I spent this morning in the woods. It was as sacred to me as before, and I was pleased by the air quality and the new tree types I had not spotted before. As we walked through the shady sunlight of the forest floor under blue skies and bright light, green and browning sycamore leaves drifted down now and again to the leaf mulch on the paths. There were many squirrels, and a pair of pied wagtails close by, as woodpigeons took flight across the glade of the central chasm. I was content.
Many tourists go to the forest for one tree alone. It is something of a historical gimmick piece. It rests at the edge of the woods proper, right next to the playing field, with two postmodern metal council benches set into concrete beside it, ugly and tamed. I find the tree itself somehow grotesque and unhealthy despite some greenery remaining. It has spent too long humanized, and anthropomorphised along with that, a hollow hiding place for Hopkins’ witches, a gaping crack and a bored maw stretching into the earth and the dark. When we returned past, a passer-by was filming it, another token visit for the scrolling wall, something curious and 'historical interest' of the done thing, pointing the camera down diagonally, into the blackness and the underworld, the beauty all around and the light beyond the high canopy ignored, and then dispersal, immediately, scurrying to the built world.
I preferred a pair of trees some ways behind it not far off within the same viewing shot. Stretching up, up and multiplying, in branching, dividing might and breadth, a full, vigorous zenith. I thought of a segment from Rigveda, and the roots of a race growing, and spreading, down forever's years from the primordial foundation, the motions of the form of the cosmos, the capsuled dust of Nature's stars, the ordered dance of alignment with what is that vast real energy, in glory and joy and hope. Not the dissonant, mangled, mutilated husk of an exploited circus ride, a few spluttering leaves in impotent, stoic bundles, and all in bubonic ugliness, and nothing to be seen or felt or meant.
***
I am just back from walkies with Skyler. I was glad to be seeing with him. Though on a habitual shorter lead all down the street and round the corner, and past the last houses of the edge, and not having so much fun apiece on account of me being unable to be with the world and him by my own imprecise knowledge of other humans (on foot to shops and work; on foot with their walking the-village walkies; some traffic too) yet my inability to show this to him suitably, and of course the clumsy legs of mine.
Beyond, in the mud and the grass and leaves and pools of water of the forest floor off inside the treeline, on the hills and gullies and inner glades and the found paths and stoppages of the woods, the labyrinthine paths through thick brambles, and off down the farmer's tracks and the open fields and hedgerows, I did not have this inefficiency before him. Used to the lead length, longer now, and my increasing measured pace, we could explore, and his enthusiasm and my unfit enthusiasm try-outs and personal observations in learning were a joy for me.
I found the far end of the short distance for interesting things, or his interesting things, or I looked close to the ground and tumbled into a state of thinking mind, which wasn't as fun as it distracted me with words and memories or seemed too competitive for me to be to him, in a terrain he could handle better, and handle better anyway. His ground reading found me better paths to follow him across the mud, and the correct higher ground mini contours to follow, and he knew far in advance when a path was dead despite my ignorance, and I tried to provide him enough interesting sniffs and investigations without falling for too many myself, thus stalling him as I hadn't maintained my posture and shown him my interest in something a bit further away.
There was no time there. There was the ground-movement with the sighting-world in front of my eyes to various degrees of elevation, more like swimming through a wobbling screen and filtering (or discerning) the interest value, with him in it and leading the way, easy to see, and to look for his eyes and the little head turns to see if I, and thus he, was okay, or additionally if I was unusually not quite okay and needed to just be turned back to for a second or so with that "why are you simple?" look.
I noticed his own ears up, and would take that into account every time, but my sense of smell is rubbish, much as my only advantage is the intuition that guesses trouble with engine sounds, and familiar models of vehicle approaching at range, and sirens, and all the things of my kind that shouldn't be there, and the silent sense when another human is going to approach, and which I need him to be away from, much as he himself can do what he wants with this, being him and not me, and most certainly not in any way simple.
Height on two legs is not an advantage in nature, only on account (by now) of other humans, or cars, etc., the visual sighting lines perhaps, but a great clumsiness as well. We were beside the world, and there was no future, and we were moving along the track, and now I'm back up here thinking and 'moving/doing' inside my head, with brief silly little hand taps, where it should just be the other way around. Thought is no advantage either, bar – perhaps – in total confusion.
I intend to increase this fun along our day tomorrow.
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