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Sunday 27 May 2012

To the woods

Tuesday, 23rd February 2010

Eighteen years ago I was lucky enough to earn a chunk of money from a book. We had just moved to this isolated farmhouse, which came with seven acres, but the sponduliks coincided with the farmer next door offering us another forty three. We snapped them up and took the land out of intensive agriculture – it had been a scorched earth, you rarely saw a bird let alone a wild flower and the hedgerows had all been removed. The rest of them were spent on putting those back, restoring the grazing land and then planting a small wood. I`ve never spent money better. The land is now grassed and grazed, the wild flowers and birds are abundant – bring back the habitat and the wildlife will surely follow, a naturalist said to me, and how right he was. Amazing what can happen in less than two decades.

It’s a joy to walk about the fields at any season, to see how the hedges thicken out year by year, to watch the larks soar in spring and the barn owl skim over the pastures. But the wood is best of all. Owning a wood is a fine thing, planting your own is even better and to those who said ‘But you’ll never see it in your lifetime’ –. wrong. We planted a matrix of fast-growing trees, larch, spruce, silver birch and the slow growing hardwoods sheltered within it. This last autumn, Bud, the wonderful Bud from Georgia, USA and now living in England, thinned it out, felling three or four trees a day on his own, logging them up and stacking them for the fires. Light needs to be let into a wood which has been fairly densely planted or everything rots and wild flowers will not come, nor the hardwoods be able to reach for the sky and flourish.

I go down the middle ride in all seasons, though just now it is treacherously slippery after frost and rain, frost and rain. It is very quiet, quiet enough to hear a crisp leaf fall to the ground, and the slight movement of a flittering bird among the branches. But there is always something stirring and if you stay a while and barely breathe, a deer will come, or a jay, rabbits, one of the buzzards which nest high up. The Border Terrier comes rustling and bustling through, nose down, scaring all away, but they move too fast for her.

The village school children come here. The top two years have an after-school club which uses the wood for a small amount of nature study and a larger amount of fun and adventure. They cannot get lost, the wood is not big enough, but they can still learn what it is like to build a hide and pitch a tent and do a bit of stalking. Indeed, anyone can come. Our wood is there for all.

We have put circles of oaks and chestnuts in the middle of the other meadows. Great trees were traditionally planted this way, so that the men working in the fields at summer’s height could have shade and shelter from sun and rain. You still see them but too many were felled to make way for the great combine harvesters, like the hedgerows. Those circles will not achieve their full height in my lifetime or even that of my children but they are coming along nicely and when this snow, which keeps boomeranging back, finally leaves us, the first green buds will burst out.

Meanwhile, the snowdrops which are usually over by now are at their prettiest, rivers of them under the trees and across the grass. It’s snowing again today. The poor things don`t know if they’re coming or going.

I recently read a new book by the wonderful country/nature writer Richard Mabey, who recommends not so much purposeful walking as ambling about. He’s right. People often do not walk so much as march, maps swinging, ten hard fast miles or they’re a cissy. How much they miss. A slow amble, bending to examine this , stopping to listen to that, standing to look up into the trees or at the sky, is restorative, enriching, informative and satisfying. Exercise is not the point of it. Ambling around our fields and down through the wood is a meditative thing. It occurred to me this morning that during Lent that is a good purpose to have. Lest anyone tell me how lucky I am - I know. Indeed, indeed I do.

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Frank O'Connell

February 23rd, 2010 9:13am Report this comment

The most refreshing article I have read on these pages.

David R

February 23rd, 2010 9:59am Report this comment

Having read halfway through the article I decided to register and write that Susan is a very lucky lady.

Reading to the end I discovered that she knew this already.

Beautiful blog post. Thanks Susan.

Bunnykins

February 23rd, 2010 11:25am Report this comment

I was brought up in the shelter of the North Downs in the days when a single gauge railway ran from Westerham to Dunton Green at the bottom of a field next to our garden. I spent my entire childhood rambling through meadows and woods all year long. This article has reawakened wonderful countryside memories - although memories they will remain, since the railway line gave way to the M25 in the late 60s and I now live in Johannesburg. Thanks anyway Susan. Beautiful!

Nicholas J. Rogers

February 23rd, 2010 1:10pm Report this comment

Great article. Living in London, there are several things I miss. One is silence, which one never finds in the city. The other is the joy of, as you say, just ambling about taking in the scenery.

Both of which are reasons why I shall return to my native Kent in the next few years!

SRS

February 23rd, 2010 3:41pm Report this comment

Looking out my Manhattan window this morning I see only other buildings with other windows. There is sleet and a grey sky (which, for the moment, I don't mind at all since I am warm and dry and inside). Today's article is a wonderful boost for one who has been 'long in city pent.' Many thanks-- and a question: is the photo actually your path leading to your house? It looks like something from a Dutch landscape or a fairy tale.

SUSAN HILL

February 23rd, 2010 3:45pm Report this comment

SRS- no, I`m afraid not. The blogmeisters here on Coffee House sort out the nice pictures. Though if I took one I`m sure they'd put it up. But what they have chosen is lovely.
Thank you all for kind comments.

Beer Moth

February 23rd, 2010 8:42pm Report this comment

As all above, I enjoyed reading that someone has done this.

(Richard Mabey does my sort of walking - 'shambling' is the term I've heard which best describes it.)

BlackCountryBoy

February 23rd, 2010 10:52pm Report this comment

A marvellous piece of writing and a reminder that this coming spring will be greeted with real relief and jubilation. I was lucky enough to come across several volumes of Fred Archer's writings recently in a charity shop (not that expensive supercilious one): I was reminded how in his lifetime he witnessed a revolution in agriculture that ended a way of life that had lasted for centuries.
I'm off to read "Stopping by woods...." which your piece has reminded me of too.
Many thanks as ever for your foresight and your intelligence.

