On a low rise, beyond a screen of trees, behind a small holiday park in the Yorkshire Wolds, a brick obelisk stands incongruously at the edge of an otherwise nondescript field. It bears a plaque inscribed as follows: “Here, on this spot, Decr. 13th, 1795 / fell from the Atmosphere AN EXTRAORDINARY STONE / In breadth 28 inches / In length 36 inches…”
The words are carved in a variety of enthusiastic fonts, with the opening “Here” given particularly earnest flourish. The extraordinary, extraterrestrial stone in question is the Wold Cottage meteorite, the first from anywhere to be widely recognised as a rock from outer space. After a 4.56bn-year journey, it now rests in the Treasures Gallery of the Natural History Museum.
I love everything about this: that it happened in this relative backwater, yet was witnessed by several people (including a ploughman close enough to be sprayed with impact debris); that the landowner, a playwright and newspaperman, commissioned local craftsmen to raise this eccentric monument; that the spot is still marked on an Ordnance Survey map, but obscurely, so you have to know what to look for; and that the current landowner is happy for people to visit.
Photograph: Roy Halpin
Most of all I love that on a drear day in the dreariest of months, I can pick my way through the mud to stand and squint through icy drizzle and be reminded that sometimes, in addition to rain, sleet and hail, the sky can deliver something truly extra.
The same evening we’re streaming a new series on BBC iPlayer and boom … a meteorite plummets into in a cul-de-sac in suburban Manchester. Small Prophets is a paean to infinite and peculiar possibility. Its creator, Mackenzie Crook, understands that nowhere is exempt from the potential for pure, unwonted magic. I’ve devoured the whole series and (flashback to the childhood trauma of Watership Down notwithstanding) adored every minute.
I add this pleasing two-space-rocks-in-one-day coincidence to the personal cache of affirmative experiences that give me something like hope. A belief that if you keep walking the land – any land – with your mind and senses open, then small, slim chances accumulate and coalesce until, sooner or later, extraordinary things become almost certain to happen.
Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024, is available now at guardianbookshop.com
