Country diary: fire, feasting and stories, the age-old answer to winter’s curfew

I’ve been eking out the shortest days by going out at the first faint glow of nautical twilight – so known as as a result of it allowed mariners to see the stars and the horizon. Here and now, it’s round the similar time Venus rises above the wooded slope on the different aspect of the Derwent.

The place I head for is a five-minute stroll by day, 10 in the darkish and the mud. It is a pure selection of biding place, a perch at the break of the steep wooded slope on a promontory 20 metres above the river. From right here I can watch the stars fade, see the gathering gentle mirror in the water, pay attention as owls give means to rooks and wrens. It is perhaps this view that motivated those that constructed an enormous earthwork right here about 300BC, enclosing a number of hectares.

Local archaeologist Alastair Oswald tells me that it will in all probability have been topped with a wood palisade – an association thought to be deplorably primitive by the classical Greek geographer Strabo: “The forests are their cities; for they fence in a spacious circular enclosure with trees.”

What this enclosure contained – a settlement, a strategic outpost, or a administrative center or gathering or ritual – nobody is aware of. A Roman camp got here later, and a pottery, a quarry, then a vacation park. But no matter the authentic purpose, this spot was deemed worthy of big effort to demarcate and defend. Seen from the river, with out the bushes that restrict the view as we speak, the fortification would have been imposing.

For me, discovering these iron-age locals felt as necessary as assembly up to date neighbours. And on this 12 months of shortened horizons, the outdated ones appear nearer than ever. We all maintain this skyline and this river pricey, all of us battle with the mud on the slope, and everyone knows the place to search for the similar night and morning stars. Now we share one thing else.

For them, midwinter all the time introduced a lockdown of kinds – a pure curfew that made this the season for fires and feasting and for retelling tales that consolation and reinforce bonds. Stories with shared roots, whose arcs are acquainted as star paths: they inform us to maintain regular in the darkish, as a result of the gentle will return.