In the arms of old oak...
How I try and fail (this time) to be an old bird in a fallen tree, a pigeon visits dressed in gangsters clothes.
Hello dear readers, a warm welcome to you all. Thank you for being here with me, for sparing me precious moments of your time, consider yourselves hugged tightly!
January has honed its fine and artful dragging out of the days to utter perfection this year, Christmas feels like months ago rather than weeks, hours feel like whole days…
Tell me I’m not wandering alone in this chicanery!
Classes this week, wrapped in a thyme and lavender scented cloud from essential oil soaked cotton balls placed on every radiator turned up to maximum due to open windows, have felt endless. Trips back and forth to the infirmary to check on gathering feverish brows on repeat—la grippe est arrivée1, oh quel bonheur! The usually prohibited winding stone steps in the tower—a shortcut—hasn't felt so many running feet in over fifty years. We are short staffed, parents cannot always arrive immediately to collect their sick children—some don’t bother even trying—sharing out extra hours, pre and peri scolaire has meant there is no pretension in our exhaustion and no relief in the realisation there are three weeks remaining before the next holidays…
Will I make it unscathed? I hope so but I return each evening trapped in a body in need of fresh air, silence, my woodland and the hill, with few minutes of daylight left to do so and as much energy as the frozen caterpillars I find on the kale!
“Yet often the mountain gives itself most completely when I have no destination, when I reach nowhere in particular, but have gone out merely to be with the mountain as one visits a friend with no intention but to be with him.” ― Nan Shepherd
❈
Aimless wandering, in French errer (intransitive verb)
To wander by chance. A wanderer who wanders the paths.
Aller au hasard, à l'aventure (errance). Vagabond qui erre sur les chemins.
With simple vagabond intentions; not far from my hill is a path, it follows the bottom of a different hill leading to disused fluorine mines. It is a dark and dank risky meander at this time of year, forest streams run fast and high—I have a moment of wellington boot wisdom before leaving—crossing the path six times before they join the Riou Viau2 flowing beside the lane. It is a two hour hike without almost impossible diversions to search the abandoned mines still holding hidden layers of fluorine. Someday I will return with one of these elusive indigo rock treasures stashed in my backpack, but not this day. This day I am here simply for the fresh air, the absolute silence, perhaps a few whisperings with tiny pipistrelle bats hidden within the folds of rocky caves and crevices, wrapped in their own sleepy-winged folds, if such a conversation is waiting.
Two-thirds of the path are behind me, my feet are dry, furry winged friends remain too hidden for my untrained eye, they ignore my cajoling—though I know they know I’m there—preferring to keep themselves firmly wrapped to themselves in sleepy silent, well hidden inertia. Perhaps another day we will chatter while they dive and flutter their tiny batwings about my business but, again, not today. I have the feeling of an un-event as I wander on, now, alongside the last stream as it burbles merrily below. I startle a heron from his feast of early frogspawn in a vernal pond, gaze in astonishment at the slow whoosh-whoosh of his great wings as he lifts off through woodland, surely too dense for such expansive elegant flight. He is an expert escapist however.
Oh but the landscape has a way of distracting the eye from the path, diverting basic need to deep desire. Foolish and infantile, devilish deviances present themselves when absolute attention to a plan is lost.
An old oak has fallen on the far side of the stream, it lies flat against the ground but the land is steep and the tree gives the impression of having just toppled slightly in its ancient footings rather than fallen completely. It takes me only a single second to realise the top branches are resting just below the entry to the last mine on the path—surely here there will be winged creatures in wait—only a second more of hesitation before I leave the path to cross the stream with the—far too juvenile for my age—thought of climbing the oak. After all, there is nowhere to fall but the ground upon which its great boughs and trunk are already resting.
I have sudden burning need to sit a while in its branches; an old bird, world weary but watchful from her high perch.
Alas, my chosen footwear, as sensible as it is for wading through winter streams, is wholly unsuitable for climbing trees, even fallen trees. And—damn that scornful gaze—I am being watched, “You can laugh you old ragamuffin” I mumble to the buzzard so blatantly sneering at my debatable agility. He doesn’t move a muscle but I can tell he’s smirking, he is, after all, perched already on his high branch of charme3. Damn his mockery! I will show him what this old bird can do when she wants to.
