Friday 24 February 2012

February 24th

 

Old twisted peat cart,

I followed your buried tracks,

As you sink and rust.

 

In the moors there is an old discarded peat cart, when I first lived in the area it actually looked like a peat cart, but over the years it has slowly deteriorated and sunk into the peat it used to carry to the edge of the moor, where it would be unloaded. I wanted to capture a sense of melancholy about it, everything returns to the earth at some point.

I don’t know how old the cart is, but peat extraction was still an industry in the area until the 1960s. The location of the peat cart is in one of the wettest areas of Flitwick moor. It’s quite hard to see in this photo, but I wanted show how wet the area is. There are a lot of silver birches in the moors as well, as can be seen by the tree on the left.

A closer view of the peat cart.

And finally a photo of this part of the moor, with another silver birch, it is exceptionally peaty and wet here in winter, so when I’m running, I have to walk through, making sure to not roll my ankle or lose half my leg in a mucky peat puddle! Anyway, it was a beautiful day today, the woods and moors were full of bird song. Their battle to establish territory has begun.

1 comment:

Yasminselena said...

There used to be a silver birch on my parents' street that I used to love staring at from the upstairs window of their bedroom. It was such a romantic looking tree with the sunset behind it. It's gone now, but it's nice to see someone else appreciate them too. Loved the photo : )