One of the many things I love about saltmarsh creeks is that, unlike so many of our rivers, they are untamed. Water flows where it wills; in sinuous curves, in swirling eddies, or lies in mirror-still circles reflecting the sky. On a saltmarsh, water wanders. Tidal flows are complex. Today, on a big spring tide, water is moving in two directions in the same creek, creating miniature whirlpools where the currents meet. Water is welling up to the surface from below and, in patches, the surface resembles boiling water. Each tide is different, but water patterns transform this landscape in intricate and beautiful ways.
Muddy mazes by David North
Perhaps landscape doesn’t do justice to this edgeland. Saltmarshes are places made as much of sky and sea as of land. They shapeshift with tide and time. These are places that hold secrets close. Dangerous yet beguiling, much lies hidden beneath their surface. Here, creeks form mazes with patterns difficult to appreciate from ground level. Mud hides a world of unseen life. Perhaps only the birds know their secrets, probing their underworlds with sensitive beaks and viewing their endlessly changing patterns from high above. Plants and birds own this space, we are always the intruders into their home and it’s wise to step carefully. Respect the marsh and with luck, it may respect you - or at least tolerate your intrusion.
North Norfolk’s saltmarshes are wild – really wild. As wild as rainforests, arctic tundras or high mountains. Places of wind and tide. Spaces stitched together by water and the wild whistles of curlews. Tides pattern the saltmarsh plants: different communities occupying low, mid and high marshes. In turn, the plants pattern the saltmarsh; grey sea purslane edging the creeks, succulent samphire studding oozy mud with vibrant bright green. Sea lavender puts on a show in the middle marshes each July, delighting bees and butterflies when it transforms the marsh to mauve, pink and purples.
Listen carefully and the saltmarsh has secrets to tell. Secrets gleaned in their twice daily conversations with the sea, and others whispered to them or, overheard in the conversations of passing birds, tell tales of distant lands. Saltmarshes hold onto things. Like seahenge appearing from Norfolk sands, they hold and hide treasures from the past and speak to us of past climates, changed environments and peoples long dead who walked these marshes with stone tools, sharp flints and bare feet.
Curlew amongst the samphire by Elizabeth Dack
I may never know what deep secrets this marsh holds close, hidden within its muddy mazes. But with attention, by listening carefully, then, just sometimes, for a few timeless moments, I’m held spellbound, hearing whispered marsh stories and listening to the sounds of water and the wild callings of geese. Held spellbound watching small flocks of waders – dunlin, sanderling, curlew, oystercatcher, redshank, turnstone and sandpiper – move with the tides, and wondering where these wild birds have come from and where they will go.
These saltmarshes are places where I can gain a sense of perspective. Places where nature feels very big and I feel very small. Places where I feel somehow part of all this wonder and wildness. These saltmarshes are places that we don’t need to manage; time, tide, the moon and nature will do that. But these are places we must love, value and protect, not just for their wildlife riches or the ways they lock up carbon, nurture young fish that support our fisheries or provide amazing free flood defences at no cost to us. Our coastal marshes are some of the last truly wild places in England – beautiful, wild, mysterious, shape-shifting, timeless and holding a value beyond any words I can write.
Main image: NWT Cley and Salthouse Marshes by Mike Page