Shadows

Since my last post I have been through a period of withdrawal and introspection.This blog has been a way of putting my persona on public display. But is it me, or just how I like to portray myself?

Then I went away on holiday and on a walk along a cliff top path I stopped and looked down the drop to the rocks below and the sea crashing onto them. What if I fell down there? There was nothing suicidal in this, but I tried to think about my non-existence. But I couldn't.If I fell down there, smashed against the rocks, I would still be in the world. I think I would still exist. But I don't know if I would be 'me'.

Yesterday a leaf chased me along a lane. What was it trying to tell me? I don't know. I feel so close to such messengers. So sensitised to them. But can't hear their messages.

These feelings are getting more intense. And I keep imagining another 'me', following me when I go for walks, watching me through the trees. Or is it someone else? My everyday life isn't obviously affected by this. I just carry on doing what I have to do. But it's like a dream compared to the real life out there. Those feelings of shadowing myself. I don't worry about this, except that I might lose the intensity of it all and just have the everyday life to live. That could happen anytime and I would be bereft.Without that other self to keep me company. But things would then be 'normal' and I'd just get on with my life.

Waterfall

It's supposed to be therapeutic to walk to waterfalls, so I walked to this one. You can only get to it if you walk, so I knew that the way would take me away from things.  To get there I had to turn off the main road where the river runs under a bridge and follow a minor road along the river to a village. This is as far as it makes sense to go by car. From the village another road - only just wide enough for a car - winds up the valley with the river rushing past in a ravine below. It turns around some sharp hairpin bends, passes a few remote farms, then becomes a dirt road to the last farm at the top of the valley. After that it's a footpath, then just a hardly visible line across some fields, which brought me to a huge ash tree where I sat, ate my lunch, and took the photograph above. I didn't meet anyone on the way except a dog that barked at me through a farmyard, quite a few sheep in the fields, and a toad that crossed the road just in front of me and was kind enough to to stop by the hedge and be admired.

So I sat and drunk the waters of the waterfall in my mind, drinking in peace and harmony even though the cascading water was anything but tranquil. I was here, and sane, and at the end of the world with a wall of rock enclosing the top of the valley. A glacier had made this. But in my moments of  escape it was a wall against the world. Feeling restored after a while I left the tree and dropped down to a lower field which was the way to the falls. This was a bog and it was difficult to get much closer without going through it. I squelched around for a while, then turned back. I could only go back by the way I had come, reversing the way across fields, the track and the narrow road. Thankfully the dog was not in the farmyard, then I saw him up on the hillside with the farmer rounding up sheep. The toad had gone too. Arriving back at the village I met a man cutting the grass on the bank outside his cottage. He wished me good day. It was a welcome back to the human world.

At home I lit a candle. Imagined myself human again. Reconciled to the world.

A Tear for Midsummer

Among the trees on the Longest Day. The idea is that it should be warm and sunny. The reality is that it is raining. But everything is so green as I stand underneath the dripping leaves. I am totally immersed in the reality rather than the idea. A tear runs down my cheek. I could think of it as symbolic of the rain falling. This is a nice idea. But the reality is that this is a tear of empathy. Not sad. Not disappointed. Shedding a tear because that is my response to the rain falling and dripping down off the leaves. I feel the tear and the rain together on my face as a blessing and a joy. I feel part of this green place, a northern rain forest where the greenness glows in the grey light under the open canopy and darkens in the shadier places where the roof of leaves is thicker. In the grey light of a rainy evening in the mid of Summer I am in the enchantment of an other world. This is not an idea. It is real.

HAWKWEED

Orange Hawkweed (Hieracium aurantiacum)

Heavy rain today after a long dryish spell.  I went out this morning to wet my hair and welcome the rain.  But now I'm having a rare sunday afternoon indoors, remembering yesterday when I took the photo above of a stand of Orange Hawkweed (also known as 'fox and cubs'). It's a plant I love to see. The books say it is a naturalized garden escape, but it seems to me to be naturally a part of the local flora besides the wild yellow hawkweeds and other dandelion-type flowers that grow tall in the hedges and field corners.

According to one book, hawkweeds were named after a belief of the ancient Romans that hawks ate them to strengthen their eyesight. A lovely idea. I hope to get some more books with stuff like that in them, maybe some of the old herbals, to add to my scientific knowledge of plants.

Re-visiting my Newly Discovered Place

Have been back to the woodland I found for a longer exploration (I love these late evenings as we move towards the Midsummer Solstice).

Here's one of the paths running down to the valley bottom:

And here's an old hollow lime tree:

The valley bottom with a wide stream running along it really is the most atmospheric place - full of dark shady groves, lighter flowery dells and a real sense of depth not just in the number of trees but the very presence of the place. Much more than a collection of trees this really feels like an archetypal forest.


'll leave this post with another pic from my first visit of some foxgloves from a bit higher up where the canopy is more open. This area has a different quality. There is more light and there are more flowers. It is also 'lighter' in atmosphere. But wonderful too in its own way.

I could dance naked in these glades if I dared. But it is a public place :O

New Discovery

I found a woodland site this weekend that is only fifteen minutes from where I live. I didn't know what was there until I decided to stop and explore. I have passed it quite often and noticed a sign for a picnic site but never explored it until now. 

It's a Forestry Commission woodland with the usual conifer plantation along one side of it, but the rest is a natural broadleaved wood. Away from the picnic site there are some wide paths where people stroll and walk dogs, but beyond that you get into lovely mature woodland where hardly anyone else seems to go. The picture above is of a sycamore that has spread into three trunks. A lovely tree that I spent some time with.  There are also some deep lanes through the trees along the lowest part of the wood, dark paths running through the shade with wood garlic and other flowers of damp woodland in an atmosphere of mystery and enchantment. I stood among the trees here with my breath held sensing something deep as I felt the presence of the wood spirits all around me. 

The wood also runs up the hillside and on the slopes there is more light and  it is more open. There was a clearing here full of foxgloves and a seat to sit on to admire the view of trees and, further away, fields stretching to the horizon.

I'll be going back to this place often especially as it is so near. Before long I will know it intimately. And I hope it will know me and accept me too.

Moth Safari

I've not had much time for blogging recently as I've been out day and night. Doing things like bat-watching and also a moth survey. We went out in the evening with a special box which has a funnel at the top and some old cardboard egg boxes in the bottom and we fixed up a torch and turned this on just after dark. The next morning we went back to see what we would find.On a warm and still night it would be full of insects of various kinds. Unfortunately, May has not been so warm as April was and some of the nights have been quite windy. But we have found and recorded lots of different moths. Here's a pic I took of a poplar hawk moth after we had removed it from the box and put it on a suitable tree:

The photo is not too sharp as there was a strong breeze and its wings were fluttering quite a bit.On that occasion we also found quite a few beautiful white ermines, though all quite small ones and several other common species. 

This was in quite a marshy area so we got things like caddis flies and other insects too, all of which we released - even the biting ones!

In the wet marshy ground I also spotted this:

The beautiful Marsh Cinquefoil with its flower heads showing an almost translucent purple in the pale light. Further out - too far to photograph - I saw the elusive Marsh Andromeda with leaves like Rosemary but flowers like Bell Heather.

Nature is so full of  deep and mysterious things.