Field Notes from a Hidden City by Esther Woolfson

Author:Esther Woolfson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-04-06T16:00:00+00:00

December 11th

Often when you’re walking through the city, you can hear unseen water. It gurgles unexpectedly under one crossroads, gushes strangely below my feet at another. As you walk on, the source of it appears – the Denburn, flowing through deep-constructed channels beside a row of offices before it disappears again under the road, through culverts and on towards the harbour where it enters the sea. It’s heard best after heavy rain, even from behind the fortifications of the large granite houses with their long gardens in the steep declivity of Rubislaw Den where it runs through the gorge formed by glacial meltwater, a valley that bisects the centre of the city. You hear the burn in spate on a cool evening in summer after rain when light shimmers on the summer leaves and everything’s heavy with dampness, but now there’s only a still and freezing silence.

Today, I walk for a while along the banks of the Dee near Duthie Park. The margins of the river have frozen. Broken, milky patches of ice drift in the black water. Gulls stand massed on the shingle islets. Their feathers lift easily from their head and wings, white-fringed in the freezing winds. Waxwings flit and scatter, searching for berries on the cotoneasters and holly in the snow-covered gardens.

On the way home in the afternoon, I find a fledgling in the lane. In spite of my decision to abjure bird-rescue for ever, I bring him home. There’s nothing else I can do. He’s a small pigeon with a damaged wing. I examine the wing, which doesn’t look very bad. If he survives, I’ll wait until he’s ready and let him go.

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