Walking on water
Often seen but never studied, every humble puddle tells a story, reveals Tristan Gooley
Often seen but never studied, every humble puddle tells a story, reveals Tristan Gooley
DOn’t step in that,’ we cry out, knowing that we’re powerless against the puddle-splashing urge. It’s up there with popping bubblewrap and laughing at animals doing silly things. Behold the charm of a simple pleasure. Money can’t buy a splash in a puddle. they’re humble creatures—they don’t shout for our attention, they whisper. Every puddle we see is trying to tell us something about our surroundings and, if we slow down a little and offer them our curiosity, what they reveal will surprise and delight.
the first trick in learning the language of puddles is to banish randomness from your view. nothing we see outdoors is random; if it appears that way, it’s just a sign that we haven’t spotted the pattern yet. A puddle is reminding us that there is a small reservoir of water in one neat spot, but none all around it and it’s whispering ‘why is that?’. the answer to this question is the key to puddle-reading.
Over decades of giving puddles the attention that they deserve, I’ve discovered that there are families of puddles. there are turn, junction, navigator, seismometer puddles and more. On a walk along a lane, you might encounter three puddles in short succession, each one with a different message for you.
Okay, I’ll come clean—not all puddles are magical, some are just logical. If there’s a place on a muddy track where tractors or even bicycles regularly turn, then you’ll find turn puddles there after rain. Any tyre turning churns up the ground and leaves a nice little hollow for the water to gather in.
Whenever two tracks cross, we’re likely to see junction puddles. Junctions are places of double wear and tear and, if farm machinery is plying these lanes, then the most dramatic puddles will be found here. It won’t shock anyone to read that a tractor churns up mud and this forms puddles, but what’s
more surprising is how something as small as a rabbit can. Next time you walk along a footpath, look at the undergrowth on either side and you’ll soon spot the places where the animals are crossing.
Deer, badgers, foxes, rabbits and other pedestrians that share the path have different crossing points to us and this leads to a small extra amount of erosion at these points. The next time it rains, the water is more likely to collect in places where both animals and people have been walking.
It astounds me how many avowedly country people are surprised to discover what the sun gets up to. Only a couple of days ago, I ran a course for about a dozen outdoor zealots. I asked them: ‘What direction is the sun in the middle of the day?’ There were lots of bemused faces and two who were brave enough to give an answer: ‘Overhead!’
I applaud their courage, but it was my job to point out politely that they were wrong. The sun never has been and never will be overhead from anywhere in the Uk—or Europe, for that matter. Or anywhere in the world that’s not in the Tropics. The sun is due south in the middle of the day, every day of the year.
This leads us to the navigator’s puddle or, to give it its full and formal name, the Natural Navigator’s puddle. We get more puddles on the south side of tracks, because this is where the sun struggles to reach. During dry spells, the puddle may have evaporated, yet its shape can still be seen and you will also notice a darker colour to the mud along the southern side of any track.
If you’re not afraid of a little ridicule, I recommend getting down on your belly to inspect puddles properly. The seismometer puddle is one that reveals the slightest vibrations: approaching cars, horses or the weakest of breezes. All you need is to find something small and distinct in the distance and look at its reflection in the puddle. Any disturbance in your environment will now cause the tiniest of fluctuations in the puddle’s surface and these show up clearly as a shimmy of your distant object.
I’ll never forget leaning against a lime tree and studying my seismometer puddle as the sun set over the South Downs. I was rewarded by detecting the passing of a bat as Jupiter twitched and danced on the puddle.
My friend Peter Gibbs, the Radio 4 presenter and Met Office forecaster—who I met when we were representing Newcastle against Loughborough on a Christmas special edition of University Challenge—has a theory that we know we need the rain to sustain our ‘green and pleasant land’, but we don’t like finding ourselves under it. It turns out that ‘can you make rain fall at night?’ is the most common question to confront a professional forecaster.
And here we find a clue to our love of puddles. The puddle reminds us that the rain has been and gone, the best of both worlds is now possible. We can have sunshine over a land that remains green and pleasant.
I have another theory. There’s no other nation on Earth that would find anything to celebrate in a puddle. We will always adore anything that reflects back to us how eccentric we are.
Tristan Gooley is a writer, navigator and explorer. His latest book, ‘How to Read Water: Clues, Signs & Patterns from Puddles to the Sea’ (Hachette UK, £15.99), was published last year
‘I recommend getting down on your belly to inspect puddles properly’