sycamore

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Island Blog – A Swan’s Dilemma

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.

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Island Blog – A Sylvan Lift

Woods. I recommend them. Among trees, my daily ‘among’ thing feeds my soul, lifts my feet, my heart. When I walked, careless and young, my hand inside my dad’s big warm palm, there were trees but I had no idea of their sentience. I knew they kept me from rain beneath their wide leafy branches. I knew they shaded me from the intense sun-punch. I knew I could climb through their limbs. I knew they lined our suburban street. Beyond that? Clueless.

Oh my, how I have learned over time, so much, so very much. Even the street trees, those ones pushing through the confines of concrete paving slabs in shopping centres, even they have a voice and a story and more, something wonderful and something healing to share. However, my daily walk is into wild woods, no people, only the trees, the deer tracks, the otter spraint, the lift of a a snipe, although I only heard a flutter from the bracken as I walked and the flash of a lifting bird.

I turn to where the track lifts kindly gentle past horse chestnuts and up to the beeches. I say hallo my friends, as I always do. They are quiet for now as a big hooha of a hail storm has passed on through and the sky ahead is promisingly blue-ish with only a few flattened clouds, stunned I decide from the slam of sudden hail arriving on the back of a cold wind. I may just make the whole walk before the next one arrives, which it always does. On I go past the politely fallen pine, 20 paces long I count. One big limb hangs over the road just high enough above it not to poke me in the eye, fingers canting down all bare and dead. Witches fingers. I call a greeting to Finneas and Magnus the only huge pines in the fairy woods who have given me their names. I round the corner and into the straight. This part of the sylvan scape is flanked solid with hazels and birches, the chorus line. Hallo ladies, I smile at them, feeling the usual urge to burst into song, and stop to study another fallen giant, this time a beech and this one still living despite the man-high curve of yanked out roots. Its fall is held in the arms of what looks like an Eucalyptus judging by its bark. The beech fell, arms wide and this beautiful saviour caught it slap bang in the belly. Although the beech, a huge one, did make contact with the ground, the saviour may well have kept it breathing still. Eventually, I am guessing, this holding up thing will exhaust the saviour and I suppose even saviours have a life span.

Where the track curves back on itself there is another beech of whom I am particularly fond, the one who grew straight out from a rock face, turned straight for the light and who now is almost taller than the others that surround it. Brave woman, I say, as I always do. You think me of me, of many women, of all the courage and sheer determination that ensures life goes on, no matter the difficulties. As I head back for home I greet Lord and Lady Larch, Archie Larch and his girlfriend the Alder. She’s shy I think as she is always quiet when I go by. Their limbs are so intertwined that I find it hard to work out who owns which. But, no matter. They are happy together and that’s all that counts. I see the lichen, green, white, orange, the different mosses on the drystone walls, the fallen wood and in the stands of rainwater. So much colour and life.

A warbler warbles at me as I come down the last stretch. I stop to find it, but I never do. Tits chatter in the sycamores, skittering like children when school is out. One flies overhead and there is a little something in its beak, something like a feather. Nesting has begun already. As I open my door and feel the rush of inside warmth, I am smiling, refreshed, rejuvenated and ready for a cup of tea. As I sip it and reflect, I can sense a change in me, a calming peace, a sylvan lift.

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Island Blog – Wolf Whistle

Why this? Wolves, as far as I know, do not whistle. But I may await a corrective.

Today my walk took me through and beneath the same trees. But all things are different from yesterday. For starters I watch two obvious tourists walk by my garden. Obvious because their kit tells me all. Not one islander wears what they are wearing. It speaks to me to me of change and hope and what lycra can do for any of us. Lycra has a voice. It says change. It says I don’t mind how ridiculous I look in this tight-fitting lightweight kit. I, yes I, am courageous enough to put it one despite my reflective mirror. I. Am. Going. Out. I smile. Good for you I say from behind my window. I won’t snigger. I was the sniggered at too often in my life to think it is ever okay to do the snigger thing. Instead I see courage.

Wood Sorrel, anemones, violets, celandines, primroses pepper the sunlit banks. I notice where they have decided to be born. How extraordinarily intelligent. They know the sun shift, after all. The blackthorn, a Go Away tree is flooded with pinkly white blossom, promising sloes for winter gin. I stop to say hallo. I remember you, you Go Away tree, when you were big and wide, commanding sky and light, until someone decided to strop you. But, see, you didn’t give up. Courage again. The Hornbeam is leafing up, that sassy dancer who can grow just about anywhere, slanting her body like a zig-zag in order to get what she needs. Her cluster of emerald leaves, like bunched fists, are growing in confidence. Willows buzz with bumble bees, the furry catkin buds alive with music. It stops me and I stop to gaze up at the fat furry bodies of Buff Tailed, Gypsy Cuckoo, White Tail, Garden, Moss Carder and Red Tailed bumble bees. I never knew there were so many of these solitary nesters. Courage, but only to me. Not to them. Normal to them.

Around the coastline I see confusion in the sea. Ah, the twist of tidal shift for there is little wind to excite anyone, least of all the puckering wavelets. A chill swifts its way towards me, me in my summer frock. I brace it. Welcome, I say. I was a bit warm to be honest, with all this pacing in my not lycra. I notice the beech trees, those silver solid strong fathers of the wood. They stand there, saying nothing, much like a husband, but I can’t just slide by without stopping. I see the wounds of time, the catch of storms past, the limbs lost, the steadfastness of this strong trunk of life. So much support of life. Birds nesting, birds landing for a rest, shade, insects. Father Protector. I get it. Down into the going back. The going back is the home leg I guess. It is where the loop bends like a hairpin and points the walker back to where he or she began. I know it so well. An open expanse of grass, now coming, coming with brave green voice into a new space. I nod my respects to Lord and Lady Larch, who seem without marital issue today. He is broken limbed but still the old style husband and she, she, who has always known herself and her situation, flows her limbs in a confident bold. She is remarkable, hundreds old and still on the dance floor. I guess he, Lord Larch is okay with it now as he never was when she was a young catch. How peaceful it feels around them now.

Sundance dapples the track as I wander home. In the last sycamore drift, at the ending of my walk in this ever changing connection with me and nature, I hear a wolf whistle. I know a wolf whistle. I have had a few in my time. I stop, turn to see who could be there. I see nobody. Ok, I say to the track behind me, what is this? The track says nothing. I wait. What I am thinking is this. At 68 a wolf whistle is really quite exciting. I want to locate this wolf whistler. Nothing. I begin to turn, remembering what fun it was at 16 to get one as I walked by a building site. Then I hear it again and I laugh at myself. The music created by nature. The wind lifting one limb of a tree against the other. Clearly I heard what I wanted to hear.