The Brecks in Time and Space

The team at the Brecks Fen Edge and Rivers Landscape Partnership love to explore the Brecks from every angle. Sometimes, this means getting extremely close to the details with microscope walks, and sometimes this means a light touch exploration with a wellbeing walk in the forest. Often, we look at the landscape we love in the context of the history that has made it: the geological effect of the ice age, or the impact of ancient civilisations. But, on a clear evening in September, we explored the Brecks from its position within space as we know it.

The almost full moon was rising as we set off in West Stow Country Park and we stopped to consider its proximity to Earth, how it is always moving away from us, and how big it is. Then we considered the sun, setting in the West. Night explorer, Jon Tyler, pulled a small piece of paper from his bag of many bags and held it up. On it were two small dots. “The larger dot is the Earth and the smaller is the moon. At this scale, this is how far they are from each other.” He then presented us with a yellow ball, “this is the sun at that scale.” And he gave the sun to a member of the group and asked them to walk away from the little piece of paper with the earth and moon dots until they were far enough away that we had to raise our voices to be heard by them. “And that is how far the sun is from us.” Then we talked about the other planets in our solar system, and even beyond that. Suddenly, the Brecks seemed like a very small speck on a very small planet, in a very big universe.

As the night drew in, we set off through the country park, leaving the lit buildings behind and letting our eyes adjust to the darkness. When you sit indoors in the evenings and look out, it seems very very dark but, if you stay out and let the darkness fall around you like a blanket, it doesn’t seem so dark after all. That night, the sky was silvery with moonlight and the path through the heathland was visible without torchlight. In the centre of the wide open space we stopped and considered the stars.

Directly above us, the three points of the summer triangle marked the month, making up the edge of three different constellations. Below them, the drama of Andromeda, Cetus and Perseus played out, ancient stars and ancient stories, slowly crossed by the bright modern light of the International Space Station.

We walked into a small wood, where the trees crowded round and blocked out the moon. Here it was really dark and the landscape around the trees showed as a pale ribbon wrapped around dark trunks. Jon reached into another bag and took out a small stick. He told us about ancient people and how they navigated the world at night. He talked of woods that burn well and not so well, then he lit his little birch beacon and a pale, bright flame shone a circle of light into the clearing. He handed sticks around the circle and, one by one, people passed the flame on, lighting beacon after beacon until our whole patch of the woods glowed and everyone’s faces were visible in the flickering golden light.

Outside the woods, the journey into the history of humanity continued as we visited the site of a 5,000 year old burial. Standing there, in the dark on the edge of the heath, looking at the burial mound, it was easy to imagine the people who had lived here thousands of years ago, standing exactly where we were, mourning the loss of someone special to them. We looked up at the stars shining on the grave and Jon talked about how distant they were. The light from one of the stars we were seeing had travelled so far to reach us, it had set off before the burial had taken place.

So, even as we delighted in the tawny owl that flew around above us, and looked for the biofluorescence of snails in the undergrowth, we were momentarily very conscious of how small and short-lived we are in the grand scheme of things. We explored the landscape of the Brecks that evening but, through it, we got a different perspective on the whole of humanity.

This event was run by Jon Tyler for the Brecks Outdoor Festival. Made possible by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.