DECEMBER 2023 · GROUNDED

Gilfach nature reserve

Marteg Valley, Wales

December is the wrong month for wildlife at Gilfach. The otters and dippers are there, but they're not performing. The lichen, though — the lichen is doing exactly what it always does, which is occupy every surface available to it with total indifference to the season.

Aerial view of River Marteg snaking through moorland and woodland, Marteg Valley — The river's course defines the woodland's edge

— What lichen does in December

Gold and grey, spreading across bare branches and rocky outcrops in mats and crusts and filaments. A winter shrub held small red berries inside a lichen-covered framework, the berries the only warm colour in a grey-and-amber palette. I got close enough that the depth of field collapsed to a centimetre, the background dissolving into soft brown.

They were moving slowly, which seemed right.
Gilfach Farm — December 2023

Lichen-encrusted winter shrub with red berries in soft focus, nature reserve — Only warm colour in a grey-and-amber palette

— Close focus

From the drone, the River Marteg curves through the valley floor in long meanders, the water dark between pale banks. The woodland stands out as a distinct body within the wider moorland — a green-and-rust island following the river's course. The aerial canopy in winter is a network of bare branches, the individual trees visible in a way the summer growth hides.

Lichen-covered tree branches in close detail, gold and grey textured bark — Gold and grey, indifferent to season

Window framing woodland interior view, dark shelter overlooking winter vegetation — The window pre-composes the image

— From the drone

One image from the drone shows a solitary hiker on the lichen-cloaked hillside above the reserve, small against an exposed rock outcrop, the scale of the place around them doing its work. I don't know who they were. They were moving slowly, which seemed right.

Solitary hiker on lichen-cloaked hillside with exposed rock outcrops, Wales — Small against the hillside, moving slowly

— Landscape stripped bare

There's a hide near the river. Through its window, the woodland interior frames itself: bare trunks receding into winter shadow, the vegetation at the margins doing its complicated thing of dying and not quite dying at the same time. The window gives you the image pre-composed. You either take it or you don't.

In January there'll be dippers working the Marteg. In December there was lichen, the river, and the aerial structure of a landscape stripped to its bones.