Skip to main content

Destruction? Or Regeneration?

 

‘It looks like Mordor’, says D, my son, as he divests himself of coat and boots after a solo winter walk. ‘What’s going on?’

So I look online. One entry tells me that our Large Wood is ‘classified as ‘ancient semi-natural woodland’, and hugely appreciated by local walkers’.


I know this. Every spring the wood anemones and then the bluebells bring swathes of light and beauty and colour after the long muted winter, and my path often diverges from its well trodden river route to go up the hill and through the forest where I stand and stare and drink in life. 


Another website reads:


‘We are proud custodians of (the) Large Wood, a place rich in history and natural beauty.’ (It was.)  ‘Our commitment to this woodland goes beyond preservation—we aim to enhance its biodiversity and ensure it thrives for future generations. To achieve this, we have developed a woodland management plan….. approved by the Forestry Commission… One of our key goals is to protect the historic charm…. we aim to improve the woodland’s overall health by enhancing existing trees and allowing new growth to flourish…… ‘ (enhancing existing trees?)


D says it looks like Mordor. So I go to see for myself. 


It is a muddy, cold evening, and hardly anyone is about. Huge machines have been abandoned in the skirts of the wood, one with a giant toothed grabber extended on a metal arm and embedded in a still standing tree - tomorrow’s first victim? Churned earth, massive tyre ruts and torn and sawn trees and branches lie in haphazard piles where once slim paths wended through the wildflowers. I don’t exactly duck under the warning tape and ‘keep out’ signs, but I do find another way in, and pick my way carefully down through the wreckage, focusing on placing my boots so I don’t trip and fall - I don’t want to be another felled casualty of ‘woodland management’. I have never seen such destruction here in England. 


As I pick my way across a ditch and back onto the road, an older woman with a dog stands staring at the carnage in the dusk. ‘What is going on?’ she says. I turn next to her and look back. What I have been thinking comes out, almost by accident. Filters are thinned when shocked. 


‘The owners of the wood say they are ‘encouraging natural regeneration’. Can we believe that the end result will be good when it looks so dreadful? That this is happening for a reason, though we, who can’t see the bigger picture, have no idea why? Or will we get angry and vent? Maybe it is like life. When everything seems despairing and destroyed, can we believe God has a bigger plan, a good one?’ Musing in the dusk.


She looks at me strangely, which I deserve. Then stares doubtfully at the wood and says goodbye, walking on with her dog. I turn the other way. 


I hope I haven’t seen this and thought this for a reason. I am not sure I am ready to trust like that. But I’d like to be able to.


As I write I keep remembering that the birds still sang, looking for bugs and worms in the upturned trunks.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Foxes in the Vineyards, Slugs in the Salad.

When my mother finds a snail in her flowerbed she tosses it over the fence into the road. Snail murder by flight - think landing and cars and hot tarmac. Ow. (So far, she hasn’t landed her missile on one of the children reluctantly journeying towards the school at the bottom of the hill. I suspect the snail would be relieved - no crunch on landing - but the child less so.)  Some, so I hear, keep scissors or secateurs close and dissect trespassing slugs before consigning their corpses to the compost. (Read that sentence aloud. Alliterative satisfaction.) My historical perspective on the slimy invaders in my veg patch has been one of turning a blind eye and then scattering a few hopeful slug pellets, while feeling mildly guilty for causing pain, suffering and untimely death to innocent gastropods. They don't seem to have died, though, they have flourished in my garden, and never before has a lettuce survived. Gastropod gastronomy - come one, come all. This year, it is different....
Post a Comment
Read more

Chiffchaffs, Sedge Warblers, Kingfishers and Coffee

  I am standing in the middle of the road in the Lower Village, and I am staring at my phone. I am dressed for a walk: faded felt Bolivian sunhat, bird decorated recycled plastic backpack from the RSPB (best backpack ever, by the way) and boots. Some clothes as well, in case you were worried. It is seven a.m. on the last day of April. A heatwave is forecast; the world around is singing with the surprise and scents of early summer.  And I am standing staring at my phone.  A man marches past at purposeful speed with a word, ‘Morning’. He too is thumbing his phone. Automatically, I judge him. He is missing the day in his rush to the station. I always judge people who are on their phones. How can they be confined to tech when the sounds and burgeoning fresh colours of life surround them?  But clutched in my hand is my own device, and my eyes are downcast and focused on the pixels.  But THIS is Merlin. I want to excuse myself, to run after him and show him the app. T...
Post a Comment
Read more