Gorse Fire
This week’s photo from the archives is a little different. As paid subscribers will know I am writing a book proposal for an on-going project that draws together photography and nature writing. This photograph and the story behind it will be part of that proposal.
The South West Coastal Path runs for 630 long miles of extraordinary cliffs, beaches, woods and headlands. Everything about it seems simultaneously fragile and stronger than granite. I have walked almost all of it, gathering a kaleidoscope of experiences and memories that have changed me. None more so than encountering the bare, burnt bones of gorse bushes and hawthorns on a hike between the Lizard and Helford last spring. Fires become more common along the coast path, the rising summer temperatures, and thick undergrowth a perfect, disastrous combination.
Walking the path that day I was met suddenly by black.
Soft tufts of unburnt grass lined the path as it cut through the blackened branches and trunks of the burnt gorse. The fire had revealed the twisted and gnarled growth of the gorse bush, normally hidden by thorns and flowers. The earth below was stripped bare, nothing left but charred topsoil and soot. Pale rocks stood out from the charcoal black land like a jagged backbone pushed up from the earth.
On warm spring days I should be able to breathe deeply and have my senses filled with the gentle scent of fresh gorse flowers. Instead, the air smelt acrid and bitter, like wet coal. I have just begun learning to bake with this wonderful plant, carefully picking the petals from among the sharp barbs. As I dry them the aroma of sweet moorland and coconut gets deeper and richer. The petals become crumpled and papery but no less bright.
On the coast path that day they were virtually gone, only a scattering of hawthorns and gorse having somehow escaped the fire, their white and yellow flowers shockingly bright against the charred hillside.
The devastation came to an end as suddenly as it started. I sat looking back over it, my feet resting on the very edge of the burn. It stretched back so far, I couldn’t see where it began, and so the world was made only of glistening sea and burnt black land, a landscape impossibly changed.
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(Note: Every Thursday I share a photograph from my archives, along with a few words about the image. I hope you enjoy them.)