The leaves are turning, but in some cases, such as these oaks, still very slowly.
On Sunday, I was wandering around under the oak trees in the woods for a while. It was a gloriously sunny morning and I found myself stuffing my pockets with acorns and oak leaves. For no particular reason – they just looked interesting.
Maybe I was channelling my inner squirrel. Back indoors, I thought I might try to arrange them a little bit artistically, but I’m not sure it has really worked. Never mind. I love the way that both the leaves and the acorns turn from green to brown, passing through many different pastel colours on the way, many of them ochres – the earth colours.
‘From tiny acorns mighty oaks do grow’ as the saying goes. This one has a little way to go yet, but as long as it doesn’t get broken or knocked down, its chances are good. There is a lot of light where it is growing, and currently little competition for light or space.
I felt a little menaced by a fallen branch, but all was well.
And despite it being mid-October, as I said at the beginning, there are still plenty of summery green leaves to be found.
Having read Some Kind of Fifty‘s post on the subject of how we get through the coming seasons, I got to thinking about how I deal with the short, dark, days of winter myself. I am sure I am affected by SAD, but there are some facets of autumn and winter I enjoy and I have a number of interests that help to pull me through those times until spring is truly here.
Obviously, we have autumn colours and frequently unexpectedly fine, sunny, and warm days to cheer us, but even when it’s cold and the weather less than hospitable, the days short and the nights long, I still like to get outside. With decent cold / wet weather clothing there is still a huge amount of pleasure to be had from walking in the autumn and winter. I love the many contrasts – a tree that is luxuriant and full of life in the summer sunshine may be stark, spectral, and spooky in the winter, maybe looming darkly through a thick mist. Photography seems, to my mind, more interesting in these times.
And that weather – rain! I love rain! I’m happy to be out in it, but love it especially when I’m indoors and listening to it pound on the roof. Clouds – thick and grey and looming low and moody. So atmospheric! Hopefully, too, we get some snow…
But it’s not all just going out walking. We tend to gather together indoors far more once the short days come around. Sitting around log fires in pubs, chatting, drinking beer, or at home with the log burner lit and a book and music, a time of thick soups and hot bread, casseroles, and hot drinks.
And, of course, we get those unexpected warm, clear, sunny days now and then.
Yule – the winter solstice, the midwinter point, has a great attraction for me. I think of Christmas in terms of Yule, especially as we don’t know exactly when Yule was celebrated. I suspect it was around the 25th December, since by that time carefully observing when the sun rose and set would have told the ancients that the days were indeed beginning to lengthen again. I have no Christian belief, but to celebrate that point where the days begin to draw out again makes perfect sense to me. So cut some winter greenery for decoration, get the fire going, and celebrate in whatever way seems most appropriate for you. In my case, music, books, and a few beers, naturally!
And then there will be spring, and by the end of March the days will already be longer again than the nights. I might even write a blog post on the subject.
January’s project was to tidy up the scrappy notes I had on my family tree and fill in a few of the gaps. Successful? I reckon so.
Parish Register from the eighteenth century – not one of my scrappy notes
It’s in much better shape than it was this time a month ago, and I feel I now have a developing narrative; I’m beginning to know a bit about the day to day lives of some of my ancestors, in a way that makes them real people rather than just a series of names and dates. Working class folk in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – poverty, sickness and, frequently, early death. Large families. Both rural and urban poor.
Then we had some milder, sunnier, days, and I guess I got a little distracted, going out and walking as often as I could. It was good to get some miles into my legs.
February’s project, then, is to finish the final draft of A Good Place ready for the final round of editing. Currently I’m reading through the manuscript and making notes, and will hopefully get down to some serious writing in a couple of days. I know what I want to do with the storyline, and it’s really just a matter of filling in some gaps.
Other than the editing, of course.
If all continues to go well, my project for March will be to spend the month painting and drawing. I’m not sure what the thrust of it will be, but at the moment I’m thinking skies and evenings and trees, or maybe a whole load of other things. We’ll see.
And then April? Whoa! Let’s not get ahead of ourselves!
I’ve had several ideas recently for blog posts, but when I sat down and tried to write them none of them really worked out. I then tried a Christmas short story, but although I was pleased with much of it, I couldn’t get the ending right. I couldn’t get it to say what I wanted it to.
Meh.
I think I’ll just sign off until the new year, and leave you with a festive picture of trees in the mist.
Wishing you all a Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year.
