As I sauntered towards Sharp tor past Withey brook. I remembered previous springs and walks over Craddock Moor to Stow Hill enclosure, the old quarry railway. looking towards the East, linkinhorn. Dartmoor on the skyline 25 miles distant.
Cuckoo call in the moorland. Post bronze age succession. The medieval tinner's cut below South Phoenix mine. Now Hawthorn, willow and gorse Trees cleared for sacred procession as a collective experience.
The landscape has been shaped by the motivation of man. Into the earth, working the Earth. Returning to the womb. Returning to stone. Taking copper for 1000s of years for status, advantage and commerce. Amazingly, there are still intact features dating back 4000 years in this heavy industrial landscape.
Primary woodland managed by man. Soil iron pan and a cooling climate deflecting post human recovery.
Now, on the 23rd of May, I had yet to hear a cuckoo. I had heard the Cuckoo as early as the 3rd week of April.
With this thought fresh in my mind, I ambled up the south side of Sharp Tor, camera in hand, looking for faces in the stone.
I had stopped to take a picture of a stone wall. The wall marked the upper limit of livestock containment. The wall had more gaps than stones. After this wall, moor land proper.
It was then, as if answering my inquiry, I heard the Cuckoo. I turned up hill, 100 yards distant, I saw the outline. Perched on the highest point of a skeleton tree.
Residual memory brings the woodland bird back to where there is no longer a forest.