alderley edge

Walking back from Hare Hill I found I was on the road. It started to rain heavily.

Much earlier in the walk fungi burst through the bark of several trees. Underneath one fungus on a tree half uprooted but still green I photographed a moth. It might have been caught on a spider's web.

In Manchester a dead rat was caught in the pose of an ecstatic dancer. It stank. More so than the cat I'd seen the previous day with flies crawling on its mouth and eyes.

Which creates a far grimmer picture of the walk than I intended. The walk was more alive than that. Insects buzzed everywhere in the woods. Birds called. Children ran along the paths. Cows chewed and watched people pass. Later in the rain they ran alongside the fence across the road following me.

A couple of days previously I watched and filmed on my phone as a couple of black animals that might have beem stoats or something similar ran along a bank of the Mersey then swam across the river. I inadvertently stopped the recording without saving it.

On the walk from Alderley Edge to Hare Hill and back I was more interested in recording sounds but hadn't thought to bring my directional mic. I did record a couple of minutes of ambient sounds in different locations.

My photographs only partly capture what interested me on the walk. The trees in particular were powerfully alive and reminiscent of all sorts of forms - real and imagined. Human limbs, an octopus, a dragon, fishes, stone, and more. In the bark of one tree a name and the date 1940 - which appeared plausible.

The rain was heavy. It was warm and still. I was partly sheltered by trees - but there was no pavement or footpath and sometimes no verge. Oversized cars drove by too fast for the conditions and light. I left the road and got lost briefly in woods when the path seemed to vanish.

When I got back to the road I thought about filming rainwater running into a drain. The rain was slackening. Back in Manchester the sun was warm and there was no sign of any water on the ground. Earlier the city had been hidden behind mist.

I wanted to share the walk with someone. I've recently discovered I have an inability to be alone and want someone to talk to most of the time. My own company is uninteresting to me.

At Alderley Edge names were carved everywhere in the soft stone as if it were a holy site. Which it perhaps is. It might be interesting to transcribe all the text. The names and dates.

As I waited for the train home I got an ant to climb off my notebook and explore my hand. I thought about photographing it.

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