Woodsmoke.

A place I love where I have a one-sided conversation with two crows.

Hello beauties, are you all as windswept as I am by wild and irascible November? Such trickery and mood swings; the menopausal month!

In twenty-four hours all the leaves on all the ash trees in a certain patch of borrowed woodland blew away. I watched them as they curled and careened, were caught in a wind which was far from a gentle caress, more a brutal, final this is the end! And it was… they’re gone, every leaf, only bare, shimmying bones of branches remain.

Hello winter!

Unexpected freedom from everyday mundanities, obligations, chores which should have been ticked off yesterday, or a week ago, a month ago even… happens rarely. As such, when a moment presents itself that is empty — or I pretend it is by ignoring the above — I pocket every second like a greedy child, with little or, being brutally honest, no desire to share it. Which is how, with gracious thanks, a beaming smile and scarcely a backward glance I find myself with not only an afternoon but the whole day following it and a weekend in visible and vociferous ecstasy in that tiny patch of borrowed woodland I have been pretending is mine for the last five years.

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Monday evening, light falling through leaves…

I am a thief of nature… of a beguiling patch of light and dark that sits at the bottom of our field.

I have found what I believe to be an insurmountable joy over these last days. During every ecstatic free moment — even after dusk has fallen — I have cavorted and frolicked like a lamb in a field of fresh spring grass in that tiny patch of woodland I keep harping on about, clearing debris, burning the deadwood and resurrecting the last of the paths from half a century of abandonment and neglect. I do this single handed. No machines, no beloved, no noise, no conflict. Meaning, every time I pass beneath tree canopies, feel my feet on soft moss, stare up in amazement at how luminous the pale green of the lichen is, kick up beauty in the leaves, feel high on the scent of decay, recognise the bird that is singing a certain delightful birdsong or halt entirely to listen to the scufflings of small creatures, I feel an internal rhapsody of delectation holding me in the divine. In the simple joy of working. I am glad to be here, in this moment, on this beautiful planet in this tiny woodland. Not just a little bit glad but a crazy full-up-heart-do-a-few-cartwheels-in-the-falling-leaves-in-deepest-thanks sort of glad.

I am privileged, I know. I don’t ever forget that. I know this goodness is precious. Such a place as this eight-hundred square meters of straggly ash, stunted hawthorn and dead cherry, brambles and briars — does that excite you too? — is a distraction from all that is a concern in a world where much is. It is a smile where too often bleakness and worry are headlining our day. It is joy in the scents of decay, hope piled in leaf matter sifted out from amongst cruelty and corruption and utter despair. It is the smoke curling through the trees, the thorns from brambles in my fingers, Just as sun and rain are essential to the balance of nature, both happiness and hope are essential to our own equilibrium. Too often we lose sight of how easily it is found in the modesty of our own bare hands when occupied in honest work.

“Too much joy, I swear, is lost in our desperation to keep it.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

I tell all this, in a rather one sided silent conversation to two crows. Both are sitting in a high perch. Their feathers glint green and indigo in the sunlight where they are undaunted by the smoke from my fire and I am almost certain they are listening to my monotone by the tone of their reply; their voices are melancholy, they speak of sadnesses I cannot comprehend. As the passerines peer quizzically down at me I ask why such sad undertones? One replies, in a forlorn voice as crows are want to have, the other remains unusually silent.

“this is how winter begins in me, it aches my bones, my colour doesn’t shine… I am an anatomy of grief”

He leaves me no time to reply to his obvious tristesse much less disagree, though I am uncertain I would have. His great feathered body lifts from the branch, his wings gather the wind in their vast expanse and he is gone. I watch him fly into the beyond, followed, though not immediately, by the other.

It is a strange meeting of black winged belief that leaves me momentarily halted. I stare into a cerulean sky watching their departure but concede, eventually, to the thought that the likelihood of my understanding their language is tiny. And, the sight of smoke from my fire weaving fabulously through the trees is too much of a beauty to ignore.

In the mystery of tree smoke shadow.

