It is one of the more subtle attractions of our parish but its seasonal window is brief and upon us right now. It is composed of four very commonplace elements, but their convergence is as special and unpredictable as the arrival of a rare migrant.
It is the reflection of the reeds in the water, which doesn’t sound like very much but if conditions are perfect it acquires great beauty. The reed has to be dead and bled entirely of any green hint so that it is pretty much the colour of African savanna. I often think of it as “lion-flank beige”.
The second ingredient is a sky of winter sunshine so bright that the reflected water of Carleton Beck is ringing blue. Third, I need breeze – preferably a south-westerly that carries the water towards the riverbank and its reed lining.
Yet any more than force two to three and the image is a clouded blue shattered by surface movement. Or the reflected colours of the reed ride only on surface ripples and one has a banded image that is pretty but conventional. Conversely, if there is too little breeze one gets an exact version of the reeds but upside down. There is momentary pleasure in these tricks of the light but they cannot sustain you.
What is needed is for all these three elements to coalesce precisely. Then the reflected reed stems wander and deliquesce so that the surface vision ceases to have any similarity to its sources. If the reed lining is thick enough to exclude the reflected sky, then it seems as if one is looking into a soon-setting reservoir of molten gold. Should sky and reed actually blend in the reflection then they acquire some of the appearance of Victorian marbled endpapers, or those globular, indefinable entities beloved of Salvador Dali: melted watches or whale-headed dreamers propped on poles.
The gold and blue interplay and fold suggestive forms into and upon themselves without end. Then I – for I am the fourth element – can share in the magic, impelled to try to capture it in words or photographs as the subliminal chromatic signature for this whole landscape.
