Because You're Mine, I Walk The Line

Crunching across winter stubble on a frosty December morning, John Lewis-Stempel gives thanks for the wildlife sustained by the old millet stalks and endeavors to train his labrador to walk to heel, aided by a handful of cheese

- John Lewis-Stempel

The little mouse comes out and nibbles

The small weed in the ground of stubbles

Where thou lark sat and slept from troubles

Amid the storm

The stubbles ic’el began to dribble

In sunshine warm

Address to a Lark Singing in Winter by John Clare

FIRST light. Below, down in the village, a cockerel crows. Far away over the stubble of millet, a tawny owl yaps in the black wood. Otherwise, a world of silence.

The stars are still alight, alchemizing the puddles, which sprawl around the geometric precision of the strawy spikes, into silver mercury. Noughts and lines. There is a binary bleak beauty to a stubble field in midwinter. The millet heads were harvested, back in October, for flour.

It is breath-blowingly cold. First light is a strange time of day to be dog-training, but when otherwise is there time in winter, with its short hours of light? When? I have found there to be too much comedy in teaching a black labrador at night. In these very first monochrome moments of a winter’s day, she is at least faintly discernible.

The millet stubble comprises 20 acres, but the field is thin, so it is a long walk along the length of the rectangle to the wood. Perhaps five minutes. In my left gloved hand, a small portion of Emmental cheese.