I’ve been eking out the shortest days by going out at the first faint glow of nautical twilight – so called because it allowed mariners to see the stars and the horizon. Here and now, it’s around the same time Venus rises above the wooded slope on the other side of the Derwent.
The place I head for is a five-minute walk by day, 10 in the dark and the mud. It is a natural choice of biding place, a perch at the break of the steep wooded slope on a promontory 20 metres above the river. From here I can watch the stars fade, see the gathering light reflect in the water, listen as owls give way to rooks and wrens. It might be this view that motivated those who constructed a huge earthwork here about 300BC, enclosing several hectares.
Local archaeologist Alastair Oswald tells me that it would probably have been topped with a wooden palisade – an arrangement regarded as deplorably primitive by the classical Greek geographer Strabo: “The forests are their cities; for they fence in a spacious circular enclosure with trees.”
What this enclosure contained – a settlement, a strategic outpost, or a place of work or gathering or ritual – no one knows. A Roman camp came later, and a pottery, a quarry, then a holiday park. But whatever the original reason, this spot was deemed worthy of huge effort to demarcate and defend. Seen from the river, without the trees that limit the view today, the fortification would have been imposing.
For me, discovering these iron-age locals felt as important as meeting contemporary neighbours. And in this year of shortened horizons, the old ones seem closer than ever. We all hold this skyline and this river dear, we all struggle with the mud on the slope, and we all know where to look for the same evening and morning stars. Now we share something else.
For them, midwinter always brought a lockdown of sorts – a natural curfew that made this the season for fires and feasting and for retelling stories that comfort and reinforce bonds. Stories with shared roots, whose arcs are familiar as star paths: they tell us to hold steady in the dark, because the light will return.
