Sometime during the Summer, I found myself walking along the edge of a military training ground. This was not quite as random or unexpected as it might sound. Back at home, while planning a south to north route through this stretch of country, I noticed the way the mapping app threw up a series of ominous red cross hatching. It seemed to suggest something along the lines of “Here be Dragons”. When I investigated further, I found it was listed as an active military training zone. And looking still further, I found a bristling calendar of scheduled activities, along with their anticipated noise levels. As I had no wish to be circumnavigating even minor pops or sporadic bangs, there was more work to do.
Looking at these red cross hatches on the map, and at the training schedule, I wondered if I was perhaps seeing activities for a much greater area than the one I wished to cross. I decided to call the number at the bottom of the page to find out and be sure. The person at the other end assured me that on the dates I was looking to go, there would be nothing happening there, and I could safely proceed to walk my route as planned. This I did. It was, in fact, beautifully peaceful. The area was effectively equipped with multiple layers of warning systems – flag poles, lights, boundary markers. I mused that the demarcation zone I skirted around could be described as being like a second line of defence – except the thing to be kept out of here at all costs was not the enemy, but unsuspecting civilians. Somewhere, much further inside, was the core area where the military did whatever the military does in such places. Walking beside the black and yellow markers gave me reason to reflect on what they might do in there. It was a very swampy area, with great stretches of water and clumps of what looked like fragile plants and semi-aquatic species well adapted to living in bogs. I had the luxury of a boardwalk under my feet. Had it not been there, I could imagine the way the mud would suck at one’s boots. It would not be quick travel. I visualised tanks getting bogged down, and I heard Winston Churchill’s sonorous voice proclaiming “We shall fight in the bogs”!
I may have laughed at the thought, but it really was no laughing matter. Thinking about tanks, and the conventional military training that would have taught people the knack of travel and combat in different environments, or how to use a bog like this to one’s advantage, it occurred to me that this kind of knowledge was becoming less critical, if not virtually obsolete. That is to say, it was now probably more a question of how long someone could sit in a bunker without losing focus on their screen. Drone warfare. It was possible that physical fitness would cease to be as important as it once was, too. I stopped to read a sign which suggested that the conservation values of this area had in large part been preserved because of the restrictions placed on it as a military training ground. For many years, people did not go here. This seemed like a rare case of military activity having had positive implications for nature conservation.
At other times, I traversed land and water borders. I was again reminded of the pre-eminence of drones by a sign asking people to please report any suspicious looking drones to the relevant authorities. The sign did not use the words ‘suspicious looking’ – but I assumed that’s would they would have to be in order for me to report them. I did encounter drones on a few occasions, in other places. Although I found them irritating, I did not report them to anyone. One was being flown over a bog area similar to the one I have just described, but it was a touristic area and I assumed it was being used to look at the view, because the owner couldn’t be bothered walking any further than they had. Another was being piloted by a young boy at a campsite. This was perhaps the defining image of a modern childhood – a young boy with a hoodie drawn over their head, flying a drone over a lake which they could go and experience all the delights of on foot, at ground level, for real. But, in an age of drone warfare, it was perhaps inevitable that every young boy – and no doubt some girls – would wish to be a drone pilot. Thankfully the boy’s parents seemed to get fed up with the whirring and buzzing overhead at about the same time as it was really starting to grate on me. Drone time was over, for now. Peace and privacy were restored; and the natural sound of the wind in the trees prevailed once more.
The border areas occasionally filled me with an ill-defined trepidation. There were hints around the edges – signs of surveillance – that gave a distinct impression of tension. I kept walking. It was, after all, just another part of a route stretching from north to south, or from A to B; something to be crossed or traversed as one might do on any other route. Yet there was this sense of heightened alertness. Some of the things I thought about now, were the kinds of things the very prospect of which would have made me fearful for the future once. It was not even that long ago when ideas that would have sat firmly in the realm of paranoid delusion, were now either reality or much closer to it. Still, I did not like to think where some of it might go.
Fuzzy Brown Line 