Country diary: the Trickle’s white witchcraft turns everything to stone

The rate of deposition from the spring is so great that even relatively delicate and ephemeral objects such as cones, conifer needles, fine twigs and moss lying on the woodland floor become heavily calcified. Photograph: Amy-Jane Beer

January has wrapped itself so tight around the valley that there is no view today. Even the short sightlines in the woods are cloaked and murky. The mud on the main track is tedious, so I’m tempted by the firmer footing of a leafy badger path. It starts well but soon becomes steep and hostile, with bramble snares every few paces. The hulk of a dead birch gives way as I grasp it for support; muddied and disheartened, I try to cut back.

I emerge instead in the swamp landscape of a dinosaur picture book, thick with dead horsetails banded bone-white and brown like okapi legs. A few more squelching steps and I reach what must be the source of the small spring we call the Trickle. Here, its early course runs white over a petrified woodland floor. Bathed in water sprung from the lime-rich bedrock, twigs, leaves, pine cones and needles are turning to stone.

‘A few more squelching steps and I reach what must be the source ofthe small spring we call the Trickle.’ Photograph: Amy-Jane Beer

Limestone defines this part of Ryedale. Our house was built for workers in the long-gone Whitwell quarry, whose stone is seen in most of the nearby buildings, including the ruins of Kirkham Priory. Whitwell. The White Well.

As I crouch, the ground squeaks. It sounds disconcertingly like the warning buzz of a trapped wasp – unlikely in midwinter. I shift my weight and it comes again. It’s just air escaping from the saturated ground, but it leaves me feeling that my attention here is unwelcome. Perhaps water that turns matter to stone is meant for witches only.

I pick over the objects arrayed down the bank, and among the twiggy debris I find calcified snail shells, catkins, acorn cups and even a limescale impression of a leaf, complete with veins, that disintegrates on contact with my fingers. Another few metres downstream and the deposit thins, and by the time I reach the path once more it has disappeared altogether, leaving clear water to trickle into public view, its mysterious power spent.

I carry a few calcified specimens home to dry out; after school, we test one in a dish of white vinegar, where it fizzes pleasingly for several minutes. You could call it kitchen science. We know it’s witchcraft.

Calcification is visible where the spring water has passed over. Photograph: Amy-Jane Beer