A Field of Difference

Each field is a world of discovery - for those who have the eyes to see.

Photo by Jenelle on Unsplash

Your local field, whether it be a hay meadow, playing field, or field of wheat, is a special place. Unique. There is no place on earth quite like it, no matter how small or mundane it may appear at first sight. The distinct community of plants, animals, and fungi that call it home; the ingenious expressions of human management and culture over centuries that have formed it; and the particular geology, hydrology, and pedology contained within it are replicated nowhere else. Your local field is, indeed, a special place — enjoy it, explore it, treasure it. 

And learn to read it well.

Reading any field well requires fine-tuned perception and a curious disposition. As you step from one patch of wildflowers, grass, or crop to the next, subtle changes in colour, texture, and form betray the secrets of the soil beneath your feet. Here, the earth is a darker shade of brown and the plants lusher and more verdant. A few meters yonder and bare, dry earth confronts you, warning you something is amiss. At the edges of the field and under the shade of the oaks, flowers bloom along the line where the shadows on their daily rhythm fail to reach, whilst underneath the dappled canopy, fungi stake their claim on the decaying leaf litter. What at first glance seemed to be a uniform field, is — to those with eyes to see — an opportunity for an endless exploration of diversity. Enough to keep an eccentric botanist or mycologist utterly content for many an hour. 

Take, for example, my local playing field. Built on top an old rubbish tip, John Shennan Playing Field is a surprisingly diverse patch of nature surrounded by old housing estates and a busy road to the north. Formed on sloping clay soil, the wildflowers here express this soil type, as do the ash trees that line the perimeter of the field. The field is far from uniform; clear patches sharpen into focus for those who take a closer look. One patch is dominated by ox-eye daisy, a larger relative of the daisy that forms children’s daisy chains, whilst dock leaves and their tall seed heads poke out like flags alerting me to their presence. Another patch is dominated by gently swaying yarrow whose delicate white fronds litter the green grass like a sea of manna. These flowers have been allowed to persist due to a few well-timed mows in a year which have kept shrubs in check, but allowed the flowers to flourish. Other areas of the field have been fenced off, allowing shrubs and saplings to grow unhindered by grazing species and trampling from inconsiderate boots. Walking this field with a curious mind and an alert attention has provided much joy. It has helped me see this, my local field, as the unique and special place that it is.

To a great degree, my enjoyment was enabled by changing the scale or orientation of my vision. This opened up new dimensions of discovery which I otherwise would have remained ignorant of, and it is a practice, dear reader, that I thoroughly recommend to you. It will greatly enrich any walk in the countryside that you may take — even of those places you think you know well. For some, this may involve looking up in the vast expanse of the sky rather than keeping their gaze at eye level. For others, it will mean peering down low at what is going on at your feet, armed with a magnifying glass or macro lens.

Entering into these uncharted dimensions will unravel new dramas, stories, and beauty — moments that would otherwise have remained invisible. Intricate patterns on the petals of a speedwell flower delight our eyes and inspire our art. Life and death dramas enacted in the struggles of ants and their insect prey inspire parables and fables and are moments of intense profundity — as all life and death matters are. And keeping our eyes aware of the happenings in the skies means we will not fail to notice migrating birds which herald the arrival of spring to the hedges that border our field. Our physical and mental limitedness means, paradoxically, that there are no limits to the number of new discoveries we can enjoy; we will never be able to exhaust or explore all the possibilities, sights, and experiences nature has to offer. At the end of the day, we will leave the field behind with some of its secrets and some of its beauty still unknown — waiting for us the next time we take a purposeful stroll. 

There is more to be had in cultivating our awareness than pure and simple enjoyment. Perceiving a greater diversity of the patterns of the natural world enables us to understand in part (but never in whole, as nature is too complex for our complete grasp), what is happening in the natural world around us and the state of its health (or otherwise). Patterns are the language of ecology. Reading this ancient language can help us understand the poems, stories, and facts that ecology is telling us. In doing so, we hear its cries for help and can act in coherence with nature rather than working against it. Vital skills in an age of ecological degradation.

---

Considering that the main emphasis of the writing I undertake is agrarianism, it would be amiss not to mention that understanding and perceiving the patterns of nature is an essential step in ‘Good Farming’ and good conservation. The closer a farmer gets to his earth, the more he realises that no square patch of ground is the same as another. Armed with this information, he can rightly deduce that the needs and requirements of any one field are not uniform or universal — and act accordingly. Likewise, the good conservationist must undertake diligent study of the ecological conditions and species niches of any particular field if she wishes to be a force for good to those creatures that call the field home. Much more can be said on this vital topic. A future essay on Over the Field will explore it in the depth it deserves.

But in the meantime, back to the local field. For the lessons close observation of it can teach us extend beyond its borders — to the communities that live adjacent to it.

---

Enjoying a field, with all its diversity and difference, and reading its ecology with competence, teaches us virtue of being attuned to local variations. We exist in a veritable deep and expansive sea of them: one village differs subtly, but fundamentally, from the one down the road; each habitat in the landscape holds its own unique treasures and mysteries and requires its own particular care to remain in health; local institutions that keep a community running smoothly and local cultures which provide joy, beauty, and cohesion differ from place to place, reflecting the different courses of history and diverse regional particularities that our local places have been subjected to; languages and their dialects capture local nuances and express what is important to local people: one local language may have 10 different words for a cow, the other 50 different words for snow. And so on.

What should be obvious from these examples is that protecting the beauty, productivity, and health of our local places requires one to become locally attuned and orientated to the diverse needs around you. Then once you have noticed the peculiar and individual needs, you can provide what Wendell Berry so frequently calls for: local adaptation of care. You can only care well for what you know intimately. The doctor who treats every patient the same will have a lot of dead patients. So too the farmer, mayor, and neighbour who treats their local fields, neighbourhoods, and communities in a manner which neglects to respect what makes them unique. They are simply left with dying fields, dying communities, and dying relationships. The antidote to local death and degradation is locally-adapted care, founded upon an intimate, skilful, and dedicated attention to the “local particularities” and variation that forms what our local place is and what it means.

---

Gary Snyder once said, “become famous for 15 miles”. This profound piece of wisdom has been in the back of my mind as these words and sentences have come together. One of the ways this wisdom is to be enacted is to become an expert in your 15 square miles or 100 by 100 m field — and care for it well. With a focused and dedicated vision that pays as much attention to the little things as to the big, seek to identify and understand what makes your place unique: why it works the way it does, what its limits are, why makes it special, and what needs protecting and healing. Work well with the local knowledge that you acquire and seek to cultivate and treasure it — for local knowledge is immeasurably rare and precious. Most importantly, seek every opportunity to hand this knowledge down to others. It may be as simple as letting someone accompany you on your walk through your local field, showing them all the diverse treasures that you have found there. It is a tragedy that so much of our locally attuned knowledge dies out when its holder passes this world. Don’t let the local knowledge you have collected and cultivated suffer this fate — the health of your intimately-known local field may depend on it.

So get out and enjoy your field with new eyes to see. New discoveries await you.

This essay is free, but any tips given (or paid subscriptions) support my work, help me to write more pieces, and are greatly received by this young writer.

---

Thank you for reading this essay, it means a great deal to a fledgling writer such as myself that you take the time to do so. For my Paid Subscribers — a reminder that the Wendell Berry Reading Group will take place this Friday at 8.30pm UK Time. There is still time for others to join this. All the details and Zoom links can be found in this piece.