Web of paths

Somehow or other I find myself in October and still in the wood.

The night is already getting dark early.

There is one inhabited house in the centre of the wood. I am ashamed to say I walk past and round it each night. Those who live there don't know I am there. I don't think I have even disturbed the owl who uses their outhouse as a pre-prandial perch.

I don't spend time there. It is just always on the way. Whether I am going up to the pond by the fir trees, through to my own abandoned nook further up the valley slopes, or stopping by that tree to listen to the leaves and the wind and the rain.

This house is the centre of my map as the nights draw in as it never was in high summer. It is situated in a clearing made by its original forester's need for firewood. Two paddocks, a barn in a centre of a circle and around it paths spiral out through the plantation pines. Bracken. Long grass. At one stage, these paths would have had their own centrifugal pull. Now they are almost cosy in the light of a bit of moon.

A nettle patch suggesting the old midden and its nitrates has wilted in the cold of one or two nights although in general it has stayed warm. I see the old owners passing like I knew them.

These paths seems to hold me like a net. And then push me right out of the wood and back here.

Green woodpeckers

I have been over in a wood in the west of the Borders. It is private. A private space in an otherwise land of open walking. In Scotland, you have the right of way. Unless specifically told not to. Here you are told not to.

I have been living in the wood for the past few weeks. They know me in the pub even. It has been relatively easy to keep clean and tidy. I have surprised myself.

I have been waiting for green woodpeckers.

They are a large bird. And they live in this wood in numbers. You can hear their cry going from tree to tree. And in quite open places, you think you must see them. But I haven't.

Just the laughing cry that gives their old name of yaffle.

What makes the wood so attractive to them (and me) is the leas within it. Open clearings, mown flat, and surrounded by wild geranium, foxgloves still out in shady places, shot dog's mercury and russian grass and ragwort that has stolen in from the surrounding fields. The deer, whom I encounter often, keep the centre of the clearings green and short like a lawn. It is like a garden.

And I expect the woodpeckers. They like to ground feed I know.

I have met people on the road who have seen them close by. But whatever glade I choose, the ash tree, the newty pond, the balsam. The laughing cry comes from elsewhere.

I have become light and clean waiting for them. I have surprised myself.

Birling Wood

What with all the shenanigans with the woods and Forestry Commission sell off, my audio tree project has had to take a back seat for a bit. Good news is that the government forest give away sale has been called off (for the moment).

My project has evolved a bit in its scope: I am calling it Birling Wood. I have still yet to evolve a mic set up that doesn't require quite a bit of attendance. Also not sure if I can leave the equipment in the wood where I am working safely. It is quiet place apart from the section we are in the middle of felling. And my kit is not technically impressive stuff but that doesn't mean no one will be taking it.

However the act of checking has its own rewards, I almost ran into a fox the other day. A female it scarpered as soon as it saw me. We had been hidden from each other by a bend in the path. I had been looking at the start of the wild garlic cover. It already smells pungent. Then the cheerful face appeared. The same thing can happen with stoats. I once encountered a family of weasels crossing (probably their regular crossing, it is on my list to go and check this out by observation). Some big dogs had passed with their owner the other way and so my passage went unnoticed. Weasels are like a mini feather boa on a string; they move fast even on their own time. I had time to sense the younger ones playing.

So I need a mindset not dissimilar to Clym Yeobright to sit quietly and listen along with the mic, and I look forward to having it and to composing the words that will go along with the recorded sound. At the moment, I feel my lack of clothing, well the right clothing. It is hard to get things dry where I am living. My jacket has acquired that smell that rainproof material gets when it never drys out. But then you look at the leaf shards of green ramson and smell that oniony smell, the warm earth. It is not warm but something is moving in it.

It is all to look forward to.

Ruskin tweet poetry

poetandgeek poetandgeek.com 

the poppy is painted glass wherever it is seen against the light or with the light always it is a flame and warms the wind like a blown ruby

47 seconds ago Favorite Reply Delete

From John Ruskin's Proserpina: Studies of Wayside Flowers while the Air was Yet Pure among the Alps and in the Scotland and England Which My Father Knew. (1886)