Light and shade

27 & 28 Declener 2014

On Saturday I had to go back to work but consoled myself with a reminder that we were all allowed to go home two hours early so I’d only be working nine to five. Unfortunately this reminder put the Dolly Parton song in my head and it followed me all through the cold streets to the office. Winter appeared to have arevived  overnight and, although we had no snow, or even frost, the wind that kept me awake by trying to blow my house down was icy cold. The sunrise photo I took on the river made it look far warmer than it felt and, up on Horseshoe Bridge , even the bars of golden light shining through the struts couldn’t make me hang around to try for a decent photo.

It took me a long time to warm up, even with a cup of coffee. When I finally did I began to sneeze.
“Are you lot allergic to me?” Mia asked when Sabrina began to sneeze too.
“I think we’re allergic to this place,” I said, sneezing again a few times for good measure.
Thankfully the phones were very quiet so we all got a lot achieved in terms of emails and letters. Sabrina and I kept sneezing. In fact, as the day wore on it got worse and, by early afternoon, my nose was running uncontrollably and I had a horrible headache. It was obvious I had yet another cold. Seriously that office is a hotbed of germs. We can hardly hear ourselves think for all the coughing and sneezing, maybe we should get it fumigated to get rid of the germs because they seem to just keep going round and round.

The brrr factor continued on Sunday morning with a thick frost. What I really should have been doing was going out for a long walk, one final push on those December miles. I’d had half a plan to walk to Botley which would take care of the majority of them but, after a night spent coughing and sneezing, I didn’t quite feel like it. When Philo and Sirona called in for a post Christmas catch up it seemed a good excuse to sit in front of the fire drinking coffee and chatting.

Mid afternoon I finally roused myself for a little stroll. There was no plan apart from picking up some milk somewhere along the way. One foot in front of the other somehow led me to Deep Dene, the little copse close the the Triangle that may or may not be a scrap of the ancient woods that once covered the whole area where my village is. Once the grounds of Deepdene House, the woods were left to the council who now manage them. As I child I used to play there from time to time and I remember them being deep, dark woods. Of course I was much smaller then.

Now it seems far smaller and less scary. The council have put up some fancy signs too. This, and some new play equipment on the grassy area on the other side of the wood seems to be about the extent of the council’s involvement. In many ways this is a good thing. All too often, when local authorities get involved in managing woodland they do more harm than good, chopping down trees as they’ve done at Monks Brook or generally clearing up too much and disturbing the natural ecology of the place. One notice even warns people not to take dead wood away to protect stag beetles and other wildlife. This approach seems to be working well as there’s a great deal of dead wood laying about. The first such log I came to was home to a nice crop of mushrooms.

A fat little robin darted in and out of the undergrowth but refused to let me get close enough for a photo. Some time was wasted creeping slowly towards him only to have him fly off at the vital moment. Eventually I conceeded defeat. I’m pretty sure he was laughing at me. Despite it being late afternoon by this time, there were still pockets of frost in the shady areas but, as I wandered the mendering trails, I saw blackberry flowers and even some stunted and half frozen berries. This really has been a strange winter. From time to time I had to clamber over fallen trees and, once, I had to turn back and retrace my steps when a trail petered out altogether. Luckily, this is not as deep or dark a wood as my childhood memories would suggest. There was no chance of getting lost.

After my initial mushroom find I’d been hopeful of a bit of a fungus fest but it wasn’t to be. There were some dried and blackened shelf fungus on one fallen log and a mass of candle snuff fungus on another but, as this was in the middle of a largish puddle, I couldn’t really get close. Then I saw something really unusual. A huge pine had what appeared to be a relief map carved into its bark. The edges where live bark joined this strange wound were a mass of sticky looking cobwebs. Tentatively I reached out and touched the area. It was powdery but firm. Obviously this was caused by some kind of bark burrowing insect but a Google search has come up blank for anything like it. The tree seems to be alive but whether it will stay that way remains to be seen.

By this time I was close to the centre of the wood. Here it really was quite dark, although there was enough light to see the leaf covered path and I could still see blue sky above me through the trees. The upper branches were picked out in golden tones. Walking towards the light onto one of the wider trails the layers of colour through the branches told me the sun was getting low in the sky. If I wanted to get to the village before the shops shut I was going to have to get a move on. Still, I couldn’t help stopping to admire the way the upturned roots of a fallen tree were illuminated through the gap in the canopy its demise had left. The deep shade under a thick canopy seems cold and impenetrable but, where trees have fallen, light and warmth streams in and new life begins.

The sun was lower in the sky than I’d expected when I came out of the woods so I abandoned my plan to wander up through Hum Hole to the village and popped into a shop in The Triangle for my milk. After that I took the long way back home as the light slowly disappeared.