The lake in Winter

Maybe the tree fell, perhaps it grew that way out across the lake where there was more room, more light than on the tangled, crowed banks. But now, like a gnarled finger, it points across the wintry lake.

Part of me - the little boy part, I guess - wants to clamber out along the tree, to see how it feels perched at the end. Probably like sitting on a branch looking out at a lake but somehow, in an undefinable way, it would be better than that.

The lake would be mine, a kingdom of chilly waters enclosed within the hills, their rocks and their wooded banks beside the waters. I could command it, sweep my arm across and see it respond to my presence. I would be its master.

But that isn't to be, I left that magic behind with my nine-year-old self. Now a different spell is cast, I am instead struck by its beauty, the stark appeal of a soft winter scene beside the lake.

....

Get off my pond!

Yesterday featured a meander around Ogden Water a Yorkshire Water reservoir managed as a country park by Calderdale Council. And the Council do a good job of managing - we met a litter picker on the path so they're keeping up to it at the weekend and the place is well kempt with paths and fences right for the rural setting. And we didn't mind too much that it was spitting with rain and rather breezy. Especially since in the woods that's broken up through the trees.

So there we were meandering through, breathing in the great smell of a damp pine wood, listening to the chaffinches shouting their heads off (it always amazes me that such a loud noise can come from such a tiny body) and we arrive at the little pond beyond the bridge at the head of the reservoir. Last time we were there it was a lovely domestic scene with mum and half-a-dozen ducklings swimming about in the still water.

This time it was a different picture, the cute bliss of the ducklings had gone and was replaced with this chap:

And when a couple more mallard drakes arrived his response was:

Get off my pond!

....

An Echo of Old Magic and Old Song

A good firm path - dry, with a good surface. Firm, secure fencing. Someone cares for this place - or cares enough to separate me from the woods. Perhaps the steepness of the slope and the looseness of the surface motivates that someone - he or she would rather those passing through didn't slide, tumble and crash into the river below. Or maybe there are beasts in the wood.

I hope there are beasts - or at least the memory of beasts. The wolves, bears and boars who once owned these woods - and the magic folk too. The trolls, the gnomes - and is that flash of white a glimpse of the unicorn. It can't be a wind blown supermarket carrier bag, can it!

On a wild night you must stay even more firmly on this path. Or else suffer the fate of Tam Lin - perhaps without a true love to save you from that mad ride into the gates of Hell.

gloomy was the night
and eerie was the way.
this lady in her green mantle
to miles cross she did go.

with the holy water in her hand
she cast the compass round.
at twelve o'clock the fairy court
came riding o'er the mound.

first came by the black steed
and then came by the brown.
then tam lin on the milk-white steed
with a gold star in his crown.

she's pulled him down into her arms
and let the bridle fall.
the queen of fairies she cried out
young Tam Lin is away.

The darkness is always close by - the legends are part of our heritage. The magic of these places - however safe they're made - is the deep magic of England. Step off the path and into the woods and listen carefully - you may hear the song of our ancestors. A song of woods, of trees and of the security that light and a clear view bring. It is a fine song.

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Nuts!

Well that's how it feels sometimes. You look out the window in the morning, the radio sputters out whatever news items our masters have decided we merit hearing and then Classic FM play more Vaughan Williams - I never knew just how much that man wrote (or should I say steal as I don't think he actually created an original tune in his life) and I certainly have no idea why he gets played so much. Especially that screeching, squealing, "Lark Arising" - it's like an out of tune banshee.

Nuts, I say. Nuts.

In this case walnuts - which aren't my favourite nuts - but which are pretty fine in Kathryn's banana cake. Walnuts, of course, feature in a (probably forbidden) piece of doggerel:

The dog, the wife and the walnut tree,
The more you beat them the better they be.

I'm not about to conduct this experiment - I don't have a dog and Kathryn punches harder than I do - but the beating of nut trees is an interesting idea. And here's why:

‘The old custom of beating a walnut-tree was carried out firstly to fetch down the fruit and secondly to break the long shoots and so encourage the production of short fruiting spurs’: M. Hadfield British Trees (1957).

Fascinating stuff! And, as I said at the start of all this, nuts!!

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The Glade....

The moment when we spy the break in the gloom is a time of magic. Not - as so many say - the instant when we step into the glade but the time we see the sunlight through the trees. A ray of light that catches the bracken, glints off the young leaves of a sapling and, if we're so lucky, catches a beast in its place.

