Beech

Beech tree, Coombes Moor, October 5th 2008

A rare five minutes of sunshine on an otherwise cool, grey windy day - I had forgotten the glooms of autumn, that feeling of not being properly lit; and then the sun comes out and the light on the beech tree shows the advance of the season, the changing of the leaves, very clearly. This photograph shows the tree from the south, so it is the south-eastern aspect of the beech which is changing first. I wonder why? I remember one tree in a park near a flat I used to have; it always turned from mid-August, weeks ahead of the others on the avenue; a frost-pocket perhaps, a building's shadow.

I recently walked along the Prom in Liverpool, another large patch of beechwoods, another area of my internal woodland. And again, on the shores of Windermere, some truly gigantic beech trees, the last of the sunlight on the roots and branches making them look oiled, metallic, capable of movement. But in neither beech wood were the trees as advanced into autumn as the large beech in our garden.

Straight from a wobbly camera - beech roots, Windermere, early October 2008: oiled, muscular, wary....