The line across the marsh

Text: an original contemporary reportage-style practice extract.

From the path, the posts ran straight across the salt marsh, each topped with a white square. I took them for the remains of a fence, set there to mark where the sea had reached. The volunteer beside me had a notebook open and was looking down.

At each post she pressed a measuring staff into the mud and called out a number. She wrote it in a column headed with the date, beside another column from an earlier visit. At the fourth post, she turned back several pages, checked the number again and rubbed a mark from the margin with her thumb. The wind lifted the page. She held it flat with the staff while she wrote.

I followed her across the line, past posts whose white tops were scuffed or missing. In the notebook, some rows were filled; others had a dash where a number might have gone. She paused at one of these, looked from the page to the mud and moved on. The posts stood at regular intervals. The marks in the book did not.

On the path back, I stopped where the whole row was visible again. A white square showed above the grass near the far end; the next one did not. The volunteer was still at the notebook, turning pages against the wind. From there, the line seemed less like something drawn across the marsh than a set of places one person had to keep finding.

Analyse how the writer uses language and structure to interest and engage the reader.

In your answer, consider how the writer presents the narrator’s changing understanding of the posts and the volunteer’s work, as well as language features, structural techniques and their effects. Support your views with detailed reference to the extract.