woodland

Into The Woods

~ Jim Hindle ~ Leave a comment

I am tired today.  I am tired like my bones and my blood have been fighting.  Spring is here, the hawthorn already thick and full in the hedges.  The blackthorn blossom has already been and gone.  Actual sunlight graces the days, mead for the mind.  It’s all just as well.  At the time of writing, the war in Iran carries on.

But perhaps despite, of even because of such things, we can begin to pick things up a little, pick up our feet as we head for the literal hills, limber a little as we take to the tracks.  Do we go forward with what?  Bloody-mindedness? Stubborn optimism?  Spring comes unconditional, offers its charms consistent as clockwork, dependable as country people’s hope.

For all the woes of the world there is still some kind of ameliorative, a knowledge the world is much bigger than us, puts in place our mortal concerns, has been here before and knows our hearts like a mother knows the ways of her own children.

It is not so very far from the woods here – I’m practically already in them as I write.  Here, just past the sign to the village, where the footpath gives out, past the last of the streetlights, at the bottom of the garden and just up the pot-holed lane, trees encroach like memories of how things once were and could be again – blueprints of an undetermined future, holding a promise of how things can be, a sign of our natural state, an origin story for us all.

We know all this is fragile in a sense, that old guarantees may no longer suffice, that there is still much to be decided.  Our living biosphere is crying out now, crying out for change, for us to stop pumping the air full of gas; gasoline habits were hooked on, cooking up a daily brew we mainline in the atmosphere as if there was no tomorrow or we are over-confident tomorrow never comes, that we have never a care for the wake that we leave, the wreckage of inertia or indifference, a tab tomorrow’s children will have to pick up.  We are counting the cost of that bill even now, despite the distractions; we insulate ourselves with screens, chained to a matrix that seeks to consume our consciousness while all the while the old things still persist – the birds sing on perennial, the leaves unfurl like banners on a march; a million strong, militants for memory, that chant we still have our inheritance, we hold it in our hands; this bright green dream of summertime, the places we come back to, can call home.

Maybe, at some stage, we will step out anew in all this.  For now, there is just a simple sense of beckoning, the tender young sun, the birds on the bough, miles of woodland lying in wait, ambushing us with unexpected beauty.  Vistas open, tracts of trees present themselves.  Walking here becomes devotional, every observation like a prayer.

Is it ever enough to remember that, far away, people might be dealing with very different realities?  Is it enough to say we never wanted the war, seek to have no part in it?  The madness of a military might can still perhaps help us re-enforce the peaceful things, to see the green leaves budding now as if these are the fundamental things and all else is a diversion, a deviation from the original plot.

The trees at peace, the land itself arising, clear and strong – can these things set our reckonings; currencies true in the new day?  Can they, in themselves, form some kind of better direction, some guiding force like true north for the soul?  Perhaps we can find our way forward not by proscriptions or admonishment but by remembering what lies at our doorstep, at the end of the lane, that these are our values and here is the fight; to seek and to see and hold onto the gifts that we have; to hold onto and value them and strive to see them endure.

I will rise and go now and go to the woods, walk through the heathland, the paths through the trees.  Like everyone else I will hope for the best for the season – for a fair prospect, for peace in our time.  Perhaps in ways that might not be so clear, the trees can somehow help with all of this, by more than just providing sanctuary or a reference point for that which we ought to hold dear.  In my wilder moments I wonder if the woods can be a kind of sounding board – echoing and amplifying prayer, like green cathedrals: dynamic, alive.  Who can say what currencies and capabilities these dreaming beings hold?  If you sleep in a tree you may feel it – the cradling of an older consciousness, the sense these creaking creatures are still very much alive, that they can anchor us, guide us, help us find our feet on the path.

At times, it may be enough to simply go forward with a clear mind, to offer intentions, to hope for the best.  If trees and woods can be a kind of antidote perhaps it is enough to simply seek to share the secret, that the solutions may lie at our doorstep, that all that is required is to step out beneath the lintel, be it that of a house or a town, find again the things that matter, that can help us endure, remember how life can still be.

Ancient Woodland, Modern Minds

~ Jim Hindle ~ Leave a comment

So we live in a world where existence for so many species we happen to share this planet with is in jeopardy, or has already been denied. And here at home our ancient woodland – supporting at least twice the amount of rare or threatened species than any other UK habitat – is being wiped out at a rate faster than that in evidence in the Amazon itself. So here at least, in knowing this, we’re given something like a greater clarity, that if we can get beyond the myth that the world was made solely for our benefit we surely have a duty to protect those whose lives rest in our hands, in our ability and willingness to speak and act on their behalf.

So where do we start in such a monumental mission? There are the obvious candidates of course – the HS2 line that threatens twenty one ancient woodlands for a scheme whose money would be better spent on improving and maintaining our existing railway tracks and which, if built, would scar a wider Chilterns landscape that has so far through accident or luck escaped too much encroachment by the infrastructural outrider that so often heralds more and more development. The protests against this particular project seem set to run and run.

Then we have the sorry story down in Kent of Oaken Woods – 81.5 acres of ancient woodland due to be swept aside for a ragstone quarry, a decision which goes against not only the county council’s minerals plan but also policy of central government towards ancient woodland. And there are no shortage of other threats – road widening programmes, pylons, new houses, even oil extraction.