My coach got into Inverness at 8.10pm after almost twelve hours on the road, and I was more than ready to begin walking. With over two hours of daylight left, I aimed to get well clear of the city and find a good spot to camp for the night. I grabbed a bag of chips from a chippy, then followed the Caledonian Canal southwest for about four miles, left it and climbed a little more to the west to find somewhere to sleep. I filled my water bottle from a stream, then wandered into a little wood and got out my bivvi tent and settled down for the night, black clouds heading slowly towards me as I did so.
Altourie – rain clouds coming in from the west. Torr Mor in Foreground
19th June 1994
This morning is dry and bright, but quite windy. I boiled some water for coffee and set off as soon as I could, intending to make the most of the good weather. Today I intend to cover quite a few miles on side roads which I hope will be carrying very little traffic and so get a substantial fraction of the journey under my belt before the weather gets any worse. This is Scotland, after all. I‘m expecting rain. It should also break me in gently, being easier ground than much I expect to have to walk. So, I’m aiming for Urquhart Castle, which overlooks Loch Ness and will be a slight diversion from my route but I just fancy having a look at it, and from there I can leave the road and follow the river southwest through Glen Coiltie before turning further towards the west.
As soon as I set off, I was walking straight into the teeth of a strong wind. Long distance footpaths are usually walked from west to east, at least in Britain, and there is a strong argument for that; we get the majority of our weather from the west, so by doing that we have the wind (and whatever it brings with it) at our backs. I’m walking it in the opposite direction not just because I am naturally perverse – or not only for that reason, anyway – but because the more interesting and exciting scenery will be on the west side of the country, and hence my destination. Walking from west to east I feel I would arrive at my destination with a certain amount of disappointment, with all due respect to Inverness which is a delightful city, but I’m after the spectacular wilderness.
So, into the teeth of a strong wind. It is not long, though, before I am walking through Abriachen Forest and I stop for a rest sheltered from the wind.
Abriachen Forest
I rather think Abriachen Forest has changed a little since I passed through there in 1994. I remember it as a dark wood of densely planted conifers, typical of the conifer woodlands planted in the middle to late twentieth century with the intention of producing the maximum possible yield of wood. The trees allow so little light through that other than the trees themselves – Douglas Fir and Sitka Spruce, typically – these plantations (forest is the wrong word) house very little life. But in 1998 the community of Abriachen (a small village) purchased 540 hectares of the woodland and since then have been improving it – thinning the trees, reintroducing native species and creating footpaths and trails.
But on the edge of the forest, and beside the road, there are a multitude of flowers: vetches, Ladies smock, and violets, particularly catch my eye. I draw away from the forest and I am back amongst a more natural landscape, with banks of pepperminty smelling gorse, occasional rowan trees in blossom and heather beginning to flower.
In places, the ground is bright with cotton grass
Now, for the first time, as I leave the road and walk uphill along a track towards the farm of Achpopuli, I get my first good view of large snow-covered mountains to he west. Once past the farm, I am on a supposed footpath heading up towards a saddle between two hill crests but the ground is extremely boggy and proves to be a taste of much of the rest of the route. My feet sink about six inches into either water or soft moss and heather, slowing my progress significantly. But then I m over, and down to a small loch where I stop to refill my water bottle and have a wash. I am surprised by how warm the water is, and I brave a quick dip as well as a shave.
Loch Glanaidh
On, then, to Urquhart Castle and then a little further out of my way to visit Divach falls, a waterfall with a drop of about a hundred feet. And near the bottom, primroses were still out.
Urquhart Castle and Loch Ness
Following a track up Glen Coiltie looking for a suitable spot to make my camp and cook supper I am walking through old forest, such a contrast to the plantation I walked through earlier. The trees are so covered in mosses and lichen it seems at times almost a wonder they are still alive. The path winds up and down and left and right and feels at times like a high mountain trail. Far below I hear the roar of the river, and for almost the first time that day feel I am absolutely in my element.
Eventually I make camp in a small hollow just below Carn a Bhainne. There is a low ridge towards the west which should shelter me from the worst of the wind. After I have eaten, I sit with a mug of tea looking across the river towards a snow pocket that is probably a couple of hundred meters higher than where I am.
A rather nicer day today, although very cold. A day for double socks, a duvet jacket and hands thrust deep into pockets. The birds are into their winter silence, flitting low down between bushes and clumps of trees, although a blackbird does set up an aggrieved alarm call as I approach.
This holly tree keeled over some years ago, but life finds a way to hang in there. Now it throws out lateral branches that act like new trunks.
This holly nearby is laden with berries, which folklore claims is a sign of a harsh winter to come. It’s not, of course, it’s merely the result of the weather patterns we have had earlier this year. It may still be a harsh winter, but the berries are not a portent.
But it’s a very Novembery day, almost a Decembery day. The leaves have fallen and the sun is very low.
