Tor Falcon: Diary of a Wild Place

May, Fairy Caps.

The forester has fed his family a banquet of wild mushrooms over the years. Ceps, Chanterelles, Chicken of the Woods, Giant Puffballs, Parasol Mushrooms, Morels, St George’s Mushrooms and many more have graced his kitchen table. Friends ring him up for over the phone identification and bring him samples to cast his expert eye over. But would they be so trusting if they knew the upset stomachs, the sweating and even the hallucinations his poor family have endured. What would they make of the sunny afternoon in August, after a plateful of over mature horse mushrooms, when two mallard the size of dinosaurs flew low over his house with the sole intention of stealing the baby from the pram? And do they know why he has finally hung up his fungi collecting hat for good. That he ignored the golden rule; THE RIGHT MUSHROOM, IN THE WRONG PLACE AT THE WRONG TIME, IS THE WRONG MUSHROOM. If in doubt, don’t eat it. And never give it to your best friend’s son to eat. (It’s all right reader, young Tom was violently sick almost immediately but suffered no long term injury. The forester on the other hand had four months of misery, sure he would die at any moment, actually hoping he would die at any moment, he still suffers a week of agonies on the anniversary, in October, every year.)

And so, after this sorry story I treat mushrooms with the utmost respect. These tiny fairy caps appeared over night. Open in the dewy shade amongst some speedwell in the morning, by lunch time and in full sun they were shrivelled stems and by late afternoon there was no trace of them. I’m happy to watch the secret comings and goings of fungi, admire their variety, gasp at their beauty or shudder at their ugliness. I’ll rejoice in their mysteries but never forget the subtle art of poison some of them are so fluent in.

May, The Pace of Spring.

Coming and going between Norfolk and Cumbria has been like doing a seasonal tango. I move from high spring to early spring and then leap-frog back to late spring. I bid farewell to the last of the primroses in Norfolk and watch them opening in Cumbria a week later. I leave the northern oaks still hard skeletons and six hours later, back in the south, find them soft and mustardy. I pass a field of sheep in Norfolk, almost hidden by an abundance of long grass but the cows in Cumbria are still in the barn two weeks later. My woolly jumper and thermal vest have been put away and unpacked, put away and unpacked.

I read somewhere that spring moves north at a walking pace. It’s a compelling thought, Primavera herself, emerging young and naked from her clam shell, magicly banishing winter as she moves slowly north, with her hand maidens, the migrant birds, singing spring into being. Where a mere glance will bring a whole hedgerow shuddering into a climax of blossom in Norfolk, she has to work harder in Cumbria, winter’s icy tentacles are taking some shifting this year. The further north she goes the deeper the hibernation of the plants she has to wake. Weather sculpted hawthorns that endure winds funneled into frenzies down narrow valleys are understandably cautious about coming into leaf, never mind bud. Ferns unfurl begrudgingly. Ash is unmoved. Perhaps it’s the goose bumps and the shivering of this, by now, bedraggled beauty that makes her magic less potent? Or perhaps it’s only through the deepest and most powerful magic that spring arrives in the north at all.

May, The Colours in my Head.

In my mind I break the year up into different colours. January is delicate pale pink. Late July is a thick dark green that stains the sky. These colours aren’t arbitrary, they’re to do with the plants and the light here. I imagine that all but the least fanciful would go along with me on this. Right now, there’s a blue moment. The sophisticated bluebell, magically gathering intensity as the light fades. Hinting at unseen splendours at the violet end of the light spectrum. The forget-me-nots, ground ivy and speedwell all have my head swimming in blue.

But annoyingly I also see colours with numbers. Actually, I feel the colour more than see it. The colour is so much more compelling than the number that maths becomes unbelievably distracting. There’s always a hurry with numbers, no time to contemplate the brilliance of the lime that comes with fifty two, for instance. And last weekend, trying to do a good deed, all these colours got me in a muddle. I offered to help at our local church, flower festival. And was put in the tea tent, pouring cups of tea and coffee and taking all the money. Oh! the pressure of the prefect cup of tea as well as all that adding up.

Seventy and seventy is one hundred and forty……

and….. and…

eighty……

It’s no good, my mind is overwhelmed with a bright firey orange that floods in with one hundred and forty.

Predictably I got one old ladies total wrong, I charged her twenty pence too much. She complained loudly and continuously to everyone unfortunate enough to be within ear shot, while she chewed slowly through her scone, her large slice of carrot cake and her flap jack. She commented every time I attempted more sums. Copious apologies and a free cup of tea wouldn’t shut her up. I sweetly smiled through her parting shot, as she finally left in the pouring rain and I heartily hoped the old biddy might catch her death of cold on the way home. I also wished that I could make these colours less vivid sometimes. It’s not an excuse that goes down well. Rather be thought of as stupid than confess the rainbow in your head, has always seemed wise to me.