It is when we see the sunlight that the change takes place. That's when our shoulders unhunch and we straighten our backs. And a little smile slides across our face as we quicken our step towards the brightness.

That moment will come. There will be sunlight shining on the forest glade. We will relax in a moment of sheer joy. Life will be good.

Before we must plunge once more into the darkness of the wood.

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The tallest tree....

Bumped into Lesley's 'Wheniwas8' blog - lovely stuff you should all go there and enjoy. Anyhow it got me to thinking - partly remembering when I was ten and partly thinking a little bit further back into those memories. Back to when I was eight.

Back then I had two ambitions - to kick my sister harder than she could kick me and to get to the top of the tallest tree before she did. I'm not so sure I achieved either of those things but the trying of them was important! And my route to the very tippest top of that ash tree - the swaying pinnavle of all the world - was so much harder that hers.

I guess I'm still trying to get to the top of that tallest tree. Still competing with anyone or everyone who passes my way. Losing too often for my sanity or good temper. One day I shall be there - on that tippest top. And I shall shout and scream with delight just like I did in 1969.

...

Wednesday Whimsy: Woods, spirit and the god of England

England is a land of woods. Or perhaps a land of once-woods – where trees once were.

I like to think that, with the support of the Woodland Trust, The Tree Register and various local tree trusts, our land will once again be a place of woods. I recall visiting the Tamar Valley and, looking out across its woods, being told that in the heyday of arsenic mining just 100 years before there were no trees at all in that view.

England isn’t a land of forest or jungle – our woods are not wilderness, are not impenetrable. Our woods are not unkempt. Our woods are not places to fear. Men work in our woods – keeping them clear and growing, logging, copsing and cropping the trees. Woods shelter deer, badgers, martens and a host of birds. Woods provide jobs and incomes, pleasure, food and beauty. They sing to us and contain our story.

But there is still more. Woods – and wood – sit right in the soul of the Englishman. Not just Heart of Oak – a celebration more of ships than trees – but the spirit of the trees still moves us perhaps more than that of the moors or of the fields. Above all else, the Green Man is the god of England. Other places have lost their secret foliate face – it still peeps out from carvings in stone but no longer lives. Here in England the Green Man still lives, laughs and has space to wander.

The Green Man isn’t someone to fear but, as Mike Harding wrote, his roots go back a long way and his manifestations are many:

"His roots may go back to the shadow hunters who painted the caves of Lascaux and Altimira and may climb through history, in one of his manifestations through Robin Hood and the Morris Dances of Old England to be chiselled in wood and stone even to this day by men and women who no longer know his story but sense that something old and strong and tremendously important lies behind his leafy mask.

One of the earliest English epic poems Gawain and The Green Knight may refer to yet another manifestation of the Green Man as the God that dies and is reborn. He is the Green Man, Jack in the Green, the Old Man of the Woods, Green George and many other things to many other men but one common theme runs through all the disparate images and myths, death and rebirth and the Green that is all life."

Above all else, we know that if we leave things, the trees return. That those trees will break stone, turnover paving and cover over the vain constructions of man. As Ian Anderson put it:

Jack, do you never sleep ---does the green still run deep in your heart?

Or will these changing times,

motorways, powerlines,

keep us apart?

Well, I don't think so ---I saw some grass growing through the pavements today.

And the trees will follow!

...

Leaves!

There are many joys to having a large garden and this includes having mature forest trees - we have ash, rowan, willow, holly, yew, oak and beech plus an array of rhododendron. All magnificent, glorious and bringing pleasure.

Until autumn when the problems with trees hits in - leaves. Vast blankets of leaves. Leaves drifting into the front room. Leaves making the steps into a slide. Leaves clogging up the pond and the fountain. Everywhere you look - bloody leaves.

And those leaves can also bring about the second of the problems - neighbours. Not that I fall out with the neighbours you understand (and, with a large garden we have around 20) but they don't have the same happy relationship with our trees. The trees fill their gardens up with leaves, take away their light and, when high winds come, lead to worries about trees blowing over onto garages, cars or garden sheds. When Sir Anthony Steen got into trouble for his expenses, I sympathised with his tree problem - if not his source of payment!

I've only 50 or so trees - can you imagine just how many leaves 500 would generate! It would justify one of these rather than one of these.