Wapley Hill

A strange, uncertain, blustery day of strong winds and heavy rain. I was up in the woods on Wapley Hill this morning collecting pine cones and sticks for kindling, but everything was very wet. Stopped for a drink on a bench and the sunlight through the beech leaves was soft and dappled green, very beautiful. Beechwoods have been an important part of my life since I was a child, and in some way all beech trees I encounter - Wapley Hill, Highgate Woods, south Liverpool - seem part of one gigantic, scattered beech wood. In his book 'The Wild Places' Robert MacFarlane talks about 'personal maps', landscapes and wild places we all carry within us. A part of mine would be a beech forest. And then the rest of the Hill is shaggy pine forest, planted two decades go by the Forestry Commission; I don't like the monocultural element but the trees have an undeniable spiky drama, and seem to add an Alpine tone to the landscape. I'll writemore about this in the Landscape Writings work. I think I will try and get up into the woods after dark in a few weeks, perhaps once the clocks have gone back; the forest at night, alone, would be a very different experience.