But where the sun strikes the trees the light is still glorious.
What can you do when you lose all confidence in your own writing?
Write a post about my inability to write anything, I suppose.
It has been a real struggle for the last six months or so. It would be easy to blame Covid and lockdowns, and they might have played their part, but it goes deeper than that. I could blame some health issues I have, but that’s not the whole story. Every time I sit down to write, I feel stale and uninspired. Even when I have a day that seems to go well, when I read back what I have written later it seems contrived or forced. Uninteresting. I feel I have nothing worth saying; nothing anyone else would want to read.
I try to paint. I have ideas I want to try out, but it just won’t come. No sooner do I pick up a brush or a pencil than I feel I can’t be bothered with it all.
I know what part of the problem is: I want to go travelling. Travelling has always given me the opportunity to press the reset. I travel light. I write. Whether I go on a long walk or a trek, or just visit a place, it gives me the chance to reconnect with the world around me.
I was out for a walk this morning. Autumn has been here for a good six weeks or more, but it isn’t progressing very rapidly yet. Clearly, it is in no hurry. Although there are plenty of berries on the trees, the leaves seem reluctant to turn or to fall. On the other side of the wood I could see the hills towards the south, bluey-green in the distance. I always find this view really evocative, and it makes me want to grab my rucksack and disappear off for a few weeks. And that immediately makes me think of mountains. In The Lord of the Rings, Bilbo says to Gandalf: ‘I want to see mountains again, Gandalf – mountains‘. He feels stale and tired of the familiar environment where he lives. (There’s more to it than just that in Bilbo’s case, of course.)
Well, that’s me.
Somewhere like this, perhaps!
Perhaps I’ll have a go at writing a few travel posts again. It has been quite a while since the last one. And before that I might re-post one or two of my earlier ones. Just to set the scene, as it were.
June is the Thick Month. Trees and bushes and stands of wildflowers have acquired a lush density by now, branches and stems encased in full-sized leaves, rich and vividly green. Leaves massed and packed in swaying light-blocking swathes. Nothing has yet faded, although there is a gradual falling away of birdsong now mating is over and broods are being raised, although this is compensated for by what seems to be an increase in insect noise, especially bee hum – certainly in our garden. The flowers are beset by mason, carder and bumblebees, and large numbers of solitary bees which provide a delightful oxymoron for this recorder, at least.
Going out and about through the woods a mile from my home, I feel I could almost be walking indoors, such is the density of the tree canopy above me, and when it begins to rain I do indeed remain dry, other than from the occasional drip finding its way through. But it is muddy underfoot in places, the sheltering swathes also keeping the sun from drying out the ground. The thick wet dark humus-rich soil smells sweet and clean, reminding me of a ‘plum-pudding smell,’ as Kenneth Grahame described the river-bank in The Wind in the Willows.
The fields, too, are thick with wildflowers and grass, as are roadside borders where councils have refrained from scalping them. As much as I rejoice to find the occasional rarer species amongst them, I think my greatest pleasure is just to see masses of the commoner species; buttercups or ox eye daisies, vetches or speedwells.
I generally see nothing rare when I am walking my patch, but I could never think of any of this as ‘ordinary’.
About two miles away from our house I came across these two oak trees. The smaller one looks as though it is embracing the larger one.
I wanted to know their stories. Had the smaller one grown from an acorn produced by the larger one? Or from a different tree? Most oaks in Britain grow from acorns that have been gathered and buried by squirrels or jays, and they’d probably not bury them right at the foot of the tree, or would they? Could it be a secondary growth thrown up from a root of the larger tree? And the smaller one has developed in an unusual way – long and straggly as though it aspires to be ivy, or some such climbing plant. Very difficult to assess its age for that reason, although I would guess the larger one to be between a hundred and a hundred and fifty years old. Both are still alive, although it was difficult to spot leaves on the smaller one, as they are mostly high up.
My immediate instinct, or at least idle musing, was to begin to impose various anthropocentric motives to the situation: The larger tree was supporting the smaller for some reason – perhaps it was weak, or diseased. The smaller one was supplying the larger with nutrition of some sort. They were living in a symbiotic relationship and sharing resources…all nonsense, of course. They had grown that way purely by chance.
The second of my ‘Poem a Day’ poems. Just getting this far is a bit of an achievement, I suppose, although I’m not particularly happy with either the meter or the rhythm. It feels as sloppy as the day itself was. But I think it has potential if I do a bit of work on it sometime later.
Mud
Today, the sun has been sent into exile,
Leaving just a weary daylight.
It has gone, and we shall never see its like again.
Mick Canning 