No. 01
The Almanac
What the marsh is doing, month by month, and the words people use to describe it. Entries are drawn from a temperate north-facing coast; your mud may vary.
Marsh calendar
| Month | On the marsh | Look for |
|---|---|---|
| January | Hard frost on the saltpans; ice plates ride the creeks. | Wigeon whistling at dusk |
| February | Fog, and spring tides begin to climb the sea wall. | Hen harrier quartering the reeds |
| March | The strandline fills with the winter’s wrack. | Sea-lavender rosettes, low and grey |
| April | First warm mud; the flats smell of sulphur and promise. | Redshank displaying from fence posts |
| May | Creek banks green up almost overnight. | Skylarks, all day, without apology |
| June | Samphire shoots, bright and brittle. | Avocets guarding scrapes |
| July | A mauve haze as sea-lavender flowers. | Bees, and people photographing bees |
| August | Heat shimmer on the flats; the water stays far out. | Little egrets stalking the pools |
| September | Equinox tides flood the low saltmarsh. | Black-tailed godwits arriving |
| October | Mist at dawn, gold in the reeds by afternoon. | Brent geese in noisy skeins |
| November | Storm surges test the wall and the nerves. | Starling murmurations over the pans |
| December | Short days, low sun, long reflections. | Short-eared owls at first dark |
Tide vocabulary
- Spring tide
- The big tides around new and full moon. Nothing to do with the season; everything to do with alignment.
- Neap tide
- The timid tides between the springs, when high water is lower and low water higher.
- Slack water
- The pause at the turn, when the sea has not yet decided.
- Wrack
- Seaweed and debris left in a line at the high-water mark. Also the marsh’s handwriting.
- Creek
- A winding channel that fills and drains with the tide. Always deeper than it looks.
- Saltpan
- A shallow, often natural, basin where seawater is trapped and slowly concentrates.
- Fetch
- The distance wind travels over open water, and so a measure of how rude the waves will be.
A note on the ruler
The ruler along the left edge of wide pages is a tide gauge in spirit only. It measures nothing, but it reminds the reader that everything here is a matter of height, and that height changes twice a day.
For real tide times, consult the harbour authority’s published tables and trust the sign at the slipway over anything printed here.