The Countryside in December
Sarah Ryan takes a bracing early morning walk to enjoy a moment of solitude beneath the branches of a favourite tree
IT IS EARLY morning, and I open the door against a gust of fresh December air. The chill is speckled with tiny droplets of rain, and I gratefully take a breath. It is a relief to both my mind and my limbs, which have spent too much time inside, often ensconced in armchairs. I pull up the hood of my coat and set off towards the lake and woods nearby. Icy droplets pitter on my hood, and a pearly roil of cloud gathers above. The roads and paths are quiet. People are warm indoors, still snuggled under their blankets. The ducks, teal, mallard and shoveller, drift on the still water, barely ruffling it with their passage. I push my hands deep into the soft lining of my pockets and pace quickly past the edge of the lake, on a winding path between bare trees. The path leads onto a wide, chalky track, and an apple-cheeked cyclist whirs past, also enjoying the invigorating effect of a December day outside. To my left, fields of winter-growing crops rise behind a cracked wooden fence, mottled with lichen, and to my right, twiggy branches stretch into a muted sky. I crunch uphill between trees and fields before the track turns to face the lake again. A furrowed meadow runs downhill to the pale expanse of the water, flecked with distant waterfowl. There may be a goosander among them or a Bewick’s swan. I am too far away to see, and enjoy their anonymity. Rabbits scuffle and dash for cover as I approach. There is a black rabbit among the scurrying forms, and I wonder where it has come from. A domestic escapee perhaps, or a melanistic rarity?
“Sit then, awhile, here in this wood So total is the solitude, we safely may delay. These massive roots afford a seat, Which seems for weary travellers made” Charlotte Brontë, The Wood
An old friend
The arrhythmic patter of rain has ceased, and I pull down my hood. The track swings past hedgerow, downhill towards a pond and the edge of the woods. I want to visit one of my favourite old trees. Some isolated parts of this wood are more than 400 years old, and I wonder, as I tread between columns of ash, hazel and oak, how many passages of the year my beloved old tree has lived through. Browning leaves border the path, breaking slowly, invisibly, down into nourishing mulch. Insects scramble amid the brown papery
folds and humid darkness. The leaves will be nuzzled apart by foraging badger muzzles later but, for now, the woods are quiet. In a moment, almost too quick to see, a wren dives from a nearby twig into a bush. I barely glimpse it before it has gone. To find the oak, I turn off the main track and follow a narrow ride into the trees. The air carries the faint damp-earth scent of mushrooms and the tang of cold, and I take a long, gratified breath. I walk this part slowly, placing each foot as soundlessly as I can. If anything is roaming the woods, I do not want to disturb it but I do want to see it. I know that foxes and owls live here. Muntjac deer too, though they and their nibbling teeth are fenced out of some sections so that the wood can grow undisturbed. The old oak is soon visible on my left. It is not an especially grand or large tree, but its obvious age gives it presence. The gnarled trunk leans heavily to one side, branches reaching for a gap in the canopy. The bark is deeply fissured with age, and I run my fingers over the rough wood, feeling into the cracks and gazing up at the crown overhead. A few crisp leaves still cling on. I spend some time in the clearing beneath the tree, which is coated in leaf litter of burnished yellow and earthy brown, and smells warmly of humus. When I return home, it will be to bustle, colour and laughter; to things to make and prepare. But now I simply stand beneath my favourite tree, my hand resting on its bark and listen to the soft silence of the woods.
“Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars, Dream, and so dream all night without a stir...” John Keats, Hyperion, Book One