This week I’ve been working on the conservation of an old slate monument in Lamorran Church in South Cornwall. It is a wooded and watery area. The Fal Estuary and its branching tributaries divide the land into small peninsulas, which makes for winding and slow progress by road. This ambling journey leaves the impression of being out in the sticks, when in fact Truro is only a few miles as the crow flies.

The church lies on the wooded bank of one of these estuary branches. When we arrived at work in the morning the tide was up, and the trees and sky glinted on the surface of the river. When the sky was overcast and the light diffuse, the estuary showed its murky, brown colour. The canopy of old oak forests on the other bank is thick and undulating, running unbroken to the waters edge and spilling dead trunks and branches out onto the muddy banks . It seems, from the church, like a small Amazon, in its watery lushness.

Each time I left the church over the course of the day, the tide had ebbed lower. At low tide the estuary is a muddy depression between the woodlands. Egret stalk the mud with their necks coiled back to their shoulders, long bills stabbing the air with each step. A trickling stream carves a narrow meander through the middle. It is clear that almost all the water at high tide is seawater, not river water. This is more of an inlet of the sea than an estuary; the great melting at the end of the last ice age flooded the old river valley as sea levels rose.

This week, a flock of Canada geese had moved into the Estuary. They were gathering round a bend in the river so I couldn’t see them, yet they filled the sleepy valley with cries of hoarse laughter, growing into a disordered chorus of honks as more birds picked up the call. Maybe there was some unseen drama playing out in the flock, a fox seen stalking the shore, but it sounded more like socialising, like the birds joining in and making their presence known, celebrating their numbers. These calls swelled to full force before petering out with a few stray honks. You felt the hush of the valley when they stopped. Sometimes an ordered V would fly over, stiffly paddling the sky, jabbering together to communicate their position, then continuing in silence, a dark arrow overhead.

The forest seems more untouched than it is. Trees do line the banks of the estuary, running along almost every twisting arm of it. This shouldn’t create the impression that the area is densely forested- behind the banks, cleared areas of farmland stretch away. It is a narrow corridor which the life of the forest has to live within. The river Fal itself has been infamously polluted with raw sewage by the outdated treatment system on the river. The river was exposed to raw sewage for 7500 hours in 2021.

But nature is still here. The wooded banks are not overdeveloped and there aren’t houses under the oaks. These inlets are-somewhat inadvertently- protected by their position within the huge Tregothnan estate; saved from capitalistic exploitation by the remnants of the landed Gentry. It is now inside an AONB, which will somewhat secure the future of this place, though the water flows in from elsewhere.

Its still wild enough here to feel in nature, to feel the presence and patterns of other, non-human, lives being lived around you. The sea comes in, a travelling Osprey curves out of sight, tail fanned wide. The sea retreats, and the waders scuttle over the mud.