Foxglove December 17 2008

I LOVE a winter landscape. Pared to the bone like a distance runner, its austerity spans the richness of autumn and the surging new life of spring in a natural resting time, where cold cleanses and water refreshes.

I LOVE a winter landscape. Pared to the bone like a distance runner, its austerity spans the richness of autumn and the surging new life of spring in a natural resting time, where cold cleanses and water refreshes.

This evening, the frost still lay in the lee of the hedge, not having cleared from the morning, though on the sunward side the grass was soft. Scent hangs well in frost, and the dogs were making the most of it, turning fallen leaves with their noses and scattering ice off the tussocks.

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Tall old weeds, brown and dead, wore a brief beauty filigreed in white over hanging seedheads and curling leaves. Warm, brown and very much alive, a rabbit crept through the thick part of the brambles, unable to suppress its telltale odour.

Countless hours of my life have been spent outside a patch of cover, large or small, with a hound or hounds of various kinds about me. Just this exact moment of query and excitement has thrilled through me each time, whether waiting a specific quarry or a random one.

At times we have ignored the scattering of departing pheasants because we awaited the fox, or we have heard the pinking and ticking of small birds that tell us our quarry is afoot, but seen nothing until it breaks cover. We have heard the crackle and rush of departing deer, we have heard nothing but suddenly seen a fox right there, one foreleg raised, checking the wind before making its run.

When the dog freezes, staring hard into the bramble and briar, sucking in scent through its nose and puffing it out through the corners of its mouth, when the tail starts to wave, slowly at first and then in great scything sweeps, human hearts beat faster too, our eyes keen, our muscles tense, though it is not our job to run.

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The dogs do the running: that is their birthright. Our job is to watch and to think, for those are the things we do better. For countless thousands of years our two species have worked together this way, and the old addiction grips us, even though today there is but one rabbit in the cover, and only two dogs outside it.

One dog is over the ditch and pushing steadily through the thorn, while the other dances in a series of brittle leaps, ready to extend in any direction, assessing the variables. Unseen but sporadically heard, the rabbit slides ahead, awaiting an opportunity to break back under the noses of the dogs, leaving nothing but a puff of scent in its wake, gaining fifty yards by guile.

The dogs respond, one briefly fooled into running the heel line before he corrects himself and forges anew through the cover, the other sprinting to the corner of the track. I see the rabbit but say nothing to indicate it, for there is no need, this time, to load the dice. There are not the rabbit numbers here at present to make it a necessity to catch every one, so I watch, leaning on my stick, letting the drama unfold.

People call rabbits "humble" and think them of no account, but this is ignorance, for rabbits are very good at being rabbits, and at surviving in an environment that guarantees each one will end up as a meal. This one has oozed across the thin part of its hedge, and is back in a thorned fortress that few enemies could enter.

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Quite suddenly the demeanour of the dogs changes, for their quarry has gone to ground. With heads and tails up, they take one last regretful breath of scent, and come back to me. "Whither now?" they ask. In answer, I sweep an arm forward, and they run ahead, scattering the frosted leaves and seeking new scent, while I, being human, pause to take in the beginnings of a crimson sunset as the chill settles into dusk.

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