The Dragonfly Pool

Matteo made us stop to listen but actually he didn’t have to make us—it was so beautiful we couldn’t help listening. He didn’t tell us the names of the birds—it was about listening not identifying. Barney told me later that there were thrushes and robins and warblers and wrens—but I heard them like instruments in an orchestra, each one distinct and separate but joining up to make a marvelous whole.

Then we went on through the wood and no one said a word. If anyone starts talking when they’re out with Matteo he bites their head off.

It was getting lighter now, and when we came to a boulder lying on the side of the path, Matteo stopped and said, “Well? What do you expect to find?”

All the others stood around and Barney said, “Snails’ eggs,” and Tod said, “Centipedes,” and Julia said, “Wood lice,” and Matteo nodded and said, “Anything else?” and when no one said anything he said, “What about the humidity?” and one of the other boys said, “Violet ground beetles,” and Matteo said, “And a sheltering toad perhaps?”

So then he turned the stone over—and all the things were there, and I know it sounds silly but he made us all so pleased—I suppose because he was so pleased himself. It was as though what was under the stone was a splendid present that God or whoever does these things had put there for us. Then he put the stone back—putting things back is the core of fieldwork, he says. And we walked on a bit farther and crossed a paddock, and he bent down to a tuft of rough grass by a hedge and parted it very carefully, because he said it was the sort of place where there might be a field-vole’s nest but there might not.

Only of course there was. Right at the base of the tussock was a round ball of chopped grass like a tennis ball and inside were three tiny squirming babies as pink and bald as sugar mice. We had to look at them very very quickly so that they wouldn’t get disturbed, but I think I’ll always remember them—they were so small but so alive.