101 At Benfleet Creek

Full Episode description

With Benfleet behind, see ahead the footpath to Leigh-on-Sea. It’s a beckoning line to the horizon. But for now, we can just let it go. Let it go because something else beckons. Something sky sized. Breezing in from the flat reflecting water. A presence, that’s been there all along. 

So turn off the path and stride down, down through the thick grass. Head straight to the land water boundary. The ground will soften, and soften again, but keep going. In careful steps, press on through the ankle deep squelch, around the slippery half submerged stones, until the vegetation beneath your feet feels like a semi floating bed of sponge. This, is the last walkable point. The point where you just have to stop, and listen, because the presence of this place has got so strong. 

In front, is the exposed mud, patterned with trickling remnants of the high tide. Further on, a bright reflected sky. A sky reverberant, with the bending tones of a passing propeller plane.

It’s the sense of wide, wide open that makes this place so overwhelmingly present. And one might respond to it with an equally strong feeling, an awareness somehow, that what’s here and happening outside, is happening inside too. Pure openness. But not emptiness. This place is vast, but not empty. It is filled with fresh blustery winds, and patrolled by tiny, flapping sparks. These are the wild birds. And this, is their world.

The tripod sinks deep into the sponge-like vegetation, but finds its place, so we attach the mics and leave them, wrapped in a wind absorbent hat, to record alone. As we climb away, back up the slippery bank, we hear them, the wild birds, coming back to see what it is we left behind.