Small Places

A Lake District morning of birdsong and wet stone. A walk through the toll road woods with family and friends, the mud made slippery by overnight rain. On the hard road - old road which hasn't fallen out of use - the puddles were deep after the rain but were clear and still. Roads are landscapes of tar and stones, potholes and layered mud, and are as affected by weather and gravity as much as the landscape around us. The rains had washed tiny grains of soil into the puddles, creating microscopic layers and estuaries of silts and pebbles in the clear water, like freshwater rock pools. They were also popular with children old and young who splashed them to thin brown mud, the silts moving in the water like coffee stirred in a mug. But the rain held off and the roads are used infrequently, so the muds would settle in the puddle after an hour or two. A poetic legacy of the journey; long after we are at home and our visitors are heading northwards, the waters and silts finally separate and the tiny rockpool landscape re-appears.