The Season's Last Weekend

Gateway to the fields from Wapley Hill, November 29th, 2008

My last entry, I think. It has been cold and gloomy for the last few days and there is a feeling in the air that it is no longer autumn but not quite winter. Heavy coats and jackets have become normal gear. The last of the colour has drained from the landscape; the leaves have been stripped from the trees and those that are left are dulled and dry. And a few days now of cold; it has been very foggy for a day or two and today the temperature hasn't risen above minus three. On Wapley Hill this afternoon it was a few degrees colder and the firs were plastered with a heavy frost, as if the water had frozen to the branches. We had the Hill to ourselves apart from a girl on a horse and a jogger; but if it was minus five then perhaps that's not surprising.

This Journal is part of a series of online seasonal journals that began in the spring of 2008. From December 1st I will write a winter journal, and then a summer one next year, so that by the end of August 2009 I will have a full year's meditations on walks and weather and birds and trees. Every one hopefully is a little different. The handwritten precursors were more notebookish; I might try and follow this with the Winter Journal. Thanks for reading this Autumn Journal and I hope you will read the Winter one as well. http://awinterjournal.blogspot.com/

David Lewis

Nightwalking

Seed head, Wapley Hill, 7.30pm, 24th November 2008

I promised myself a night walk; when the clocks went back and the patterns of light and darkness changed I remembered how much I used to enjoy walking alone at night; Bedford Park in Southport, a cold dark flat space ringed by lights, or the long walks along the canals outside Runcorn with old friends. I chose Wapley Hill and decided to walk tonight. The road up the hill was deserted and very dark; the car park was empty and the Hill was in total darkness. Without the car's lights the stars appeared, the tall larches silhouetted against them. The sky looked pale grey/blue, the stars were so thickly clustered; there seemed to be no space between the stars, just more stars fading to beyond sight. I tried to adjust my eyes to the faint light and the stone road up the Hill gradually appeared. I was surprised at the amount of orange street light around the Hill; all the way between Shobdon and the Arrow valley seemed to be lit, like looking out onto a small town. I couldn't work out where all the lights were.

A cold night after a wet day, and the ground was heavy underfoot. The sky clouded over and the starlight was hidden, but in any case it was too dark to go too far into the trees. The sharp spikey pine silhouettes were clear against the sky but the deciduous trees disappeared. (In the Mortimer Forest this morning I was reminded that the thin branches of birch trees look like purpleish smoke.) The only sound was the wind in the trees. 'Trees are how we see and hear the wind,' said Roger Deakin, a quote I have been carrying around for days.

I managed to take some pictures but it was too dark for proper meditative nightwalking. I headed back to the car and took some pictures of seedheads. I had expected to be frightened in the woods at night but it was an empty, sighing space, silent apart from the wind and once a small animal, perhaps a rabbit. And the rattle of leaves out of the corner of my eye; a strange thought that the leaves fall at night as well as during the day. The car was spattered with golden larch needles on the way home.

Silver

A turn on the step from the garage; and looking westwards the whole sky was silver, a beaten metallic, soft, almost fragile.  The bare branches were motionless against the pale sky, a black feathering as thick as the stars.  

I suddenly realised late this afternoon that the season is winding down, or rather accelerating towards the winter.  Bitterly cold this afternoon, a keen wind from the north that has brought snow to many places apparently.  Here it has been wet and cold all day.  There was a sharp edge to the wind and the temperature in the courtyard didn't rise above about 5c all day.  Walking the dog down the toll road at dusk the sky was clearing; it could be cold here tonight.  

Apart From The Trees

A cold clear night, a whole skyful of stars and the Milky Way very clear overhead.  Dark at 5pm and only just above freezing at 8pm.  

Headlights from Presteigne visible a mile and more down the valley, thanks to the hedges being trimmed.  Long tunnels of moving light.  Ghost trees.  

We have seen a lot of nuthatches recently, probably the family that were reared in the old apple trees in the summer.  A young one watched me unpack a box of books from the garage a few saturdays ago.  They come to the bird table next door and we watch them in the ivy on the beech tree.  A short, loping flight.  

And unexpectedly we went to the river Lugg at Presteigne after heavy rains.  Usually the river is swollen and the colour of angry, milky coffee.  But this time the river was clear and we could see large maple leaves turning slowly in the stream, racing under the bridge and away, a slow, gentle movement in the ferocious power of the water.  

Wapley Hill Stories

Beech avenue, Wapley Hill, November 20th, 2008

The beech leaves had drowned the path and turned the whole width into a beech-leaf-field; only the surrounding conifers stopped the leaves drifting further. The path itself was marked by a double avenue, in some places a triple avenue, of old beech trees which were clearer, the architecture of planting was clearer, now that the leaves had fallen. The design became clearer even as the footpath between the trees disappeared... I am fascinated by these trees and their planting.

Forest Murmurs, November 2008

Deeper in the forest the trees are Forestry Commission conifers, planted as a commercial crop about 30 years ago. They too have a dark Teutonic beauty, a fairy-tale menace, a suggestion of wildwood. Under the canopy the trees have no branches, just wispy stems. But these collect cobwebs, mist, rainwater, and have a silver-gilt sheen that is very beautiful.

A different setting and a different second of light

Wapley Hill Images

Some snapshot images taken recently. Wapley Hill is our nearest place to go for a walk; we are on a busy B-road and the old toll road has grown over again, so that leaves only the Moor itself for a walk. This is boggy and not very safe for children. We have found it interesting how restricted our options are when it comes to walks; we definitely had more options in the city.

Small grove of silver birch, Wapley Hill, 20th November

Larch plantation on Wapley Hill - my local patch! Most of these have shed their needles now and the ground is carpeted with them.

More About Beech Leaves

Beech foot, Wapley Hill, November 20th 2008

The wind has changed direction; chopping firewood this afternoon the air seemed colder than it did this morning. The wind was from the east, straight down the valley from the Welsh hills, rattling the last of the beech leaves and the ash keys in the courtyard. The air smelled colder as well, a cleaner smell. Now at 7.30pm it has clouded over so the crispness is gone, and the wind has died, but it is still cool.

A good morning spent hunting for firewood on Wapley Hill. Gunfire and pheasants on the lower slopes, dogwalkers, and horses on the narrow Stansbatch road. In the week since we have been there the beech trees - on long avenues across the hill - have lost their leaves completely; the ground is covered in crisp, golden-bronze leaves, still dry. The paths have disappeared under the leaves, drifting the ground, as if under a light fall of snow with the same sense of vulnerability and impermanency. The leaves had been blown into these drifts and were far more 'solid' than they appear. But there were strange bald patches where the wind is stronger and the leaves don't settle.

It made me realise that the days are still shortening and the sun is lower in the sky every day. Half a mile down the beech avenue the sun came out, horizontal beams deep into the woods, lighting the smooth grey trunks. I have noticed beech trees more than anything this autumn, the beech-colours have been spectacular. And this morning the leaves were everywhere, drowning the path, blurring the definition of the avenue, smoothing everything apart from the trunks rising from the bronze floor like elephants' feet or the claws of giant birds.