nightingales
on hearing things | a mews house in Edinburgh
This week I returned to Highnam Woods in Gloucestershire, where I went on an all-female nightingale walk last May while researching Hark. This time, I went with Camilla Greenwell, a director and photographer, and Alice Boyd, a musician, storyteller and sound artist, to see if we could hear the nightingales with a view to making a short film about listening. You can find more nightingales, and a lot more about listening, in Hark, my latest book.
When I see someone else in the woods I am surprised. More than that, really. The car park gate is locked with a chain and padlock. It has taken months for us to receive the code, and when we do we have already jumped the fence once. Over the hours we spend there, I settle into the thought that we are the only humans in these woods, the only shoes to trouble the dappled light and the buttercups. We spread our bags, our cameras and rolls of film, our microphones and wires, over the path. Then, in the distance, two young men on bikes, another laden with plastic bags. Where have they come from, do they wonder why we are here, too?