The recent snowfalls, together with gusty squalls, have been sculpting the fields around Berthem in ever-changing ways. Early this morning we took a dirt road that initially seemed clear but further along the winds had created deep drifts and the cold had frozen the melt water underneath so that the road became all but impassible. And it was there, in the middle of nowhere, that we came across a 4 x 4, mysteriously buried to its bodywork in the middle of a a muddy field. In Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, Llewelyn Moss comes across an abandoned pickup truck while out hunting and we half-wondered if we would similarly find the remains of a drug deal gone wrong. But the truck was empty and it soon became apparent what had happened. Instead of backing down the narrow dirt track to a place where he could turn, the driver had backed off the road into the field, thinking that he would be able to do a U-turn. But the freshly-ploughed earth was deceptively sodden. The more the driver had pushed the accelerator, the deeper his tyres had dug, until the truck had sunk down to its bodywork (the roof was covered with mud spray). He had had no choice but to abandon his vehicle and would doubtless come back, once the snows had melted, with a tractor to pull the truck out of the mud bath.
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