And so to recover my calm, I steel the last half hour of sunshine to draw a pool of pretty speedwell. Steadfast in their blueness, shivering in the evening sun, I watch as they silently close for the night.

May, Poplars.

The poplars create a vertiginous edge to this place. A mile long, five abreast, they act as battlements against the rest of the world. They halt regiments of chemically controlled wheat and rape. They offer look out points for crows and buzzards. They are our loud, fidgety boundary.

A Bryantt and May match factory in Norwich paid good money for poplar in the sixties so plantations sprang up all over the place on damp unpromising land. The factory has long since closed but these landmarks remain. Blocks of one clone or another, their uniform sameness is their beauty. All exact in hight and habit and colour. Each clone has it peculiarities. These ones are square topped and prone to rust. Dry, red leaves, the size of plates, clatter high above your head on a windy autumn day, until winter blows in from the west and strips them naked one by one. Within a week, from west to east, a mile of shivering skeletons.

Not far away a different stand, a more branching variety, produces flames, not leaves. My eyeballs gently poach in their warmth as I look at them. Monster matches, igniting spring. The tallest of trees, grown for nothing but splinters.

These genetically engineered giants mark wet places. They tell a story of fashion and economics and science in our man made landscape. They add layers of light and movement. They stop a view in it’s tracks, forcing your gaze up and round. They run at unexpected angles, bend to the wind and dare to prick our famously vast Norfolk skies.

April, Standing Back From Blossom.

I wonder if I have a bit of bee in me? I’m attracted to blossom like an iron filing to a magnet. The minute I see any, I have an insatiable desire to get right up into it. Nectar’s not my aim, no, I just want to feast my eyes. Look at the shape and number of petals, the stamens, the way it sits on the branch. The smell of it. Watch the insects on it. Loose myself, swoon at this perfect moment, and then I invariably try to draw or paint it. I have hundreds of unsuccessful drawings of mad frothiness., with no structure, no edge, no tone and absolutely no merit. I desperately want to convey the thrilling intoxication I feel for this fleeting beauty, but I never do, I just make a mess.

So this year I’ve decided to stand back from blossom. To look at it in the landscape. First there’s the blackthorn, little pin pricks swelling into smoke that drifts through cold, dark woods and along dead hedges. Then the wild cherry blossom twinned with tiny mustard leaves. Echoing the white April clouds, pot bellied with rain. Punching holes in the material world for the sky to fill. There’s the pear, blossoming thick and creamy against the large, three stemmed birch, dripping with ochre catkins. As the sky darkens behind a landscape of bud, young leaf, blossom, twig and trunk., it sings it’s frilly tune in harmony with the rest. It illuminates rain drops and dares to compete with rainbows. So with the dainty crab apple serving up it’s pink delights at the moment and the blossom of all blossoms, the may, yet to come, I’ll keep my distance and try to remember that what makes blossom so achingly sweet is its temporary part in the whole.

Well, maybe I might, just once, bury myself deep within an apple tree, but I’m definitely not taking my paints with me this year.

April, From Beginning To End.

As we walked between fields of sheep, our game was to find the newest lamb. Just as we turned towards the fell a second twin slithered out of it’s mother, a messy miracle, all wet ears and legs, within a minute almost standing. We marvelled at the extraordinary triumph of birth. These crumpled new beginnings all clean and unwritten. And we left them with our hopes and luck for the future, trying to forget the lamb last night, with it’s eyes pecked out by crows.

Half way down, through the larch wood we spied the main footpath to the lake, alive with a procession of weekend walkers. Not wanting to join them we sat and watched. First an enormous wolf hound, scuffing his feet next to a bent old man. Next, a matching middle aged couple with a springy pair of fluffy golden retrievers. Then, someone running with a wet collie. And finally a young family with two terrier puppies, making slow progress and a lot of noise. The seven ages of man with a sort of evolutionary trail of dogs.

We crossed the river at the head of the lake and skirted round to the bottom of Flass Wood. This ancient oak woodland, once coppiced for industrial charcoal burning but now left to it’s own devices is swollen with moss. Two or three foot thick in places it surges over boulders and up tree trunks. New ferns, older than time, uncoiling, wood sorrel, leaves still folded and a bright white skeleton of…… of what? A snake? Just a perfect curved back bone and a head. The size of the head thankfully ruled out a snake. Eventually we found the pelvis, the shoulder blades, ribs and legs. It was the mangled remains of a fox. Curled up, asleep forever on it’s soft bed of moss.

We had started with creation, seen evolution, and come to the end of time in just three hours.

April, Miss Back’s.