The hours I continue to spend in this small paradise at the bottom of the top field are always in hard labour. Mine, alone, in the way I prefer and the way that is kind to nature, if less kind to me. The land is not flat, the paths climb steeply on one side and are littered with stones from the original wall following the lane — the only access to the hill until after WWII— on the other. You will not hear me complain. It is a labour of love in leaf pools of olive and ochre, in rivers of light that filter, now, through bare branches between trunks still standing and the poems whispered by the ghosts of those long fallen. And, — for another day — it is a secret I am holding tightly for fear of it escaping in the tendrils of sweet scented woodsmoke which began five years ago during the unforgettable days of confinement.

I believe, whatever force of madness overwhelmed my son and I the day we began to clear the first path half hidden under fifty year wall of growth, dense with briars and thorns and ivy, it was divine and glorious and prophetic.

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A friend for a Tuesday; Chaffinch - Fringilla coelebs - coelebs is latin for batchelor, it is not uncommon to see flocks of just male chaffinch in winter, hence the Batchelor Bird.

Briefly - I have been feeding the birds, mainly chaffinches and tits — both blue, coal and long-tailed — double their usual seeds and nuts, to help compensate for this sudden change in Novembers mood, just in case I understood the language of the crows. Because, also, winter begins in me this way too.

I cannot run fast enough to keep up with the hours passing. They overtake me twice a day — sometimes more. Meaning at the end of each day, never mind each week or month or year, I am older than I believe I am, this strikes me as somewhat unfair since I feel I am old enough.

Pulling up the blades in the last field as the light fades. November 14 2025 - Le Paradis

The ploughing is over, all the winter barley is planted. A rich, earthy scent hangs in the air so evocative of my childhood on a farm in West Sussex I feel I have been whisked up in time, deposited on that other land in another country that I once loved in a different life. For a few lost minutes I am walking ploughed fields, following behind my father who carries the warm scent of pipe tobacco and coffee, his shotgun cracked open over his forearm, a loaded cartridge belt slung low on his hips. Pigeon fly up in flocks, disappear into morning mist, there are sheep huddled in the corner of a field below us. Our boots are caked in mud and I fall in the deep ruts made by tractor tyres and plough because then, I was just ten years old and those plough lines were like mountains. It is a feeling so visceral and alarmingly strong, tears prick my eyes.

I am delighted and touched by a comment left by Jeffrey Streeter on Embers; I wrote;

“And, evidently they — or perhaps only her smile — carry the secret language of the ever cantankerous weather gods because as we pull up outside the barn, a pale sleepy sun finds a crack in the damp and the grey, through the blankets of cloud, the rain halts completely and unbelievably, not a single drop more falls during the entirety of their stay.”

His reply;

In Japan she might be called a 晴れ女,” hare-onna” or sunshine bringer!

Jeffrey she is, she does, she always will!

The cattle in the field next to the lane which backs onto my small patch of paradise on this hill in the middle of deepest darkest France have been practicing their posing, they have now mastered a passable impression of a John Constable painting.

November days are turning, the evening landscape is painted in gold filigree just as winter opens its freezing embrace with a veil of gauzy, silver light, a curtain of muslin mist blows across the hill in the wind, wanders down into the valley and alas, I doubt it will budge until April. Stove is alight and roaring…

And when old Winter puts his blank face to the glass,
I shall close all my shutters, pull the curtains tight,
And build me stately palaces by candlelight.”
― Charles Baudelaire

Before I ramble on all Novembery forever — and I could — I will stop and send you love until next time…

PS — I noticed Fog Chaser has composed a piece of music with the same title ‘woodsmoke’ — do tap the play button here, to hear this beautiful and meditative piece in B minor on piano — maybe listen while you read.

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Something I have loved…

<Mary L. Tabor> has been serialising letters she wrote and imllustrated to her 8 year old granddaughter while she was away for the first time at sleepover camp. At the time she was reading a wonderful book titled This Is A Poem That Heals Fish by poet Jean-Pierre Siméon, you can find full details in her Table of Contents. Mary you make me wish for a granddaughter…

Letters to My Granddaughter

Jeffrey Streeter does indeed give us a glimpse of distant horizons, some closer than you think, some resonant of youthful days and all intricately weaved into his love of literature, tap below for a choice of destination.