Not on this day perhaps, not in these wellies… but one day!
My chickens are disturbed; an imposter, a thief dressed in grey and green and metallic-plum plumage—gangster clothes if ever I saw them, the very best no less. He is hungry, as bold as the brass rings around his eyes, strutting his colours as he barges through their ruffles, ignoring huffy squawks. He makes a sort of gentlemanly half curtsy as he dips to peck up with great gusto—and far too much nonchalant head nodding and sidestepping—the tastiest morsels. They, in turn, their backs and necks and wings, all fluffed up bland feathers by comparison, together brave a sideways glance which they hope is a glare, retire to cower under a—yet to be giant—redwood cedar. My apologetic smile at the pigeon thief as I shoo him away does not go unnoticed by six indignant hens; when I return to close them in for the night they refuse, they run me a merry dance around their coup before each can be caught, gently stroked with whisperings a reassurance before being placed on her perch.
I am not certain—it could just be a trickery of moonlight—but I’m sure I catch a glimpse of metallic-plum feathers still sidestepping and curtsying under the cedar, clearing the last of the grain…
I brush away the thought that my woodland is missing my tender care, that I have spent so few hours maintaining our friendship this year that young ash trees and elm—especially the elm—are failing in my absence. Of course this is highly presumptuous when I know the truth is simply that it is I that miss our conversations, it is I that miss the birdsong spilling from their branches, soft mossy bases and whispered leaf stories. It is I that is failing without their support.
I would love to think the owl, hidden on its branch in the walnut tree calls me for our daily game of hide’n’seek though I know he is calls because calling is his evening ritual, he doesn’t yet trust me well enough to ask me out to play.
I hope the daffodils sheltered under the old wall in that secret place I have not yet had time to visit, don’t burst their yellow buds until I do.
I find three of strangest possible natural objects lodged at the base of a tree in the forest, a potato, a dozen nibbled pumpkin seeds and two razor shells…
Seth tells me there are more ways to shuffle a pack of fifty-two cards than there are grains of sand on the entire planet. A fact, apparently it actually is, I find quietly unimaginable. Evidently, I don’t and never have, thought about such an enormous number, but he does.
The wind is preparing to be wild up here, Storm Herminia is gathering her strength to the South, as yet only the tips of the trees are swaying as they whip up the clouds. It feels like an auspicious evening for baking a cake, a slice of which to be eaten warm, while curled up in a favourite chair with a good book.
From this cosy place I send you my love
Susie X
If you would like to show your appreciation for my writing but don’t want, or perhaps don’t have the means to upgrade your subscription you can send what ever is acceptable to you via a secure link HERE. Whether you do or you don’t, I am delighted you have read this far.
My heartfelt thanks.
I have loved this week…
’s Barefoot Rage, grabbed my attention from first line, enough to make me not stop until the end,I could never have imagined a friend like Gregor. He saved my life. I only wish I could have done the same for him.
except it wasn’t the end; now I am impatient for part two which will be with us all on Friday.
Jonathan also has a heap of recommendations for further reading which I encourage you to not ignore.
La grippe - the flu in French is a particularly virulent variety this year!
The Riou Viou is the name of the river running at the bottom of the hill I live on, rising in a village called Escandolières it flows for 27 kilometres before joining the Riou Mort in Viviez.
French for Hornbeam. Carpinus betulus,
Oh yes - "January has honed its fine and artful dragging out of the days to utter perfection this year" - Christmas was a thousand years ago. I am a bear. Leave me to hibernate in peace.
Oh, and yes - "I find three of strangest possible natural objects lodged at the base of a tree in the forest, a potato, a dozen nibbled pumpkin seeds and two razor shells… " - don't even pretend that's not the fairies that take me hand in hand through the forest to the waters and the wild.
Oh, and one more thing - a gracious Thank You my friend. I am honoured 🙏🏽.
I read this gorgeous letter while curled into the corner of the sofa, my cat’s warm backend plopped heavily onto my reading arm. Your words and his weight sunk me further into now and I’ve come out the other side refreshed, grateful. Your “un-events” shimmer with the kind of aliveness that don’t need “eventful” to claim their significance. Beauty simply is. And you, my friend, point the way. ❤️