The empty house is unexpectedly lovely every time you see it. Built of soft weathered brick, sitting behind and slightly above a small pond, it must be the kitchen wing of a once substantial hall. Two large double chimney breasts and one enormous triple chimney take up most of the front. Tall and patterned, they’ve been cold for years. A grand porch juts out. Stone carvings of grinning heads, wild curls and strange hats. A coat of arms with a horse and a bear. A bear knocker, a bear lock. AD 1620. And a strange energy. Not visible but palpable.

I seek it’s last remaining contemporaries. The ancient oaks that stand still, in the fields here. Each one extraordinary. Their long history visible in their bulk. One, in a bog, huge corrugated toes coming up for air. It’s trunk almost fluid with bubbles. One, fossilised except for a three foot strip of bark keeping the merest spray of twigs alive. One, completely burred, has given centuries to the production of whiskers. One giant, divided into two, each stem the perfect hulking mirror image of the other, even where they’ve split. Each tree full of holes. All old pollards whose limbs have been sacrificed on the alter of those seven chimneys.

These trees come from a time before machinery broke the thread of our memory. A time when trees had spirits and fairies could fall in love with you. When nights were dark and hedgehogs stole the milk from cow’s udders. But they’re still here, alive. Alive and whispering in Jacobean English, thick with Norfolk vowels, of a past I can only catch the faintest glimmer of.

April, An Unloved Jumble of Plants.

Bored of lying in bed, too ill to want to move, not ill enough to sleep. I decide it’s a case of mind over matter and lug myself outside. I’ve missed three days, three days of spring, warm and exploding. I sink down beside the stream and draw the first thing that catches my eye. It’s a jumble of plants that I see every day without really looking at.

The young monterey pine at the back. Usually so blank and black. Today, the bright green of park benches, jauntily dotted with ochre cones and soft growth tips.

Then the sycamore. Twenty years old and with a carpet of seedlings at it’s feet.

Next, the contorted pear. Old and misshapen, clothed in the tight buds of it’s unequalled blossom. Occasionally this tree produces one or two small, warted fruit, so delicious, their memory never leaves you.

And the tangle of wild plum. Invading with suckers. Showing no sign of life. But later so generous with their exquisite purple fruit, blushed blue and dripping sweet. The air will be filled with their fragrant harvest, the humming of wasps audible from where I’m sitting.

The holly. Slow and dark and waxy behind a young thorn, delicate in the light.

And finally the daffodils, loud and stiff. My least favourite member of this strange grouping.

But the spell breaks, my head throbs, my back aches. Shivering, I creep back to bed and dream feverish dreams of plucking succulent wasps from trees.

April, Take Shelter in Trees!

Samuel Palmer’s exclamation, ‘TAKE SHELTER in TREES’ strikes a familiar chord. He wrote it after yet another disappointing exhibition, which certainly sends any artist running for cover. Hiding from the world is one thing but Taking Shelter in Trees is another. It’s about comfort. The otherness of trees, their unconcern with the human world. They are just trees, being trees. Beautiful, solid, sure, life giving, what ever you want. But the uplifting part about being in trees is surely, the knowledge that you are completely insignificant.

I sought the shelter of the wood this week in an attempt to hide from the tsunami of noise our new neighbour has unleashed, A busy road, for decades silenced, roars. Machinery drones. And although being in the wood can’t extinguish the noise, it dulls it, makes it less important. The worry and the fear pale at the immediacy of what’s going on around me. The squirrel angrily clucking and waggling it’s tail, eventually runs straight at me…. help!… The chiff chaff, the wood pecker and a host of warblers intent on reproduction take no notice of me. A crimson spider flashes it’s slow progress across the leaf litter.

Sitting in the sun with my back against a smooth ash tree I try to draw the emerald slick of dogs mercury. Pulsating green at the feet of trees since February, it’s time is almost over as the nettles begin their unstoppable surge upwards and the canopy far above it’s head begins to close over. Drowning hopelessly in green, my pastels and my talent (?) no match for this vivid carpet. I leave, revived by all the riches in the world, found in trees just being trees.

March, Sallow.

It seemed to me to be a co-incidence that as I was heading off to draw pussy willow, aspirin was making the news. Willow, the mother of aspirin has been treating man’s aches and pains for thousands of years, and new scientific studies suggest it could also prevent some cancers, even cure them. The forester claims that deer will self medicate on sallow coppice - I doubt he has scientific proof for this, but if amount of time spent watching deer in woodland counts for anything, then by rights there should be a seed of truth in it.

So, this week, all hail the sweet sallow. Humble member of the graceful salix family. Cheerfully brightening our dull March days with it’s pussy willow. Tight downy chrysalis’ unfurling into elaborate oval pompoms. Each see through hair holding it’s pollen laden head out to the world. Exquisite lemon yellow halos, faint with the first nectar of spring. Mild recuperative tonic, gently bringing bees back to life. These small trees, blousey in a hedge or glowing in the under story of a wood, transform light into pure joy. This is their moment.