Can I really be so fickle? Is my heart to be captured purely by proximity and the lack of effort needed? Perhaps. Nothing if not pragmatic, I have to accept that as much as I love the marsh and as faithful as it has been to me during the 18 years that it was (more-or-less) just at the end of the road, it is now further away. If I am to walk the ‘long river walk’ – all eight miles of it, then it means starting at the other end of the circuit, and the boring bit which I was willing to accept as the last leg to home comes earlier and is not so palatable in that placement.
So the question rises: if not the marsh then what has so quickly stolen my affections in its stead?
Woodland.
I could argue that turning my attention there is as if to make peace or atonement for the wreckage of Clive’s mini-wood, necessary clearance, to stop the bungalow from being root-torn to shreds, and my remaking of the garden in a way that sees trees restrained to shrub-state, but that'd be over-stating the cause. In truth it is just because the nearest green-space to my front door leads me across the open parkland down into the Heronry.
There is something about walking into a wood. It is like walking through a mediaeval gateway into a Cathedral Close. Immediately the sounds of the outside world are muted, and you feel injuncted to be silent, reverent, to slow your pace, and to look around with something approaching awe.
You are invited to listen.
You are encouraged to look up, or down, or in any direction around...but such looking is curtailed, directed, focussed. Look at the small things. The seeds. The fungi. A leaf. A pool.
In the woods, there are no grand landscapes, only intimate moments. You cannot look back and see how far you have come, nor can you look forward and point out your goal. The woods show only a fraction of their winding paths. Don’t look back, they say, don’t look ahead, look here, look now.
I walk into this particular wood on a damp autumn day. Summer had continued late and hot. When Autumn arrived, she slunk in, trailing heavy rain clouds and moods just as sullen and wet. No mist or mellowness just yet. Still sporting Summer’s greenery, still carrying her predecessor's flowers, even while trying to bring forth her own fruiting bounty, it’s no wonder she wasn’t her usual blowy, breezy self, scattering leaf jewels before her. Torrential downpours threatened to tear away my overflowing gutters, probably not yet cleared of decades of leaf-fall. Then paused. Then came again. As if Autumn had had enough of Summer and was trying to chase her away, telling her in no uncertain terms that she had outstayed her welcome. Go now, the message read. Let things settle and die back.
That is the message of Autumn. Let things settle she says. Allow the fruit to ripen, and fall.
Ripen, and fall. To be gathered in. Autumn is a time of gathering. Of home-coming. Harvest home.
But Summer does not want to let go this year. Even as the leaves are starting to turn, new flowers are blooming in my new garden. Weeds that I didn’t get around to pulling have grown up into sunflowers, like fabled ducklings into swans, bright and showy, exuberant. I love them for being there, but somehow also know that it is time that they weren’t. The grass is still growing, and it’s too wet to cut. Besides, the old second-hand mower doesn’t fill me with confidence and I want something I have more faith in.
The garden is new. The house is not yet fully fitted out. So maybe I too am still growing, creating, and not ready to bring in my own harvest of the year’s endeavours.
Down in the woods though, things are more in tune with the turning of the year. The first golden leaves brighten the dark paths. The hollows are refilled, bright ponds catching the light, showing more the sky than can be seen by simply looking up. A fallen birch holds a bowl of light, a blurred refraction of other life, a water altar that I failed to capture but smudgily and out of focus.
Down in the woods we’re slowly wrapped in Autumn’s own aroma of damp and vibrant decay, with a back-note of wood-smoke and we know – the trees and I – that the year is turning, whether we’re ready or not. Summer is weakening and will depart. We will take what harvest there is and start to husband our resources against the Winter and prepare them for another year.
