Country diary: Listening to the lake sing and the trees speak

‘This is why I need to sleep wild: to listen to the land whisper.’ Photograph: Amy-Jane Beer

My little family of three crosses Hadrian’s Wall on foot, where it tracks the natural fortification of the Whin Sill. Intended as an expression of might, Britain’s most epic Roman structure now perhaps hints at something more futile: an attempt to keep the unmanageable out, and a reminder that nothing is owned for ever, if at all.

As the sun begins to sink, we leave access land to enter a steep pinewood bordering a lough. The strip of level ground at the bottom looks a perfect spot to wild camp, but a sound halts our descent: a brisk, semi-regular shhh-shhhhh-shhh.

Someone sweeping. No, sawing. But we see no woodworker. We continue cautiously and the sound becomes louder and more complex. It’s only when we emerge at the shore that we understand it is the lough itself speaking. Despite several hours of sunshine on this proto-spring day, half-moons of ice have lasted where small bays lie in the shadow of the trees, and the water is playing them like a stiff brush on a drum. Tshh, tik-tik tsshhhk.

‘Where spindly plant stems pierce the ice, water is welling, and inverted ripples pulse and spread across a perfect reflection of the sky.’ Photograph: Amy-Jane Beer

The visuals are equally beguiling. Where spindly plant stems pierce the ice, water is welling, and inverted ripples pulse and spread across a perfect reflection of the sky. We watch and listen as the sky turns pink and the lake stills.

We pitch our tent at dusk, then cook, eat, burrow into sleeping bags and play daft word games until we doze off. I wake suddenly, hours later, aware of a new sound. It builds fast. Something huge is rushing at us out of the night. My mind inserts unwelcome imagery: a train, windows flickering, headlights blaring.

‘We pitch our tent at dusk, then cook, eat, burrow into sleeping bags and play daft word games until we doze off.’ Photograph: Amy-Jane Beer

One of the pines utters a long, multi-tonal creak, then another, then there is silence once more – a vast expanse of it. I struggle to sleep, troubled not by what I’ve heard, but by the fact that my subconscious reached for “train” rather than “wind”. I am, I realise, afraid. Not of the weather, or the nightmarish locomotive, but of forgetting what the full fetch of an isolated squall sounds like. Of forgetting that lakes sing, and trees speak.

This is why I need to sleep wild: to listen to the land whisper with a mind soft, still and yielding enough to really hear it.

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