In the company of trees

It's late, the sun is filtering through the forest, pouring deep honey gold onto the path ahead. The quality and colour of light transforms everything. In the clearing a group of wise old trees stand in our path, disturbing the earth as their roots burrow to the surface.

Camping forces you out into nature, back to basics; the smells and sounds. There are three alternatives, wild camping, camp-sites and France Passion a network of farms and producers where you can stay free of charge for a night. We've been experimenting with each. Tonight we are in the yard of a mussel farmer and walking the land. 

Later I'm reading poetry to himself. "I went down to the hazel wood because the fire was in my head, and I cut and peeled a hazel wand and hooked a berry to a thread" (The song of Wandering Aengus by WB Yeats) This is one of our favourites from years of early poetry study in the Irish education system. We endured a lot about poetry, Irish and religion, but the poetry was more of a gift.......

It was the old trees that reminded me of the poem and tonight somewhere in southern Brittany we are once again savouring "the silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun"

Inklings

What if you followed every inkling, hunch or hint at a possible good idea? If you stretched your legs out beyond your comfort zone? If you trusted that these inklings would become their own story?

On the misty drive through South Kilkenny, nothing to see, hidden landscapes. Favourite fields and places blanketed in fog. In the distance the great house invisible today. But up close, the trees loom out of the background. Their huge branches hugging the dim light.

The silence of life on this road. The twists and bends of rural life. The car door slams and the soft shoe shuffle of this wayfaring photographer saves the day. The vaguest hint of shape and shadow. 

Following an inkling that it's not all about light and certainty......

This felled giant

Did you ever wrap your arms around a felled giant and get up close and personal with it's roots and heart? The wooden body feels so strong, there are new buds on the tips of it's branches but the torn roots are dry. This Beech tree will never come into leaf again.

So many fallen trees since the huge storm last month are lying pitifully broken exactly where they landed. Having blogged my nightmarish journey home during the big wind, I'm still checking out trees I know and finding they are gone. This beauty is lying on the front lawn of Mount Congreve one of many lost there over the winter.

I photograph it's awkward sprawl and then the daffodils blooming around the gaping hole where it once stood magnificent. 

Home

Clinging on in the storm

The storm hit hard and I was in the thick of it swerving back and forth in 150k gusts. Finally reaching the warren of back roads nearest home, it dawned on me; I was crazy to be out in this weather! 

Of the many possible routes, three turned out to be blocked by fallen trees, and after driving around in circles for over an hour it was all about to get worse. My fourth approach route, ended abruptly with another fallen tree and while bewildered motorists tried to turn around and find a way back another tree fell behind us. We were now stuck between the two giants. I pulled into the ditch disorientated and shaken.

A postal worker stopped and shouted to me. Encouraging me to follow him he pointed to where the others had been swallowed up by a curtain of rain. I felt like falling in a heap but had no choice but to keep going until I could go no more.

Making a frenetic dash through lanes and farms we eventually came to a familiar boreen. Jumping out of his van, he pointed to where I needed to go next and then my luck changed.

With my heart in my mouth I ran the gauntlet of more creaking trees, branches strewn on the road, debris hitting the car from every angle. The house was dark, the power was out, no water, no phone or internet. 

But unlike so many of the power supply workers heading out to repair lines, I was home, dry and intact. Once you have experienced the panic and vulnerability of having your precious home flooded, you never forget it.

Still lacking internet and any connection with the outside world, the next day my youngest left Ireland for Sydney, Australia, and I found myself saying with a teary eye and a wagging finger, just make sure you come HOME! I keened for the rest of the day...... 

After the storm I revelled in my own home sweet home, muttered to anyone who would listen that living on this windswept island has far too many challenges and I keep wondering what the weather will be like in Sydney at this time of the year? 

Listening to voices

I am on the move and missing those walks on the lane. From life on the road, the midlands of Ireland open like a golden tablecloth waiting to be laid for Spring. Crumpled, layered, deep.

The dark trees are silhouettes now, solid and strong. They open conversations with the sky and the land. Then they turn to me saying "Stand your ground and don't be afraid to be alone. Grow old with grace and dignity. Be as big or as small as you are."

The sky joins in, "Spread out" it says, "don't hide, there is enough space for each one."

And the land too speaks saying, "Be what you are, a tree is a tree, a flower is a flower........ a mouse is a mouse."

Then I confide, once the adults called me Mouse and I hid under the furniture reading books and listening to them talk.

"But look at you now Mouse" say the trees, the sky and the land, "driving around the country listening to voices, turning up late to important meetings from wandering the land, staring into space and thinking like a free soul........"

Raindrops

When the rain rolls in from the western Atlantic we can be enveloped for days. The greyness hangs over the whole island like a wet blanket. We struggle to communicate about anything but the weather.
Showers gather, deluges threaten, scattered downpours are aggravated by strong winds.

We laugh about towing the whole country a few degrees southward. We have the temperament of the Mediterranean countries but the weather of the Vikings. We like to think we are Cuba without the sun.

I try to remember the positives, the green it brings, the trees who thrive on it, the cosy pitter patter on the roof at night. But the worst effect has to be the absence of light. It can be scarce enough at the best of times but on these days I pine for it, scouring the sky for breaks of blue.

During a gap I head out for a short ramble. Everything is weighed down with watery raindrops. Full fat globules of liquid silver. One of the most precious commodities in the world. One of the scarcest human necessities in plentiful supply here, sparkling like garlands of jewels.

And I notice the smell of the land......soft, sweet and damp.

