Most of this summer I’ve done my walking in the woods. The ridges and high hills don’t appeal to me as much at this time of year, particularly in good weather. The light is flat and a little too intense, a little exposed. And I don’t like disturbing the skylarks—fragile and threatened creatures, which nest on the ground, braving the ravens, dogs and sheep. They can do without also braving me and my hyperactive spaniel. But the other day I walked on Hergest Ridge for the first time since the summer solstice and took a detour from my usual route along the Offa’s Dyke path. There’s a little valley that creases the centre of the ridge, with a shallow stream issuing from a spring halfway down its length, petering out just below the common. The spring is dry at the moment, as are all the shallow pools on the hill—dusty, grey, cracked. I have no idea how the ponies and their foals are staying hydrated. We’ve had little rain for months, which is not a statement I can usually make about a place like this. But the surrounding woods are still deep green and the bracken has grown high and lush. It doesn’t look like a landscape in drought.
From the summit of the ridge you can see Pen-y-Fan to the west, the undulating plateau of the Black Mountains, and the Malvern Hills. Usually these landmarks fade in and out of view as cloud sweeps eastward from the Atlantic, but now they are stark, unshrouded, like an illustration in a book. Unremarkable, except at dawn and dusk, which arrive too early and late at this time of year. I prefer my dawns at between 7 and 8am, my dusks between 7 and 8pm. Civilised times, thank you very much . . .
Today I delivered a painting to a customer in Wiltshire and drove over the Severn Estuary across the ridiculously long suspension bridge which, for all I know, is held up by matchsticks and magic. A thunderstorm frowned in the east, boiled, glowered, darkened, then threw down all the contents of the sky— rain filling the gutters and flooding the road in seconds. Flashes of lightning shot horizontally over the ever shortening horizon. Soon, visibility was only a few feet. Cars slowed, lorries speeded up and battered us cursing car drivers with horizontal spray. Storms, how I love them, I just can’t wait for autumn when they come bustling in, wave after wave. Summer, round here, doesn’t fade. It’s demolished.
There’s a dead hawthorn tree above the little valley on the ridge, which I pass occasionally. It’s a tangled thing, lying on its side at the top of the slope, its matt of tightly entangled roots ripped out of the ground. It looks almost silver from a distance, like layers of lightning flying from the ground. Or some madly tentacled sea being blown far inland. Perhaps it was hit by lightning at some time in its life, being one of few trees on the summit. I don’t know how many storms it endured before it was finally blown over, but it’s a mature tree. And it’s not quite dead yet. Some of its roots are still drawing sustenance from the parched earth, feeding an oddment of twigs which have flowered and are now producing fruit. Its few leaves glisten with vitality and the cups of its berries are mid-flow between green and scarlet. A few more harvests to come for the birds, perhaps many more. From a distance though, you’d think it was dead. Many silver-blue lichens and bearded mosses—parched to the palest grey—coat the leafless branches. You’d almost think the tree had been cast in pewter, that this is some mad metalworkers monument to storms.
Recently I’ve noticed that some prominent thinkers have started to write and talk about the divine. It seems a little out of character for the culture (always a good thing), and I’ll admit, it’s not something I’ve thought about overmuch. As I was driving through that thunderstorm I was listening to a podcast produced by the organisation For the Wild, an interview with the late poet Andrea Gibson, who at the time of the interview was two years into a terminal ovarian cancer diagnosis. She spoke beautifully about her impending death, about the gift of endings, and her sense of the divine, which I can best summarise from the conversation as the “not knowing that resides within truth” (my words, not hers). I’ve been wrestling with this idea since—it feels like a koan and I’d like to gaze through its prism at that almost dead hawthorn tree.
A tree which is clearly dead, and clearly alive. Which is ugly in its barren entangledness, and beautiful in its starkness. Which has a trunk leaning at twenty degrees to the horizontal; which is surrounded by snapped off branches almost rotted back to soil; and which pushes out immaculate, glistening leaves, like a sapling. Which is a corpse for insects to feed on, and a living host for ten thousand bryophites. And a maker of ripening berries containing seeds to be eaten and scattered in a few months by the local blackbirds, and the hordes of Norse raiders—the fieldfares which come here for winter. I’ll be here to welcome you little wild things!
A tree which is seen differently by every pair of eyes that encounter it, human and wild. So many roles for this almost finished being, so much left for it to share. How many more storms will it ride out? How many more springs will it push forth new buds? When I take my last walk on the ridge, which could be days or decades from now, will it still be a sun shelter for robins, a wind break for lambs, a larder for thrushes? Will these long-predicted summers of draught swiftly kill it off? And if they do, what new beings will grow in its skeleton shade?
This, for me, is the “not knowing which resides within truth”. Like the many miracles happening all around us, all the time, it’s enough.
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