Badgers

Badgers are briefly but memorably observed along the coast, first as an uncertain presence moving through bracken and later as a single animal returning to its underground sett. The encounters give the walkers’ landscape a life beyond their own passage through it, and the final sighting makes the badger’s hidden refuge especially resonant.

Encounters on the Coast

After camping on a flat, mown field, the walkers sit beneath silver birches overlooking the lights of Sidmouth. A badger passes quietly and disappears into the bracken. It soon seems to emerge on another of the intersecting paths, then to appear again elsewhere. The narrator cannot tell whether the animal is moving exceptionally fast or whether several badgers are running through the undergrowth.

The following morning, tracks pressed into the heavy dew seem to support the possibility of several animals. The narrator concludes, tentatively, that badgers hunt in packs. The account preserves the uncertainty of the observation: a fleeting glimpse and marks in the grass prompt an interpretation, rather than establishing a definite count or behavior.

Returning to the Sett

In a later encounter, after a night spent curled beneath gorse, the narrator crawls out as the light lifts and sees a badger leave the coast path. It crosses a patchy field towards undergrowth by a far fence, its short legs moving quickly. The narrator imagines it as hungry and roused from its winter slowness, driven into the cold night to forage and now needing to return to safety.

At the wide entrance to its tunnel, the badger pauses to look around and check the air, then slips underground. The animal’s movement from exposed path to hidden sett gives the scene its quiet resolution: it disappears into a protected world beneath the ground, out of view.

Shelter and Invisibility

The two sightings offer different kinds of evidence. At Sidmouth, the badgers remain indistinct, their numbers uncertain amid the branching paths through bracken. In the later scene, one animal’s route is followed clearly to the entrance of its sett. Together, these moments make the badgers more than passing features of the coast: their movements reveal the presence of sheltered, active lives within the landscape.

The final return underground also gives the phrase gone to earth a literal force. The badger finds safety by vanishing from sight, a small counterpoint to the walkers’ exposed passage through the cold. The narrative does not explain the animal beyond what can be seen, but its pause at the tunnel entrance and quick disappearance leave the image of refuge sharply drawn.