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.