Materials: swan mussels

18 Jul

As makers we are often inspired by the materials we find accidentally… and nature is the best gifter of serenditipity. This is the story of how we found such a beautiful natural material on a local walkabout. Check back in a few weeks for what we make!

Sometimes, options are limited. A weekend in spring was one such example. The sun was shining, the daffodils doing their dance. The kids have already had too much screentime so… “we’re going out for a walk”.

Forty minutes later, the inevitable objections and moaning overcome, kids are inserted into trainers and coats and unwrapping their minty humbug bribes along the path to the pond. As ever, eight eyes are on the lookout for anything interesting. We pass chickweed and cow parsley sprouting amongst the cleavers and dandelions, something densely dark green with pale striped shoots that we can’t quite identify yet, but will come clear once it’s flowered. The walk continues past the still growing, convoluted, moss encrusted stump of a tree and the tempting form of a dumped rusty and bent bicycle (no H, you can’t take it home!).

Boggy ground avoided, we arrive at the pond and get accosted by the ducks, who expect their payment of crumbs. At regular intervals the path widens towards the pond’s edge and at each there’s an opportunity to gaze in at the water and spot things - the occasional fish, whatever object that has been recently thrown or blown in, but this time, something different.
The water’s edge is silty and sandy and not yet overgrown, so it’s not long before I spot something silvery in the water. Not a fish, it’s too still. A dark hump with a creamy silver apex. When we get our eye in there’s one, two, three, more. The water is quite murky so it takes a little working out but soon it’s obvious that they are bivalve, filter feeders and some of them are alive, some of them are empty shells.
A quick scout around finds a forked stick and with a little effort three of the shells are landed. It turns out they are swan mussels - about 10cm long, with that elegant curve and that lustrous gleam from the nacre. Into the plastic foraging bag they go.

The walk continues and it becomes clear that the pond has a thriving colony. We explain to the kids how to distinguish the live from the empty and not to disturb the live ones - until we ourselves have to break the rule. The pond level here has fallen and we find a live one here at the waterline which is in trouble. It’s carefully lifted on a trowel and deposited into slightly deeper water, where it seems to settle happily.

The walk continues, buds bursting, birds singing, children chatting - sometimes those limited options are what make life worth living. I happily take five minutes to practice slinging into the trees and we head for home.