Book extract: Love Letters on the River by Carly Holmes

Carly Holmes lives and writes in a small village on the banks of the river Teifi in west Wales. Love Letters on the River is her most recent release, a collection of essays, beautifully illustrated throughout by Guy Manning, detailing the Teifi valley and the river that winds through Carly’s days.

Describing encounters and missed encounters with the wildlife that surrounds the Teifi, the book is a lyrical, honest and tender tribute to the many creatures ‒ both in the garden and beyond the garden wall ‒ that bring joy to Carly’s life simply by existing.

Nightjar at Cross Inn Forest

In hindsight, choosing the longest day of the year to try and see a bird that is nocturnal wasn’t the most sensible decision I’ve ever made. We set out on midsummer night at around 7.30pm, collecting my husband Si’s cousin Sparky en route. It was a beautiful evening, the light blued and soft as sea glass. The world had that timeless everlasting summer feel to it, where you can’t imagine it ever raining again, can’t imagine a day where you could be cold under grey, damp skies.

There is something about the nightjar that has always captured my romantic imagination. Perhaps because I was a depressed teenage goth, drawn to all creatures of darkness. Or perhaps because, as with the bittern, I long to hear them as much ‒ if not more ‒ than I long to see them.

In my cloth bag, along with a couple of bars of chocolate and a flask of water, I’d folded a tea towel, on my friend Howard’s advice. ‘If you wave a sheet or something around above your head,’ he’d told me, ‘then they think it’s another bird and swoop down over you to get a closer look.’

Dogs and midges

I’d never been to Cross Inn Forest despite once living not far away, first in Aberarth and then Llanrhystud, for a few years when I worked for Social Services in Aberaeron. My free time back then was spent wrangling the two large rescue dogs I had, and walking with boisterous dogs doesn’t generally entice wildlife to show itself.

When we got out of the car ‒ the sun still riding the sky and twilight a long way off ‒ every midge in a five-mile radius headed over to say hello. Every midge. Fighting through clouds of them, choking on the first of many who seemed strangely drawn to the inside of my mouth, I pulled my hoodie on and cursed the lack of insect repellant. I hadn’t even thought to bring any along with me, which was seriously remiss, given my fraught history with biting insects and their exuberant lust for me and my blood. Even Si and Sparky weren’t getting off lightly, both starting to slap and scratch at their arms.

Despite this horror, our collective mood was cheerful, fizzing with anticipation. We struck out along the main path, passing a couple of small groups of people who were also doing the midge dance with their arms. One of the groups stopped to chat: they too had gone there for the nightjars but were now on their way home after an hour spent walking around fruitlessly. Two of the women, wrapped in beautiful silky shawls, held glasses of wine which they sipped from as we talked. Now that is good solid preparation, I thought, admiringly. They might have turned up a few hours too early to spot a nocturnal bird, but they thought to pack wine.

As we still had another hour or so until dusk, we decided to wander without direction or intent, just aimlessly meander along the paths through the patches of clear-fell and deeper forest, past the little streams and pools of standing water, pausing when we felt like it. Absorbing the smell and sight and sound of the place.

Juvenile redstarts provided us with an escort, twitching along the tree line from branch to branch and then landing on the track ahead of us, taking off again almost immediately and returning to the safety of the trees. Sparky insisted on stopping at every sighting, raising his binoculars ‒ ‘It’s another redstart, Sparks. Honest,’ and then lowering them with a nod. ‘Redstart,’ he’d say.

Ambling spirit

I tried to slow myself down, making a conscious effort to adopt some of Sparky’s leisurely, ambling spirit. I’ve always walked fast, my stride naturally long, and I have an anxious need to keep going until I reach my destination, a guilty aversion to relaxing in case I’m seen as lazy. I had to remind myself that here, tonight, we were merely killing time until it got dark enough for the nightjars to show themselves. If we decided to stop for a snack or paused at every single sighting of a bird that I could tell at a glance was a robin or a blackbird, then so be it. Nobody would be judging me.

