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.

Mosses

They said today would be dry between two rainy days, and it was for most of the time but here in the hills grey clouds drifted across the sky and this afternoon, and for about ten minutes, a fine spray of rain fell and I raised my face to it, glad to receive its blessing.

I spent the morning in the forest that clothes the steep slopes looking at mosses. There aren’t many flowers at this time of year but the mosses are bright and green and luxuriant in the damp woods where water runs down the slopes and keeps them wet. I identified several species. Here and there I saw the leaves of wood sorrel which in the Spring will have white flowers with green veins in the petals hanging from them. But for now it is just the leaves, like clover, but a brighter green and sharp with the oxalic acid they contain.

Up above the forest there are narrow paths running along the steep hillside. These were once leets, channels to carry water from a lake to the old mine workings where the water turned huge wooden wheels. These are all gone now and it is hard to believe that this was a place of industry in the 19th century. It is quiet but for the calls of buzzards and kites and now the leets are filled in and make paths for people like me to wander my lonely way along them and feel that soft sprinkling of rain on my face.

Wind and Rain

A change in the weather. Warmer but very windy. The trees all swaying and creaking in the wind. I sat in the wood and let the sounds and the gusts of wind crash all around me.

All the dry brown leaves on the floor rustled in the wind around my feet buried deep in a drift of them. Sitting out among the trees I feel close to the weather and feel good about sharing it with the trees. Then the rain came in on the winds driving through the trees.

I sat wrapped in my waterproof coat with the hood up over my head. I felt like I was a wild creature in a shell or in a den with the wind and the rain up against it. But for me this is the place to be, with the wind's song  in the woods.

Rain

Rain in the forest, it's lovely - if it's not very heavy you don't get soaked but just get the rain drifting down through the trees. I spent today in he empty woods with wet rain on my face but the rest of me wrapped up warm and dry. It's a special feeling being there in the rain - feels more elemental somehow. I sometimes fantasise about running naked through the rain though not at this time of year. But even in the summer I'd be too shy to do it. Even if I knew no-one else was about.

I'm feeling good about having this place to say things like this. Whether anyone else sees it or not.