I have not been feeling so well last week or so. Nothing serious, just one of those seasonal things. Perhaps my brain pulled into an odd shape by the tidal forces of sun and moon as the equinox draws near.
We are heading towards that time of year the clocks get turned back, you don’t hear it called “winter time” in these days of spin, but given we are leaving “summer time” behind I think we can make up our own minds about what happens next.
I was meant to be finishing off blog entries for various other walks but somehow the changing season has fractured my connection with those walks and it is getting hard to return to that time and place in which they occurred, it feels like forever ago.
Among the books I am currently reading, Roger Deakin Wildwood is uppermost on the reading pile. His much deeper and considered view of woodland is no doubt going to affect my interpretation of these spaces.
Roger does not subscribe to the power of the “lone tree” but rather prefers his trees in clumps. As nature intended presumably. He cites the fact groups of oaks will assist an ailing tree as much as they can, sharing nutrients to help their friend in need.
Dog 1 has developed a rather unpleasant, but thankfully as yet rare, coughing wheeze. It has the feel of something that will end his days, I am dreading it.
So while the days are fine and the going is good, we are on something of a “greatest hits tour”. The other week we had a wander around The Naze and the tower. Very much gentle ambles for the aged.
Today, early autumnal colour is the plan. Autumn colour is not something to arrive late for, its gone by then. Any number of elements can conspire to bring a premature end to the colour. Some years it never gets the chance. So I give it every chance possible to show off. I noticed the tree in the garden going brown at the edges so it was time to visit favourite wood.
The blog contains a previous record of a stroll earlier in the year.
Then it was carpeted with bluebells, they are long gone of course and during the summer were replaced by a thick waist high carpet of ferns which obliterate everything. Spring and autumn seem to be the best wood walking times, the most dynamic seasons.
The field which leads to the wood has been harvested now, waiting to be ploughed over, I can see some golden hints in the trees, but autumn has yet to take full hold.
Within the wood itself it actually looks like winter has grabbed hold of it, there is a lot of stark and bare branch now the ferns have died back. It is a strange space, I have it too myself as always. It is not far from a road, but far enough, ten minutes of walking is enough to shake off most people.
I was determined to get a good picture of dog 1 on his own and with his pals. The big hope was to get an image which encapsulated part of my feelings towards the wood itself and also take a half decent image of the “secret water”.
The pollarded trees and sweet chestnuts creaked in the wind, leaves were falling from the canopy to join the many on the floor. We all know the paths so don’t need to see them to know they are there, hard earth packed by generations of wandering.
The walk is slow, old dog slow, which is fine. Loads of images are taken of tree trunks, a tangle of them stretching into the distance, this is ancient woodland. It has been managed, once more seriously than it is now. The great storm at the end of 1980s uprooted a lot of the trees but they were left where they fell and most have started a new horizontal lifestyle.
It is a terrible tangle really which can only be made sense of within an immediate range. By the middle distance it is just chaos, there are no distant views, just patches of sky struggling through the wood.
A few butterflies pottered about in the secluded dells, a splash of green among the brown identified the place which is optimistically labelled a pond on the OS map, a small stream feeds it, or does it drain it, but it has not rained enough for this to be running today. It is a hot day and getting hotter, the canopy shields us from the worst of the excess.
Dog 1 wanders in his silent world, looking back to make sure he has not lost contact with us, if he does at least he has the good sense to stand still, we always turn up in the end and he knows it.
The leaf litter was not quite deep enough to kick it about in childish memory. This is a “must do” for me. My most memorable walks to infant school, as an infant, was kicking up clouds of fragile leaves, I would be knee deep in them, wading along the pavements to school in my short trousers. A lost world, kids in short trousers walking to school along roads so tree lined leaf matter could lie over a foot deep in places. Some days we would walk the dog over a hump back bridge, a stream filled with watercress ambled unconcerned beneath it, considerably older than the motor car it was, and remains, an accident black spot. Back then it was just a place you had accidents, now it is a place of endless signage and hand-wringing concern.
Popping out from under the canopy, the day had heated up sneakily, the fields had been ploughed over, waiting for the frosts to break them down. Next stop “secret water”. There is not a lot secret about it, its on the OS map, but it is so surrounded by trees it is something which has to be sought.
It is a place of weeping willows, ducks and quiet. The water is not actually used as reservoir for the fields which gives nature more of a chance.
All four of us sat at the waters edge for a while. A fly landed on its back on the water. It made frantic circular ripples in the water as it fought in vain to break the meniscus. It was too far out to rescue which was a shame, even a fly’s life is more important than to die so pointlessly. Maybe it will be eaten and give its death some validity. I take some pictures of the event wondering how high up the brain scale the insect would have to be for me to affect a rescue. It is not about evolutionary scale, for all I know the fly could be the pinnacle of evolution. Peace and quiet is a matter of scale that becomes obvious watching the fly. Earth looks peaceful viewed from the moon.
Homeward bound now, it has been a nice old dog stroll.
A final picture of the woods before we left it.
I hope it is a better year for Sweet Chestnuts, the harvest was a positive disappointment last year.
As ever failed to capture the essence of the place in photograph but it was good fun trying. It just gives me an excuse to return, as if I need any more encouragement.
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