There was a heath to our right which we circled around, and a cuckoo called somewhere, over and over, from its wild tangle of scrub and stunted trees. The air was fragrant, almost sticky, as the cooling heather released its herby scent. We reached the T-junction where the nightjars had been seen and heard the previous week, struck out to the right and wandered along that path; returned and took the left branch. It was gone 10pm now, and the evening was starting to gather around us, the sunset an artist’s palette of peach and rose smeared across the sky.

10.30pm, and we’d been walking for two hours. I hadn’t truly realised just how light a summer’s evening is when you’re not watching it from your lit home or garden. Outside, and without the background glow of streetlamps or houses, it felt as though darkness was always just beyond reach. There’d be a slight dimming of the light every twenty minutes or so but it was still essentially more day than night. Si and Sparky had fallen behind, chatting happily and noisily, and I’d reverted to my default behaviour, marching on ahead, alone. I wanted some distance between us all, worried that I wouldn’t hear the nightjar if it started churring; I didn’t know how loud it would be
and didn’t want to miss it.

I cupped my hands behind my ears and walked like that for a while, stopping to spin in a slow circle, straining to hear anything unusual. A cuckoo kept up his steady calling and an owl started its plaintive, fractured hooting somewhere close by. The midges redoubled their efforts to consume me.

Going home

At 11pm, Si said that we’d need to start thinking about going home. It was a work night for all of us and we had a thirty-mile drive ahead. I changed my tactic then, dragging behind them both, slowing us all down. Whenever they realised I’d fallen back, they’d stop and wave me along, reassuring me that we’d come again next week, or soon anyway, and look one more time. I stooped to re-tie laces that weren’t loose, paused and held my hand up with exaggerated drama ‒ ‘What was that?’ ‒ and all the time willed a nightjar to appear right now. I felt an urgency that was vast and irrational.

When we got back to the small car park it was gone 11.30 and a muted half-moon was heaving itself into the sky. I cast looks back into the forest. If I bolted now they wouldn’t leave without me, would they?

An older couple loomed out of the gritty dusk as we were unlacing our boots beside the car. ‘You looking for nightjars?’ the man asked. ‘There’s one high up in that tree there.’ He pointed to a large tree by the side of the lane. ‘We come here most nights to see them.’

It was now, finally, too dark to make anything out, but we stopped packing our things into the car and stared up at the tree, straining to see anything among its thick and leafy branches. I stepped away from the others and stood alone in my own pocket of darkness, vibrant with renewed hope and silently pleading with the bird to show itself.

When it started churring, the sound was so loud, so unlike anything I’d ever heard before. It was organic, but not birdlike. Eerie and other. I imagined if someone encountered it, walking alone in the dark and not knowing what a nightjar was, they’d have felt a thrill of sudden, ancient fear in the same way you would if something howled deep in the woods in a country which has no wolves.

Triumphant

‘Carly, can you hear it?’ Si whispered to me. I’d moved further away from the group, back into the forest, and he couldn’t really see me, didn’t want me to miss this. I stood with my face tipped up to the sky and just listened as the churring went on and on. No recording could come close to capturing the experience.

The sound stopped with an abrupt suddenness. One moment the noise was everywhere, and then it was nowhere. I stayed frozen, straining through the now-thick night to try and see the bird. ‘There you are,’ one of the older couple said, triumphantly. ‘Told you it was there. Off he goes, look.’

The nightjar swooped from its tree and towards me, glided over my head and away into the pitch depths of the forest. It seemed to float on the air with only the merest shiver of its wings, its flight as unbirdlike as its song. As if it were a gauze and silk puppet in a child’s play, suspended on invisible strings that fluttered it weightlessly over the stage above the enthralled audience.

Love Letters on the River by Carly Holmes is published by Parthian, available to purchase here.