Under a moonless, starless, benighted sky, head torches were switched on and we struck out across the riverside meadow. We had walked for several sure-footed minutes along a closely grazed towpath where white yarrow rosettes glowed like solar garden lights. The only hazards on that firm ground had been the nearly invisible giant plates that I stepped on and found to have hard crusts and soft hearts.
Down in the thick, lush, grass of the meadow, my torch beam made an excellent pat detector, spotting every cow splat before it was first-footed. The herd had not long been taken off the meadow and it was easy to see why. Though the grass grew tall, fearsome thistles grew taller. However, every head was nodding, a sign of chemical weed-wiping and a shrivelled destiny ahead.
We might have crossed a field that held nothing more sinister than cow poo and prickles but I was thankful for my light, which allowed me to sidestep an ankle-twisting rabbit hole.
In the quiet, we were not short of company, for the meadow was an Oxford Street of insects, a constant mass of moths, midges and mosquitoes chopping this way and that across the lighted path. Giant nectar shoppers fluttered out of nowhere; colourless moths with still bodies, sprays of antennae and flurries of wings.
The mosquitoes fled my repellent-anointed skin with whines of annoyance, but midges peppered my face and became more numerous as we drew closer to the river.
Standing on a wooden footbridge over the dark water I noticed a pale shape pressed flat against a rail and panned the beam over a resting hook tip moth. In daylight its wings would be marked like brown growth rings on a felled tree, here they were ill-defined shades of grey. A pinhead of intense light shone from the insect’s head, a piercing reflection from its eye.
And, having seen one such reflection, I could now see many more in the dew-drop meadow on the other side of the bridge. As the torch illuminated each flying moth, brilliant lights shone from the eyes of these fairies in the night.
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