2nd February 2008
It’s been snowing hard since yesterday morning. Snow has settled all across the bay wherever there’s no incoming tide channels. It’s on all the windward sides of tree boles & in the clear parts of the woodland where I’m standing, west of the burn that flows into Sailean an Eorna. The trunks themselves are patchworked by mosses & snow drift, set against off white lichens with here & there a snuff coloured lichen on nearby rocks. Lungworts (Lobaria pulmonaria), also on the trunks, are a leathery green, vaguely lizard like. This is mature oakwood, with a few fallen trees, sparse & interspersed with holly & hazel. There’s a few birch trees here too. The fallen trees are almost certainly a result of storms, perhaps hurricanes. Some are split, the weight of large branches become insupportable in high wind, while others are toppled entire, with root-plates at right angles to the woodland floor, though it’s seldom horizontal on this slope leading down to the loch.
One fallen limb, a metre round, is eighteen paces long, from the main trunk, but still joined; it’s a sessile oak; the main trunk a metre & a half round. Growth has been good from this limb, curving up & away from it, its recurving forms giving living space to a variety of epiphytes.
The oaks here have a massive beauty, fallen or standing, their relic lives entwined with each other & with all the other species of the woodland. Here, in a rootplate ten feet high (more than three metres) growing straight up, while the oak shoots from its recline, is a holly. It’s more than double my handspan round, the displayed upper roots all elbows & knuckles smooth as if polished. From the same plate is one of the ubiquitous birches, though smaller than the holly. Another oak, standing, has a massively thickened lower trunk, made that way by epicormic growth. Its girth is more than five metres round. Lying close by is another ancient of four metres’ girth with a partner birch, older this time, maybe a metre & a half round. The bole of the fallen oak is host, under the snow, to a small holly, showing only its first pair of true leaves – last year’s germination. Its roots will grow & assist the oak’s subsidence back into the soil & rock from which it slowly rose. The ivies run round straight trunks, which subdivide fairly low into main branches. Each subsequent division curves & curves again, some so much they seem to spiral on themselves, sometimes almost making knots.
I try to read the woodland, limb by limb & leaf after leaf. Its full story is conjecture. The epiphytes are an indication of ancient woodland, but it will have been worked here too, coppiced, perhaps, certainly bark stripping happened, & selective felling for charcoal. There may have also been plantings; though now there’s no indication of this. The woodland, like all worked landscape, is art, & as such, fictive. If I’m expounding on the great book of the woodland, the lives of the trees, their history & economics, then each tree, in its subdividing & recurving limbs, is reciting genetics, performing climate & topography, geology & its own personal survival so far.
My ignorance is boundless. Not only can I not know the trees’ stories, the woodland itself reaches beyond history. I can’t tell the names of the mosses & lichens. But I’m happy in my lack of knowledge; nothing at all can stop me from fully experiencing the setting & enjoying the secrecy of the trees; their utter stillness, which nevertheless they impart to me, here for a short while.
As I leave the oaks, just two feet from where I pass, & not at all bothered, a huffed up goldcrest is bobbing & pushing her head into snowdrifts, below which are small plants’ seedheads which she raids in her search for warmth.
It’s been snowing hard since yesterday morning. Snow has settled all across the bay wherever there’s no incoming tide channels. It’s on all the windward sides of tree boles & in the clear parts of the woodland where I’m standing, west of the burn that flows into Sailean an Eorna. The trunks themselves are patchworked by mosses & snow drift, set against off white lichens with here & there a snuff coloured lichen on nearby rocks. Lungworts (Lobaria pulmonaria), also on the trunks, are a leathery green, vaguely lizard like. This is mature oakwood, with a few fallen trees, sparse & interspersed with holly & hazel. There’s a few birch trees here too. The fallen trees are almost certainly a result of storms, perhaps hurricanes. Some are split, the weight of large branches become insupportable in high wind, while others are toppled entire, with root-plates at right angles to the woodland floor, though it’s seldom horizontal on this slope leading down to the loch.
One fallen limb, a metre round, is eighteen paces long, from the main trunk, but still joined; it’s a sessile oak; the main trunk a metre & a half round. Growth has been good from this limb, curving up & away from it, its recurving forms giving living space to a variety of epiphytes.
The oaks here have a massive beauty, fallen or standing, their relic lives entwined with each other & with all the other species of the woodland. Here, in a rootplate ten feet high (more than three metres) growing straight up, while the oak shoots from its recline, is a holly. It’s more than double my handspan round, the displayed upper roots all elbows & knuckles smooth as if polished. From the same plate is one of the ubiquitous birches, though smaller than the holly. Another oak, standing, has a massively thickened lower trunk, made that way by epicormic growth. Its girth is more than five metres round. Lying close by is another ancient of four metres’ girth with a partner birch, older this time, maybe a metre & a half round. The bole of the fallen oak is host, under the snow, to a small holly, showing only its first pair of true leaves – last year’s germination. Its roots will grow & assist the oak’s subsidence back into the soil & rock from which it slowly rose. The ivies run round straight trunks, which subdivide fairly low into main branches. Each subsequent division curves & curves again, some so much they seem to spiral on themselves, sometimes almost making knots.
I try to read the woodland, limb by limb & leaf after leaf. Its full story is conjecture. The epiphytes are an indication of ancient woodland, but it will have been worked here too, coppiced, perhaps, certainly bark stripping happened, & selective felling for charcoal. There may have also been plantings; though now there’s no indication of this. The woodland, like all worked landscape, is art, & as such, fictive. If I’m expounding on the great book of the woodland, the lives of the trees, their history & economics, then each tree, in its subdividing & recurving limbs, is reciting genetics, performing climate & topography, geology & its own personal survival so far.
My ignorance is boundless. Not only can I not know the trees’ stories, the woodland itself reaches beyond history. I can’t tell the names of the mosses & lichens. But I’m happy in my lack of knowledge; nothing at all can stop me from fully experiencing the setting & enjoying the secrecy of the trees; their utter stillness, which nevertheless they impart to me, here for a short while.
As I leave the oaks, just two feet from where I pass, & not at all bothered, a huffed up goldcrest is bobbing & pushing her head into snowdrifts, below which are small plants’ seedheads which she raids in her search for warmth.
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