A story

An icy draught whistled through the flimsy,moisture drenched rear window of the 78 beige citroen diane as it whizzed along a shadowy white thorn and ash bordered country road. It was just before dawn,on an exceptionally chilly January morning.I was sitting in the faded and uncomfortable rear seat of the car,arms folded against the cold, while the driver and front seat passenger engaged in animated conversation about the joys of nature and the outdoor life. I pulled my dark woollen hat down more tightly on my head and thought to myself that one did not have to leave the confines of this particular vehicle to be exposed to the harsher elements of the great outdoors

"Left after the next telegraph pole" Sean gestured and Pat swerved the diane onto a narrow, potholed, grass centred bog road."Looks like cars dont come down here much" Pat said as he gripped the wheel with intent, and guided the French designer bean can down the route used mainly by rabbits and local farmers. The cars headlights lit the bumpy, undulating way for nearly ten minutes untill Sean announced"See that wooden gate, You can park there"
 

"Brrrrrr , its a cold one" Pat shivered as in the half light of early dawn all three of us unfolded ourselves from the inside of the car. Early morning mists were lifting and vanishing like ghostly whispers as we plodded overland towards the fen. The drowned soil tried to suck every wellington booted step downwards as if to try and nourish itself with our presence. The frosty air and quietness of the early morning gave a subdued echoing quality to our intermittent conversations as Sean stopped us now and then to point out some wild plant or animal.

The ground became more bog like as we approached the lakes' reed mace and bull rush fringes with dark green stands of needle tipped rushes grouped like sentinels around its approaches. " Stay really quiet now" Sean said as we blended ourselves in among the brown capsule tipped bull rush stems. Really quiet, was not part of Pats normal behaviour and and one could see that he struggled to follow Seans'  instructions..

It was a cold windless morning, probably a degree or two above freezing. The lakes surface was clear and smooth mirrowing the light grey cumulus cloud drifting over head. Occasional rays of early morning sunlight stippled the lakes surface and danced among the reed mace stems where the three of us crouched in hiding.To a casual observer the only evidence of our presence at the lakeside, were our condensed exhaled breaths. Sean interjected quietly with little gems of knowledge about the origins of the fen. "It was formed after the last ice age ended ten thousand years ago" he said while drawing Pat's attention to a small flock of diving duck feeding out on the lake 
 

A coot called from the far reaches of the lake as images of the ice encased landscape that once existed here excited my imagination. In my minds eye I saw a great ice sheet, an earth shaper,hundreds of feet thick, and so dense from its overlying mass, it gave off a hue of aqua marine from its terrifying depths. I imagined great booming sounds echoing across a forbidding landscape, as ice shifted and fissured within the glacier, as it moved imperceptibly like a gargantuan creaking galleon.
 

I shifted into a more comfortable position as moisture laden bull rush stems brushed again' st my face, stirring me out of my reverie."The fen formed in a hollow scooped out of the landscape by an overlying glacier".Sean informed us as a wave of nervous calling spread through the feeding flock of duck. Sean motioned us to stay very still, for he knew from experience that this type of behaviour was often an indication of the presence of some predatory animal or bird of prey. Pat whispered"What is it Sean?" and as if on cue there was a disturbance out on the surface of the water a stones throw from where we lay camouflaged  among the reeds.

To our surprise and delight a flat squat whiskered face of an otter emerged from the water and the fact that it held a pale yellow two foot squirming eel in its jaws increased our excitement. The water dog started to swim directly towards the lake edge where we were in hiding and climbed out of the water with its prize right in front of us. Amazingly, the otter, although on high alert did not sense our presence and with audible salivating, grasping and gripping sounds,as it tried to subdue its writhing, slippery prey with its jaws and feet.

Patience in watching nature can sometimes be rewarded with some jewel of intimacy with her wild creatures, and this scene was our reward during those precious moments at the  fen, but what happened next could never have been planned or expected, and was like something out of a jungle survival story.
 

Sean and I were so absorbed by the scene unfolding in front of us that we had not noticed the increasing excitement of the eccentric Pat and the fact that he was leaning slowly forward in a way that made it look like he was ready to pounce. And that is exactly what he did.

Back on the road, our destination Pat's house Sean and I laughed nervously as Pat drove erratically, chatting and gesticulating, excitedly about the mornings events. I sat apprehensively in the back seat.very aware of Pats lack of attention to his driving and also to the slithering sounds coming from behind me in the small boot of the diane.It seemed to me that the eel was still alive and kicking and trying to make its escape. Jokingly Sean asked"What s your plans for the eel Pat?" "Dinner" Pat replied, his blue mischievous eyes twinkling as he looked back in my direction hungry for a reaction."Great" I smiled uncomfortably as I tried to give the impression I was agreeable to his line of thinking.
 

Pat's kitchen was a small and felt crowded with the three of us in it.The still very alive eel had been scooped up and dropped unceremoniously into a large red bucket where it writhed uncontrollably. I could see its jet black wild eyes looking at me and it made me uneasy and even more so when Pat chopped of it's head on a well used wooden chopping board."Now I will show you how the French cook eel" he said with gusto. I looked at the slime covered head and staring eyes of the decapitated eel and wondered at the days events..
 

This eel had escaped death twice that day before it met its final demise in Pat's suburban kitchen. It had escaped certain death from the jaws of an otter in a watery fen. which was formed in the aftermath of an ice age,and survived a potential road traffic incident as it travelled in the boot of a French designer motor vehicle. Now it was going to be a meal for three human beings.
 

An old, blackened pan was placed on a hot stove and finger sized portions of fresh eel were dropped into hot oil and allowed to cook and sizzle "Look, they're still moving" Sean said amusedly. To my astonishment the eel portions were still wriggling as they were being cooked and I was amazed to to think that even the individual portions of eel were still trying to cling to life." What a tough animal" I thought to myself. Three plates were set, knives and forks were  provided and I tasted fresh otter caught eel for the first and probably the last time in my life.

Looking back I still can see the lifeless, smoky black, eyes of that eel and how it had affected me. I wondered how it had any real sense of truly existing or was its experience of life confined to explosions of  energetic unconscious reactions to its environment and the drive for survival.In contrast I lived and functioned dominated by a continual waves of reactive emotions to people and my environs. The eel just seemed to exist, and it was my thoughts that gave it meaning and life.

So back then as the three men, of different personalities and differing emotions shared in natures bounty it may not have seemed clear at the time, that this was a moment of consequence.  It was for me a rite of passage, marked by the sharing of a meal of otter caught eel,and the shaping of a character, as life passed ever onward, like the inperceptiible and relentless earth shaping advance of a great ice age glacier.

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