Jack in the Green

February 24th, 2010 12:27am Report this comment

That put me in mind of Thoreau, writing 150 years ago, long before Sting was saving the rainforests:

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

"making the earth bald before her time"? Sounds like you have hundreds, not tens of years to make good and restore your "scorched earth".

Austin Barry

February 24th, 2010 7:59am Report this comment

Sounds like it's still 1953 in Susan's Arcadia. All it needs is for John Gregson and Dinah Sheridan to appear with a straw picnic basket, thermos flask and a little dog called Scruffy.

Unhappily, most of us live in a bleak Dystopistan, a place in decline.

Still, there's always the pale postcard memories of an England that was.

SUSAN HILL

February 24th, 2010 9:51am Report this comment

Ah yes, I knew someone would come in with a sneer. Get out into the country, Austin Barry, take a train and a bus or walk. You will find many many places like this , woods and fields and streams and villages, where you will be welcome. Do it for a day and if you have a weekend stay in one of the many modestly priced B and Bs which are all over the country run by nice ordinary people. No need for grand country house hotels. You sneer. There is plenty of poverty in rural England, and unemployment and low wages. Drugs are as great a problem as in the cities and housing is expensive, waiting lists for council houses long.
We also have to work hard to keep up what we are lucky enough to have. But just do as I suggest - I don`t know where you live but there will some unspoilt country within an hour or two's reach. Come and enjoy it.

bernerlap

February 24th, 2010 10:57am Report this comment

Lovely article. We moved into a house 6 years ago with a small paddock. the previous owners had planted a selection of Rowan and Birch (we live in an upland area) around the edge. It is a never ending source of joy to see the trees grow and the wildlife they encourage.We have rabbits, hares, owls and this year for the first time ever we saw a stoat in ermine.
What is brilliant though are the number of people who visit the area to go walking or just enjoy the view. When we see that we realise how lucky we are to live in the place we do.

Austin Barry

February 24th, 2010 12:39pm Report this comment

Susan Hill. Blimey. It wasn't intended as a sneer, rather more as a melancholic observation on returning to the city after a bracing weekend along the Malvern Hills. Still, if you insist...

SUSAN HILL

February 24th, 2010 2:43pm Report this comment

Ah, sorry, I misinterpreted your tone. But if you have been in the Malverns, which on a clear day I can see from the hill behinhd my house, you know that there is indeed plenty of beautiful country still here.

Austin Barry

February 24th, 2010 6:34pm Report this comment

Many thanks. Yes, a magical place the Malverns. I've been going there since, a teenager inspired by Ken Russell's Elgar film, I pushed a bike to the top trying to remember, in those pre-IPod days, the melody from Introduction and Allegro.

Tendryakov

February 24th, 2010 11:32pm Report this comment

I'm struck by how the traditional myth about the nature of the countryside prevails and how one of the most notable societal changes in Britain over the past couple of decades, is barely mentioned. I was born and grew up in the shadow of the Malverns in the 1950's, and spent my childhood in Worcestershire woods and fields. It has irrevocably moulded me spiritually. I had what I am now told was an idyllic childhood. Think Bevis and Mark, Cider with Rosie. The lane I grew up in now has executive homes at the bottom. The BMW and the Lexus reign. There is only one person with a Worcestershire accent left - my 92-year-old mother. Estuary accents are more prevalent. The lane has been tidied up. It has the feel of a sleek suburb. Living in my native lane is way beyond the means of us country oiks. But the irony is that most of these newcomers don't actually live in the country because they love the country, but because it is prestigious. My village is "sought after". They wouldn't know an alder from an elder, and buy their veg at Tesco. I'm afraid the countryside is the land of the rich now. Excuse my bile.

Andre

February 25th, 2010 8:53am Report this comment

What a delight - I was just about to spend the morning writing a technical journal; but the rain has stopped and the outdoors beckons. Couldn't help thinking of Thoreau - many thanks for a quite wonderful post. 'I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived...'

hadrian

February 28th, 2010 10:48pm Report this comment

I couldn't agree more with your sentiments here, Susan! The beauties of the natural creation and also of man's loving cultivation of wood and tree and wildlife are indeed therapeutic! However even those of us not lucky enough to live in secluded places there are still compensations galore! I live in a fairly typical, late 20s semi with a reasonably sized garden. It is divided into discrete sections or 'rooms', as the current jargon has it, and it is amazing what fascinating creatures are given habitat and haven in 30s-60s suburban hedges, shrubberies, trees and garden plants! One of the saddest features of the more modern housing estates/developments is the loss of all but a meagre patch of lawn and with it the loss of that superb and under-rated stand-by, the suburban privet. Ours have housed or sheltered blackbirds, thrushes, wrens, dunnocks, robins to name the more common varieties and acted as a sort of hedge hotel to dozens of happily chattering sparrows and starlings! We have bumble bees and butterflies and the occasional fox and squirrel. All this on our doorstep, as well as sunkissed lawns and peace and privacy. All that having been said, escape to the country never fails to lift the spirits, I admit! Mind you, as a Christian, though thankful for all these gifts, I think we mustbe careful not to deify 'nature' in a mystical, semi-pagan, pantheistic way. We may glorify God for all these blessings but 'absorbing nature' must not become a substitute for religious worship according to the means of grace- Scripture, prayer, communal, Lord's Day worship, sung praise and fellowshipping together. The one energises us for the other, stimulates our appreciation of the good things around us.

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