I went for a walk today- it was grey but dry, so I went into the woods.
They are beech woods, tall grey trunks with smooth bark. Absolutely bare branches and a carpet of brown dry leaves on the ground. I love it this time of year as there is no undergrowth and not a lot of wildlife around, so you get this sense of openness and silence. but not deadness- the woods seemed very much alive, like the land itself was waking up and haunting itself. Have you ever read Ghormenghast? There is a scene when Titus escapes to some woods near the castle that has that same feel.
I feel called to walk in different places from where I normally go. I follow the trail, treading carefully over the dry but somehow soft dead leaves, away from the muddy paths. I see a hollow at the base of a tree, and go over to look. The hollow is deep with a thick lining of brown leaves. I walk on, along a wide muddy track watching the trees on either side of the road, enjoying the space and quiet. I see a tree with twisted lumpy growths on its trunk, a gall or canker; another a dead spike long since broken off at the top, a holly, its leaves gleaming with the light that falls through the bare winter canopy; then I feel a pull to my right- downhill. There is a little plaque on a post, "These woodlands are dedicated to the memory of ......, by the Woodland Trust." I see a place along from it that is stripling trees, thin poles growing close together in a circle, open in the middle. I approach and find a hollow drops away below my feet, not too big but bigger than a fallen tree would make as it pulls up its roots and the soil from under it. Beech trees are shallow rooted, so they can fall easily in storms. I walk lightly- lifting my feet carefully and quietly, Now there is a place where a tree fell decades ago and has rotted almost to nothing. The mound of earth it pulled up has a badger hole in it, not used lately but there are big chunks of chalk in the soil that has been flung out of the sett and blue flints in among them. There are some big ones, with broken off ends, still coated in white chalk on the outside. I see flint as molten matter that fell millions of years ago into the sea, after being gouted out by a volcano,that gradually cooled and coalesced like hot toffee in water, hardening to globules of smooth waxy brittle stone that settled on the chalky bottom of that ancient sea, to be covered and covered by zillions of tiny dead shellfish that fell through the same water for an age before being raised up to become land. I have no idea if I am right but can think of no other explanation. I pick up 3 large flints and carry them back to the path. I look for the tree with the hollow at its base, I recognize the holly, the broken spike of dead tree and the strange warty trunk of the cankered tree. I find my way back to the hollow, leaving one flint in a different hollow that can be seen from the path. Finally I place the two flints, one like a seated female figure, another tall and narrow, bedded down in the leaves in the hollow. A queen and consort. They can't be seen from the path. I'll probably not be able to find them again myself. My job is done. I pat the tree and leave. I walk along the path now- not needing to branch away. I wave a greeting at the place where I got the flints as I pass it again, step briefly between two trees growing so closely together you can feel the energy between them, a special node that seems quite chatty. I can sense the pulse of life- sap rising in the dormant looking tree. A dog-walker calls from further along the path, so I go back and walk like a normal person.
