It is an undeniable fact that some woods are more alive than others. I should know, I have walked enough of them. Some woods, like this beech woods near Upper Enham, have a thickness to the air. Once you walk in, you feel yourself pass through some kind of invisible wall, safe in the liquid embrace of the life of the forest. There is an overwhelming sense of abundance and you hear something beyond the edge of sound. You cannot but be aware of the unseen energy of the forest. Feel it pushing up against your body, providing you with some essential thing you didn’t even know was missing. There is something undisturbed about some woods and in that peace, the trees swell out from themselves, filling the spaces between them with their spirit bodies. So when you walk—a quiet, slow walk of wonder—you come to know the life of the
Here I learnt the story of the kingfisher. He has watched this stream rise and fall, empires of minnows with it. Here, at dawn, the deer come to drink and gossip and speak of where to find the most perfectly ripe buds. Here, the dragon and damselflies whizz and flit, landing hither and thither, dazzling all but the kingfisher with their glitter. Here, where it is always a degree or two warmer, silent people come and sit quietly with their breath, watching the play of light on water. The kingfisher remembers a time when there were thousands of his kin living along the full course of this stream. A time of bustling minnow empires, the occasional trout, and when the stream floor was covered in turquoise and emerald pebbles. This was the time before the miners came and left the stream with nothing but a golden, sandy blanket for a floor.
Last week, I wrote about re-establishing a practice of morning pages. Another essential practice from that period of my life which I have now resurrected is that of ‘artist dates‘. I always thought of artist dates as simply being nice to myself and eventually they morphed into the concept of ‘small joys’, partly because I have pretty much always had a low income, but also because small joys are something nice you do for yourself every day. For me that means always wearing a cool pair of socks and eating nice food. That said, I have decided to do slightly grander gestures for myself on a monthly basis. I suspect this will mainly involve either going to the seaside or going into the woods, both of which I have done recently, hence the pretty pictures in this post. I suppose the point of this post is simply: why do we not