CUT RUNNING
FAR DYKE · SURVEY OFFICE
How do you file it?
Four cells sounded. Four of six sectors still settled.
BASIN 04 · THE PEEL
Ground truth and sight are the same field. You may only have one.
Four soundings across a flooded sphagnum basin with the water rising. Every pole strike tells you exactly what you stand on — and lifts the lapwing off the water, taking that sector's flight paths with it. Wading on soft peat drags your wake through the flock and blurs what little is left. Stand still long enough and the birds resettle, but only from a sector that still holds them.
You are on the near dyke with the pole. The peat in front of you is quag, and the flock is over it. Choose.
THE WATER WAITS
Paused
The basin holds its level. Nothing moves while you are not looking.
FILED
Honest
The sheet goes up on the wall with its gaps hatched, and the works will dig where you actually looked.
FIELD CARD
Two channels, one field
PROBE puts the pole into the cell you are aiming at. You learn that cell exactly and only sense its four neighbours. The strike lifts every bird in that sector and knocks the neighbours half off — that sector's flight lines are gone for good.
WADE steps one cell. Firm peat is quick and silent. Quag is slow, and your wake thins the flock even where you did not probe it. Pits take a leg once the water is over 0.20 m.
HUSH is fifteen seconds of standing still. Birds drift back only from a sector that still holds birds, and only as a coarse wetness read.
The cut is the old drainage channel. Drawn down it is a firm causeway you can run; running it is a deep cut that will take a leg. Probing it while it runs teaches you nothing at all.