Sound-scenes of Norman's Pond as dusk turns to night - sleep safe

Dusk.  The gates of the Lee Valley Park are shut. The people are gone. The miles of footpaths are empty, save for crossing ducks. Beside Norman's Pond, hidden in the scrub, the dark bush crickets have begun. Gulls cry out. On tepid summer water, swans are swimming, slow under the gathering shadows, drippling the mirror-still surface for food. Their calls bounce and echo across the empty lake. Melding with the sound of passing trains. With the tidal flow of the A10, London's artery into rural Hertfordshire.   Nightfall. The waterbirds are asleep. The shadows have gone. The lake is inky black. But hooting the commencement of real dark, of the real night, hear, the first owls. Through the scrub, the crickets have sharpened their messages. And at the very edge of the water, something very small scratches at something.  Delicately, with the patience of an invisible thing.   Dead of night.  Emerging like a squeaky toy jumping through carpets of leaves, a creature on the run, or on the hop. It comes, and goes, right past the microphones dissolving into wherever. Owls hoot in the high treetops opposite, and some waterbirds have woken up again, now the air has cooled. It's shifted. Now there's a wind. The A10 sounds to the right of the horizon, and the undulating hum of the power station beyond the bird hide can easily be heard. A floating sine wave, the subtle underflow of our civilisation. Occasionally things splash into the water, and call out over the lake. Dry hanging leaves rustle in sympathy with the passing breezes.     This is peace in the Lee Valley. Edgeland peace. A peace formed out of calm rather than absence. Tranquillity, not from being away from human things, but beside them when they are at ease.