Windswept, freckly and fairly wrinkly

While I am standing beneath this Sycamore, besotted with its golden glow, leaves are passing away in front of my eyes. A little death is taking place as each one turns, decays and falls. Autumn and it's peaceful slowing brings the inevitable truth to mind. 

The wrinkling up of my smily eyes like a crisping leaf, curling and fraying at the edge. The retreat to creative solitude as each hour of daylight becomes more precious. The overwhelming urge to dawdle and dander on my walks. While the Sycamore is going through a gradual decline with each season, I suppose in some ways so am I.

Without any sense of panic or great turbulence the natural world is going to sleep, is letting autumn happen. All the so called imperfections of these ageing leaves, dark spots, crow's feet, crumples, puckers, creases and fraying at the corners, once caught in the eye of my lens, are surprisingly beautiful!

I'm not there yet, still only dabbling, but when the time comes the best possible decline would have to be a similar windswept, freckly and fairly wrinkly one.  I doubt that this will never be written on the back of a jar of moisturiser............ 




This time last year I wrote a similar post called "To whom are we beautiful" inspired by the lines of David Ignatow

In the green backwoods

We listen for the sound of the soft turf giving way with each footstep. We watch every little rustle in the leafy undergrowth. The darkened tunnel becomes our adventure today and we are high on the danger of it.

The boys have to hide first and then we girls count to 100. That gives the boys time to conceal themselves throughout the forest. We girls then set out to find them knowing that at some point either we will sneak up on them or they will ambush us cleverly before we can......

The giddy excitement of the increasingly spooky and darkening thicket. The ripe blackberries that lurk in the briars to distract us from our task. The shadowy woven branches of Willows, Ash and Beech. The unbridled screams of the found girls and the inevitable row over who saw who first.....

These greenest of green backwoods have been home to my dreams as along as I can remember. Dreams of bigger experiences and journeys. Dreams of a better me in a better world. Dreams of freedom and safety. Scary dreams too of what might be hidden in the dark there.

Everytime I re-emerge into the light after walking in the backwoods, I feel I have lived that young girl's fears and longings all over again......

Reluctant to leave winter behind

I am finding it hard to let go of winter. Usually in dread of darkness, this year through observance and photography I have strangely, weirdly, fully, fallen in love with winter.

The sparse branches of the hedgerow willows and the brown bracken outside my window, have become a familiar backdrop to my daily life. I am unsettled by the blazing golden fuze bushes which are lighting up my work station now and startled by the lengthening day with emerging fresh greens everywhere.

Since the Winter Solstice the world has been turning back towards the sun and I need to let go now and let the light return to my life. They say it takes four seasons to grieve a loved one. Bare winter will always be the reminder of how much we have lost, but Spring, when we allow her in, is a reminder of the future....

Shadow and darkness are an integral another part of seeing through a lens and add depth to all our images.......

Snake-like roots that help keep it dark

"...and the grove of trees growing out over their lake......wind down snake-like roots that reach as far as the water and help keep it dark"  Beowolf

A deep green rim of algae has appeared at the edge of the lake. On a grey afternoon this created the most enchanting dark mirror for the lakeside trees. Impossible to focus because of glare and the odd stray branch, I had to wait until these were uploaded to see the full extent of the images.

Darkness, surface, reflection, depth.

Even Jung recommended talking to trees

Sometimes a place has a soulful feeling about it. Off behind our house are three deserted farms which overlap in a series of fallow fields and gorse covered hillocks. Each of them has a farmyard haggard overgrowing with an ever increasing wildness. There are corners which have been long forgotten and hold memories and echoes of the past. 

In the corner of a small grove this Ash tree commands a striking pose, back to a low wall and branches outstretched. Even in the sparsest winter this grove is a haven of lush wooded green. Mosses and ivy cover every inch of it.

If a tree could tell you something of it's individuality, this one speaks of confidence and ease. So perfect is it's setting that entering in here you immediately feel the carefulness that is required to delicately negotiate around the space, in case you might disturb things. Tiny pink wood anemones cover the earth and twisted matted ivy stems braid around the trees and their branches. It is almost like entering a green room more like a library or a small chapel than a forest.

The tree presides over the little grove like a sentry on duty or a mother embracing all protectively. Where most trees reach upwards, here is one that reaches outwards.

I go here each season and remember as Jung once said, “You will find yourself again only in the simple and forgotten things, why not go into the forest.....sometimes a tree tells you more than you read in books” There is no real separation between us and this tree. At least that's what my own instinct tells me when I am in it's shadow. Do you know what I mean?

When you can't see the wood for the trees, just listen to them instead

I wouldn't normally go into the woods to clear my head, I'd be more inclined to go to the coast or up to the hills, would you? But every time I pass this little wood it calls to me, and so today I finally went in there. Something about forests makes them a bit spooky and I found myself breathing hard and checking behind me every now and then! The forest is a place where you go deep. It's impossible to avoid fears and uncertainties, at least for me.

I was soon distracted by the presence of the larger and the more slender trees which seemed very sure footed somehow; still and sure. I tried to listen to them and they were a calming influence.

It's easy to go through life in the pursuit of colour and drama in the garden, the whirring and the whizzing of insects, the beauty and the grace of butterflies. But the still, green, silent ones are always standing strong and tall in the background, filtering the light yet allowing in just enough to nurture the forest floor. And sometimes it's ok to feel a bit lost, and to try to re-find the right path.......there's beauty there too....

"In the middle of the road of my life I awoke in a dark wood where the true way was wholly lost" -
Dante, Commedia