I did miss the volunteering in the two weeks that I had my late shifts in midweek.
Strangely, it's already started to feel a bit like a family. The Reserve Officers are great - kind and informative. They have great patience with the volunteers - explaining things, answering questions, being talked to by the more talkative among us.
My father had been snippy about why they burn the willow rather than chipping it - burning releases carbon into the atmosphere and so on. Oh, and why don't they tell basket weavers to come and collect the willow. I asked Clare the first question, and her answer probably does for the second as well: limits of money, manpower and time.
Me, the fire feels... primeval. The whole thing - the birds above, the insects, the spiky plants, the cutting stuff down, the mud, the cow shit, the earthy-vegetationy-wildness - and add to that a fire, the flames and the smoke and the ashes blowing and occasionally burning your skin.
Oh, and the cows. These are Dexters. They are very small - the size of Great Danes. They were curious and liked eating the willow leaves. Every now and then they'd spook and run about. One, a chestnut brown female, was braver than the rest. I bent down to sniff at her nose. She sniffed back and we just about touched - an Eskimo kiss with a cow.
Frans De Waal says bonobos like to kiss - but they use a lot of tongue. I half expected to feel the wet-sandpaper of a bovine lick.
I don't really understand why marsh habitat is preferable to willow copses, but I think it's because there are so few marsh habitats around that there's a desire to protect what we have. On this meadow, there were reeds and marsh grasses. What lives here? I have no idea. Rather fewer willows after today.
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