puddleshark

Had planned to get up early for another expedition down to the coast, but the roads were very icy first thing. Decided I was not brave enough to go far afield, so instead took a sunrise / moonset walk through the forest.

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I had originally planned to head over to Stourhead this weekend, thinking how lovely the lake would look in this grey weather. But I woke up this morning with a sore throat, feeling too feeble to make that long drive north, so instead took a quiet walk out through the forest to the marshes.

( November, by the marshes )

The sky is blue and the wind is full of fairies willow fluff, drifting wherever the wind takes it.

Out in the forest, cuckoos are calling, somewhere in the far distance. Woodlarks are singing their eerie fluting songs. Dartford Warblers perch on top of gorse bushes, give a quick burst of scratchy gorse-prickle song, then are gone again.

On the heath, Tree Pipits are staking their territory with rapid-fire bursts of song from the very top of isolated trees, but are yet to start making their slow motion parachuting songflights.

Last week, I met the Lady with the Rottweiler in the forest and we chatted. ("He's friendly. I put him on the lead because not everyone wants a slobbery Rottweiler kiss.")

I walk on autopilot in the evenings, forgetting that the old path is now blocked with barbed wire and having to retrace my steps. How long will it take my feet to learn to walk the new path without my brain interceding?

Icy rain all afternoon, turning to sleet as the light went.

I did manage a walk before work, around the forest in the starless, moonless 6am darkness, with many small detours from the path to avoid the mud and puddles. Conclusive proof that, whatever I am, I am not a spaniel. (The Forestry Commission have been restoring a strip of heathland alongside the path I normally follow, felling trees, and the heavy machinery has made an impressive mess of the tracks).

So much rain in the last few days. Whatever happened to that spell of good weather we always get when the kids go back to school?

A morning walk around the forest. Stillness. Damp. Chill. Earthballs popping up beside the tracks. The gorse bushes draped with silver webs. A Sika doe, still wearing her summer dapples, in amongst the young conifers. We exchanged glances and moved on.

A single chiffchaff singing, but unlikely to summon Spring.

Out in the forest at noon, it was so dark that a Tawny Owl was hooting.

( February has fallen in love with the Rain... )

Just before sunrise, two hobbies making a high-speed pass over the forest, above the treetops. A parent and a youngster maybe, from their noisy contact calls?

My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow & river & wind-wandering weed-winding bank.

O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew —
Hack and rack the growing green!

The Dark Path has vanished: the narrow path, close-lined with conifers, which I would walk each day before dawn with my torch switched off and my gaze lifted, navigating by the narrow strip of stars between the black branches.

The Forestry Commission came out with their heavy machinery and, over two days, cleared all the trees that lined the way. What was once a shaded, secret way, sheltered from driving rain and summer sun, is now wide open to the elements.

But I'm not going to go all Gerard Manley Hopkins. This is by nature a cyclical landscape: open heathland changes to forest, and forest changes back to heathland over the years. Whenever stands of conifers are felled there is a temporary devastation, a brief wasteland of tree stumps and spoil. But within two or three years, the heath comes back, the tree stumps lost beneath a cover of flowering heather and gorse, and tiny self-seeded pine saplings. And within ten years the pine saplings have become trees, and the forest starts creeping back

When I met the Gentleman with the Staffie this morning, he said the Forestry Commission were creating a firebreak. With climate change, droughts and heatwaves are becoming more common. Heath and forest fires are becoming far more serious. It makes sense to create and maintain firebreaks.

6am in the forest. Mars low in the west, an orange spark among the black pine branches. Two days of rain and southwesterly winds have washed away all the ice and snow, washed clear the sky: so clear the faint stars that make up the head of Hydra are visible.

Walking under winter constellations now. Orion has already vanished by the time I set off, only Betelgeuse visible above the horizon. The sickle of Leo high in the west. The irregular quadrilateral of Virgo in the south.

The night skies are deceptively full of movement these days – travelling points of light that turn out to be satellites, or high altitude planes – but still I saw two meteors, late Geminids, both bright, and one leaving a trail.

Walking the Dark Path through the conifers, I allowed myself to be distracted by the rising crescent moon, glimpsed over one shoulder; strayed, and got a face full of pine needles.

5 degrees C and a northeasterly wind. Took a walk through the forest, out to the marshes.

Flat grey-white skies, and not enough light for my camera. The Canon 80D is a terrible camera for low-light shooting: landscape shots fail to capture the subtle colours of the marshes in winter, and come out with the colours all harsh oranges and acid greens.

( Hasty black-and-white conversion shots )