Chris Packham

Grieves for an old friend

SCRATCHY AND I REMEMBER OUR CANINE COMPANION AND CONTEMPLATE OUR PRECIOUS TIME SPENT AMONGST THE TREES. WE KNEW DEATH WOULD CREEP THROUGH THE SHADOWS SO WE BARKED AT THE MOON.”

As a nipper I’d have been panting in its crown in less than a minute, with green-stained knees, twigs in my hair and a muesli of barky bits down my shirt. The oak is squat with a fat belly and brawny arms, opened sideways, trimmed in a rich velvet of mosses and lichens – medieval in fashion but younger in years.

Its sprawling form tells me it spent its youth in a field, but it is now cocooned in a forest, overreached by an upstart pine and jostled by an impatient throng of irritating birch. Soon after we began to explore these woods it shed a limb, a giant python which curled across our path and which I wrestled to one side. When we next passed, I noticed that this ancient spur arched to offer a perfect seat. So I sat. And Itchy took this cue to bounce up for a cuddle, and so the ‘cuddle seat’ was christened.

Every foray we made was punctuated with a stop and a caress. In sunshine and shower, in cold and wet, at dawn or dusk, he stood on my knees and licked my face. If I was late he would wait there, if he got lost we would meet there, if I pretended to forget he’d stand indignant and then leap twice as high and lick thrice as hard when I returned to perch on the cuddle seat.

And then he was gone. The following morning I had to go there, and sit there and just be there… for Scratchy. But when Scratch plodded up to that rustic pew, he spun and he stood and he stared up the path, scanning, waiting for his twin. I called him and pulled him over, but I couldn’t break his watch. After 10 minutes he sat but remained fixed upon the way we’d come. That’s when he realised it was just us. And in the clammy grip of those callous winter trees we broke what was left of our hearts.

Today the f loor is filigreed with vivid moss, and wilted violets and scruffy anemones line the arcade from ‘carcass corner’ to the ‘treat seat’. The sun is sharp and silvers the fuzzy outline of my expectant friend. In the weeks that followed Itchy’s death it was difficult to get him to walk, so I introduced titbits – four, given at regular points, including that broken bough where we had always rested and loved.

So ‘cuddle’ became ‘treat’ and when I arrive his gleaming chestnut eyes follow my hand and his tongue and teeth tickle my fingers and his nose wets my cheek as we kiss. Then we sit and sometimes he still searches for his brother.

I didn’t imagine writing this. When I began these essays on the pretext of composing a monthly cameo of an oak wood in the New Forest, I thought my life would be very different this morning. I hope it was immediately obvious that they were as much a eulogy to my lost companion as an autistic insight into the intense sensory experience the setting provides. I wanted to try to express my connection to this place, but that connection was not mine, it was forged by the three of us because I have rarely been alone here. But I feared I would be alone by now.

I’ve never felt as much at ease as I have amongst these trees, on these paths, in this mud, in the mist, the frost, the snow. I’ve slept, I’ve scampered, I’ve dreamed, I’ve stumbled. I’ve run and jumped but not yet fallen. And although we’ve left our marks here, they are all so justly temporary. We are just butterf lies who’ve f luttered through this ancient temple for a day.

Our time was not limitless – we were gifted a finite number of walks, and we counted them all. We knew death was on its way, that it would creep through the black summer shadows and snatch at us, so we barked at the moon, chased rainbows and when we felt brave we snuck glimpses of this woodland’s magnificent foreverness.

We’ve played for a moment in a bigger game. We expect no marker, no grave or tomb or other vanity to record our folly. But what fun we’ve had! Each time I’ve unclipped that gate I’ve pulled the pins from my joy grenades and watched them explode, running for the sheer joy of running, enriching my life and gifting me an ecstasy that couldn’t be supped or stabbed.

I stand. He shakes. The treat seat was wet. I walk, he trots. A great tit titters and the sun makes a million leaves fizz. I smile. The end.