their eye glints.
When Henry David Thoreau looked back on his time of solitude at Walden Pond he confessed: "For many years I was the self-appointed inspector of " rainstorms and I did my duty faithfully." Snipe are inspectors of rainstorms, rain and the journeys of rain through the land. This is the season of snipe, the glorious utopia of resurgent flood meadow they have dreamed of.
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