alder

I walk down a track of orange, gold, yellow and blood red. The leaves left to rest beneath the trees to left of me and right remain un-crunched by dogged boots. They lift a little in the breeze as if to acknowledge my passing, landing back down again without a single sound, not even a whisper. On the track I recognise, through the mud and squelch and slidden bootprints, oak, ash, sycamore, beech, chestnut, lime, alder and hornbeam, but only just. The weight of all these walkers have pushed the embrowned leaf fall down, down, down towards the earth’s core or chewed them up as I might chew spinach leaves into a pulp. Standwater is everywhere. I see the still standing grasses and woodland plants I cannot name showing only their heads as they fight to rise above the massive rainfalls of late. This, I tell them, is how it will be from now on, so next year, grow taller. They waggle at me as a light puff of what was a full blown gale yesterday ripples the water. Peering down I see the almost astonishment of what lies at the bottom, rocks, stones, grass still green, for now, waving, and drowning.

Long tail tits piccolo around me although I can rarely see them, so tiny are they, but I know their voices so still whisper a greeting. A robin follows me, or does it lead me? I ask this because at the point when I might well take the short route, it bobs on a branch or two beyond the cut-down and eyes me, black, pitch, a challenge. Ok, I say, I know, I say, I should, I say, and I will. Sunlight dapples the track lifting colour to my eyes, a shine on the rocks like a rainbow, as on the surface of stand water, oily and still as something that isn’t alive at all. Any stillness here is a surprise and a thrill because the weather is a………a what? A bully? Sometimes. A mover and shaker? For sure it is aye that. A music maker? Yes, that’s it. The sound of island weather, the way it alters colour faster than I ever could on a canvas, melding, blending, fracturing, defining, the sound of a lead violin in a wild space, the orchestra in full battle mode. You need a conductor I shout above the storm, yanking open the door and holding tight so I don’t head off, like Dorothy, to Oz. Not that I would mind that much. It sounds like an awfully big adventure.

At the funny bone of the elbow shaped track I no longer have to duck in order to see the skerry. White water, even on a calm day, lifts like white curls around the rock, the surface of which is almost invisible to boats but don’t be fooled as one fishing boat was all those years ago, for it is wide as a mountain and just as high, or is it low? Grounded at the earth’s core, or so I imagine, solid, silent, no flag-flying attention-seeking Halloooo! No. Only the white baby curls and a good navigation system will avoid you disaster and just offshore. So why no ducking? Because the flipping hooligan we ‘enjoyed’ recently, that discordant orchestral mayhem that sucked in and blew out windows, split ancient pines and stripped my roses, also turned even the most determined leaves into tiny flying saucers. Wrenched from the mother ship and without independent flight control, they probably lie now beneath my slidey boots, muddied and rendered mulch well before they were ready. And that is life up here, out here, here on the sticking out end of a big rock combination, granite and basalt, unlikely mates, a marriage of opposites, apposite, no escape and for centuries. The thought rolls my eyes and huffs my breath. Well Done, I mutter. Rather you than me on that one.

A pair of hooper swans are still here. When around 80 of them floated in with a gentle piping honk (or 80 gentle piping honks) a while ago and then left I had thought them gone. I wished them well on. their way, congratulated them on their journey from Iceland and yet this pair remain yet. Weather, again. Where we once knew the bite of a cornet, dis-cornet, at this time of year, encouraging all of those with any sense, those untethered to this land such as cows, horses, sheep and humans, to elevate in search of warmer climes, we have introduced confusion. It is mild here, wet, yes, windy, yes, but mild.

I understand a swan’s dilemma.

I walk today, the same route, the ever-changing route, the route that is a right fidget. It never settles, even over a mere 24 hours. The story of this landscape can never, could never be captured in a photograph, a still, for it is never thus. Every leaf changes, every blade of grass. Blue beetles march the track one day and are gone the next. Moss rises emerald and fades dry the next. Water courses overflow, lifting the water plants high enough to drown and then, the next day lower them gently back into the mud. Even natural springs (my absolute passion) falter if rain is cut off for days. I call them sassy. Yesterday we were a torrent. Today we trickle. it just shows how adaptable we are, don’t you think, you moving person? And the otter doesn’t mind, being as flexible as we. Yes, I acknowledge. I agree. It thinks me.

At this point, and at many other points, I am the moving person. I walk through the trees, wander deep into the woods to follow the tracks of night deer, as they stand still. Watching me. I know they are, just as I knew when I passed by a group of humans who drop silent. You just know they are watching your ass and it isn’t always comfortable knowing suchlike. I don’t feel the same way about the trees. They are older, kinder, wiser after all. Even as they are the still people and cannot walk with me, they do inside my mind. This huge beech tree, this spindly sycamore with no room to spread her arms, this alder, this willow. I notice and pause to connect with a fallen larch. You were so rooted and for so long my friend and then you fell. Did you decide that for yourself? I see others who are coming to their end of days with their bark peeling, or that suffocation of ivy determined on strangulation grasping at their bodies, and I wonder when they will simply and perfectly and politely decide to lay down their burden of care. All that growing, that big fight for light, those nesting birds and the endless production of buds and nuts and cones as food for those who, in turn, perpetuate the very you-ness of a tree. This fallen pine is still breathing. Something of the roots remain buried deep inside the nourishing soil, still offering food to flight life, insect life and to creature sanctuary. Wild honeysuckle snakes across the limbs, the flowers not yet beckoning me to a sudden catch of fragrance. Brambles entwine the trunk, snaking like a hug, the promise of blackberries for the autumn birds. I move on.

There are dead trees, stand-ups, arrested in flight. They stopped. Just like that, or so I think. But I know enough to know that this old tree that now looks like a home for a Hobbit, knew fine it was dying. I just didn’t notice. The woodpeckered holes tell me that this old, dead, tree is still offering life, even in death. The mosses that have grown from ground to about breast height, agree with me. Fingering the moss I can see macro-life. Tiny creatures that need this moss on this dead tree in order to survive their own little species. A bumble bee comes in. I hear it and know it is coming to check on me. After all, I am in the natural world now and a visitor. It rounds me once, twice, thrice, nearing at every swoop. I pause, stop my feet. Hallo, I say, Friend. And it is gone. It smalls me. I see how much of nothing I am in this world and how, if I was a bumble bee, I would so need to check out this stomper yomper who has just invaded my space.

On the return flank of this wander I stop beneath an almost fairy circle of beeches. They are hundreds of years old and, so the story goes, planted as a hedge. To be honest, this makes little sense to me, but wait. I am in my this century thinking that every poor planted soul will be trained and clipped and felled and carved into shapes. Back then this would never have been in anybody’s mind. It is, I believe, a sickness. We have forgotten how important natural nature is to our own future. These trees are millions high now, fat bellied and with outlimbs that defy gravity. Crisp cool barked and solid with deeply strong roots, these big boys are, quite simply, magnificent. I see them daily. I say hallo but they, I notice, are a bit distant, not like the chatty hazels, the moody silver birch dancers, the scholarly alders. The willows too, are friendly. But these beeches hold something, a wisdom. They have seen generations pass this way. They have watched fire and flood, death and life, beginnings and endings. They are silent.

I respect that.