There is no doubt these woods need all our help and that campaigning in all its forms is now as necessary as ever. But perhaps the greatest threat to our old woodlands – and everything else – is simply the mentality that lets us think that their removal is ok, that they and the species they support are somehow secondary to our own human concerns. They are not, in our common culture, in any sense inviolable. They are, or so the logic goes, the pretty chattels that adorn a landscape loved by sentimentalists and precious few besides. There is simply no room for such pleasant irrelevancies if we want a modern and functioning nation. So the roads are ushered in, high speed lines are laid out as some kind of sleek and greener future and the end justifies any means because industry and commerce must win out, because these are the wheels that keep our world turning even when such cogs drive our own end as much as the scraps of habitat that happen to be in the way.

We can fight any number of projects and – where they threaten precious ecosystems, protected by laws that are routinely deemed fit to be overridden – it is right that people should do so. But if we are serious about preserving them for good, if we are serious about somehow grappling with the underlying assumptions, attitudes, beliefs and even that most unmodern of mindsets: the stories we tell ourselves, we have to see more clearly the ancient change in attitude – what you might even call the original sin – that let us think this world was ours to do with as we please. Without the shift in perspective such insight would hopefully bring, we will ultimately still be simply pushing at revolving doors, or banging our heads against walls. If we do not change the state of mind that underpins each push then even immediate success in any campaign will be rendered temporary because the beast would still live that breathes life into yet another threat and then another.

A long time ago there was no need to sweep aside the plants and animals that did not appear to matter to our immediate concerns. The day such acts became permissible was perhaps the inception for the sorry times we face today. The more we can all recognise that and struggle to imagine a way beyond it is perhaps the greatest and most important challenge we face. Until then nature will remain apparently expendable as will our own lifelines that she carries, a reminder if one was still needed that there is no boundary between us and the world around us except that which we have created in our minds. Demolishing that arbitrary and hitherto all too powerful border has never been more urgent or more vital.

“Our Richest and Most Fragile Habitat”

~ Jim Hindle ~ Leave a comment

At first there was the by now usual sense of stunned disbelief: the government – not content with dispatching any public body with a goal of serving the greater public good or attempting to provide some kind of environmental balance from on high – was coming for the Forestry Commission. But beyond the justified chorus of concern, the petition that has already gathered 150,000 signatories, the score of campaign groups that has sprung up, is the idea really as bad as it sounds?

After all, The Forestry Commission itself was set up after the First World War during which the importance of a domestic supply of timber had been made acutely relevant by the interfering effect of German u-boats. Our previous habit, formed in the previous century, had been to simply strip other unsuspecting countries of their wildwood. In a short space of time after the founding of the Commission in 1919, vast tracts of upland hillsides, moorlands and heaths had been planted up.

The effect on these habitats in our backyards was obviously less than brilliant but at least we weren’t denuding the pristine forests from so much of the rest of the empire. And here, even at this first inception of the Commission, there lies the rub of how we provide for our appetite of timber without undue damage to the natural environment. Is it so bad if so much of the Commission land has now come up for sale? Weren’t these trees planted to be harvested at some stage down the line? With our current deficit isn’t now as good a time as any to call in our debts? We might even stand to reclaim some of those moors and heaths and barren but beautiful hillsides that were lost beneath the blanket of dark spruce.

One very large problem with this is that large areas of ancient woodland have been cut down and grubbed up and planted with conifers this century, seen as they were after the collapse of their age-old management pattern as somehow extraneous, unproductive patches to be tidied up. About half of our ancient woodland has been lost since the end of the Second World War and replanting with conifers accounts for by far the largest share of this. At least, such a proportion would have been lost if these woodlands had not proved so unexpectedly durable – they can revive after a considerable time with the right conditions and even decades of the heavy shade of conifers have not removed them entirely.

Infact, since the 80’s there has been a growing recognition of the need to thin out conifers where they have been planted over ancient woodland and revive the latter in all its beautiful and species-enriched glory. Which is exactly what stands to make the proposed sell off so tragic – the Commission was planning to pursue such restoration on a massive scale. A vast amount of recoverable ancient woodland stands at risk of being lost, forever.

So even if the concept of selling off an asset once held firmly for the public does not raise hackles in and of itself, even if the thought of tracts of forest losing the excellent level of upkeep of paths and rides that the Commission currently provides does not sit uncomfortably then perhaps the proposed pawning of this most precious asset – the 20,000 hectares of woodland as close to wildwood as anything we are ever likely to possess might just wake us up to what we stand to lose in this proposed sell off.

The sorry star upon a proposal which has long since shed its needles and should be removed from both houses with all speed is that the mechanism drafted to facilitate the sell off is not even constitutional. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, we’re glibly told that this is an opportunity for community groups to acquire their local woodland – even if such groups gather the money, where exactly do their members hope to find the time to manage forests with any thing like the level of dedication the Commission currently provides?

There will always be a need for sustainable forestry. But brokerages as hasty as this one appears to be, running the risk of selling off to firms who only have profits in mind and little or no sense of what husbandry can look like don’t do the country any favours by any yardstick. The Commission maintains 100% of its woodland to Forestry Stewardship standard – there will be no such requirement for future owners. To make a former point again, even the economics is dubious; the FC making sizeable returns on their estates to the point where the body costs the public only 30 pence per taxpayer per year. But this government has no sense of value, of what a thing is worth, of what generations past have held dear and fought for. They paint themselves as bitter medicine, as the cruel but kindly short sharp shock. Really though they are just libertarians, about as respecting of institutions as their far left mirror images. Whether semi-crazed by ideology, or simply guilty of an amauterish gambling in the face of the crisis we face, they seem set to discover the limits of the population’s tolerance.