Autumn: Lost Sheep and the Cotswolds

TROUBLE, ME IN: Lynn y Fan Fach, [Carmarthenshire]
Once upon a time, at the margins of Lake Lynn y Fan Fach, a shepherd from Myddvai wearily led his lambs to pasture. He stopped close to the waters edge, before laying down upon the green banks to take a nap. Later, he woke from his slumbers to see a young maiden rise from the dark waters. She shook the cold water from her hair and glided to the shore. Stepping lightly from the depths, she then ambled amongst his flock. She had more than mortal beauty. Instantly the shepherd was filled with an aching fullness... for he longed, he yearned and he desired... to lay with her...

She smiled and spoke from within the flock of little grazing lambs to say:

"These lambs are entering into trouble; and trouble is already upon you - See here, this witless, causeless blow to your life is now both beauty and perfection... From this day onward... from this first sight of me... all things beautiful in nature are your troubles... You will ache and you will cry when looking at this green and simple earth... Behold! the times that are coming are all to your design... Best your sleep be lasting."

From my Notebook Journal: 30th October 06
Last Saturday morning I got a call from Hayley in Castlebar [County Mayo]. Hayley is our 'logistics expert'; managing all 129 of us field operatives, in her impressively organized, no-nonsense manner. When Hayley says "GO"... believe me, we jump up and go... don't ask questions. And invariably, when we arrive at our destination, all our gear is there, in place and ready to use. She’s our fixer... And when she rang to say that I needed to go to Moreton-on-Marsh – “NOW” - I simply said “yeah sure”, put the phone down and went to pack.

Early Friday, Hayley had been contacted by Prof. Susan Millington-Parkes, from the University of Earth Science in Bergen. [Prof. Millington-Parkes is a renowned scholar of Quaternary Geology and Holocene Glacier science]
Now tragically, during a recent third-party-funded research expedition - organized and headed by Prof. Millington-Parkes - one of our own field operatives vanished from the cold-based glacier Longyearbreen - Svalbard, Norway. After an extensive search of the area over many, many days, the police finally packed up saying that she must have either fallen foul of the freezing January weather, or indeed just fallen…

The meteorologically non-surging Longyearbreen Glacier is a spectacularly spooky place [I was there as part of my MSc research]. High upon the glacier ridge temperatures can suddenly plummet to well-below -40c, and the collective fear was that Nasrine Jondah [our 27 yr old field operative] was possibly caught out by bad weather and had headed off to search for shelter... only to meet with some terrible end.

Apparently Prof. Millington-Parkes had keenly read my observations on frozen [in-situ] soil and vegetation, found below (78° 13'N), 2 km upstream from Longyearbreen's glacier terminus. Dating the relict vegetation had strongly indicated a glacier increase - from about 3 km to its present size of about 5 km during the last c. 1100 years. In addition, the subglacial permafrozen soil system had been evaluated for microbial survival capacity over the same considerable time period [I evidenced some microbal survival from more than 1100 years in a subglacial, permafrozen state.]


Brindle cow, white speckled,
Spotted cow, bold freckled,
Old white face, and gray Geringer,
And the white bull from the king's coast,
Grey ox, and black calf,
All, all, follow me home...

To Moreton-on-Marsh