Heather at the Barrow

(Children of the Second Stack, Field Note 7)

I took a break from my policy work today. Put on a light raincoat because even though the sun was shining on my desk, I didn’t trust the October weather. By the time I reached the lake, I was warm enough to tie the mack around my waist.

The fairground was folding itself up — rides clanking, trailers coupling to utes. They don’t call them that here, but they do in Australia. For a moment, the scene slipped out of geography; these ride owners could be anywhere, anywhen. The smell of oil and candyfloss hung in the air like an afterthought.

Then the wind dropped. Completely. The kind of stillness that makes you realise how much noise air usually makes.

Veering off the bitumen path that rings the lake, the ground turned to sand. I walked through heather, that low mauve resistance, the scrub that survives what other plants cannot. It felt like stepping through a wound in an ancient dune. My shoes made no sound. I half expected to see the sea.

Instead there was a mound.

Not large, but wrong. A deliberate swelling in the land that seemed to tilt the light around it. The kind that doesn’t happen by accident. The kind you notice only after you’ve already gotten too close.

I stopped three meters away. My phone was in my pocket, heavy and useless. No signal. I hadn’t checked when.