Heartwood

Posted on June 28, 2016

I wrote a short story to go with an image I had painted for The Woodland Trust.

The story is set in a real place, Mounsey, a beautiful place, near Dulverton.

The Heart of the Forest

When they first arrived at the house he hated it. Why his parents, after all these years had decided to have a holiday was a mystery to him. And why here? They lived by the sea. Summers were always carefree, beaches and surfing.

Now, here, there would be no surfing for FOUR weeks.

How would he survive?

To be honest he hadn’t really been listening when the olds first said they were going. Much of what they said when they talked at him was just a blah blah, blah of solid noise. He took little notice, less if his ears were stuffed with earphones and music. He assumed they must have said something at sometime.

Now he was here.

He’d been looking forward to the summer, life on the beach, in the water mostly, showing off to the summer girls from the holiday homes who seemed easily charmed by his exotic ‘local glamour’.

Even the light here was different. At home the air was pearl bright, salt clean, smelling of the sea. Even at night there was more light, as the stars reflected up from the beach so it seemed as if you stood at the very centre of your own small universe.

Here he was no one. Nothing. And the air smelled of damp earth, mushrooms, and rot.

Four weeks.

He wondered if they had done it because he had exams coming up, to keep him out of the water and at his studies.

Four

long

weeks.

The journey took five hours. When they were near he was convinced the satnav was taking them to destruction. His mother had a map, instructions printed off from the net for the last stages. “Left by the bins, down a single track. Steep.” Understatement. The road was steep and twisted from side to side like a roller coaster ride, rutted. The hedgebank was thick with flowers, heavy and wet from rainfall. They bowed down to make a tunnel through which the car drove, flowers slapping at it’s windscreen.

Then there was the house. You could almost stand next to it and not see it, it seemed to grow out from the trees that enclosed it from the rest of the world.

The house sat snug on the slope of a steep sided wooded valley. A rough clearing at the front passed as a garden. Late evening sun filled it with light. They stood and watched as a great bird slow flapped it’s way across the valley. Huge, legs trailing behind it. It looked like a dinosaur, a dragon bird.

He threw his things into a room and looked out from the window.

Trees.

Trees everywhere.

Nothing but trees.

Throwing himself down on the bed, plugging in his earphones he knew that this would be the longest four weeks of his life.

When he awoke on the first morning he had forgotten where he was. He could hear the comforting sound of the rolling sea surf. When he opened his eyes he remembered. It was the wind in the trees that has tricked his ears as it rolled through the leaf canopy from treetop to treetop, like a wave.

The rest of the household still slept. He went out into the garden and stood at the edge of the wood where trees and garden met. The wood made him feel nervous, unsettled.

He’d lived in the same place all his life, never been on holiday, seldom away from home for anything.

The light under the trees was emerald. Things moved, all through the trees, small things, keeping just out of his vision.

He went back into the house, closed the door on the wildness of the place, made coffee and wondered how he would ever get through the next four weeks trapped in this house, down this lane, landlocked.

By the third day he was climbing the walls, ready to walk to the nearest railway station and get a train home. Every time anyone opened the door something of the wood came into the house, twigs, leaves, bits of moss.

Then he met the girl.

He’d been for a walk with his mum and dad down the track that led away from the house and deeper into the woodland, following a hand drawn map they’d found in the kitchen. He hadn’t liked to admit that he needed to go with them, couldn’t go alone the first time he entered the wood, because he was afraid. Of what, he couldn’t say. The trees themselves perhaps? He felt as if they were watching him. Of getting lost, maybe? Perhaps it was just a lingering memory of all those childhood tales of pockets full of white pebbles, wolves and witches and houses that ran on chickens legs that played on his mind. He knew it was irrational. Anyway, for now he walked with his mum and his dad, and listened as they talked. So, now he knew that they had come away so that she could take some time to write a paper she was working on, that his dad would be coming and going as work demanded, and no, he couldn’t go back home because his mum needed him to stay here as she would be scared in such a remote place on her own.

They walked down the narrow track and the forest thickened around them until they reached a mound of trees, a thick wooded hump of a hill. The path ran around the hill, down beside a stream to a swift shallow river, then back up the hill and home to the house.

Waking early next morning he decided to walk the route again, alone, before the others woke.

It was only just light. Bats were returning to roost in the roof above his window. Outside the low sun slanted golden shafts through the mist. He plugged in his earphones, switched on the music, strode down the path. Spiderwebs stretched unbroken across the pathways. Only a few steps away and looking back the house had already disappeared, swallowed by the great trees. He followed the path down, away from the early rising sun. Movement caught his eye. Something large. A deer. An ear twitch in the bracken. Another deer. Three, four, more. Then branches moved and lifted into a sunlit slant and there was the great antlered head of a stag. Both stood, statue still, watching each other. Amazing. Wild deer. They must have caught his scent for moments later they all spooked and ran, like a stream of wildness down the slope and into the heart of the forest.

He took a step, let out a breath he hadn’t even realised he was holding and walked on. And there she was, at the foot of the wooded mound, a girl, with eyes the colour of autumn leaves. He took the earphones out from his ears and heard the forest speak.

“You took your time,” she said.

They walked together, around the hill, down toward the narrow stream. They talked as they walked, with an easy intimacy, though he felt a little shy of this girl.  And when his mother asked him later what she looked like he couldn’t say. Meeting her there, this first time, was like sitting offshore on a surf board, waiting as wave after wave went past and feeling it coming, the energy building and lifting to make that one perfect wave, then catching it.

She was like that.

He learned more on that one day, about the forest, about himself, than he had learned in a lifetime at school.

Somehow the usual questions didn’t come to mind, seem important. She knew who he was, where he was staying and when he asked her how it was that she knew she answered simply,

“ The trees told me.”

So they walked, at first on the path he had walked with his parents, but then deeper into the wood. As she stepped from the path she held out her hand to help him over a fallen log. He hesitated.

“Aren’t you scared of getting lost?” he asked.

She laughed loud and a flurry of small birds flew up from the trees. “ No more than you are of drowning,” she answered. “No one can truly get lost in the forests of Albion in these times. This is a small island. But there was a time..” Her voice trailed away, lost in memories.

“ Are you coming, or not? I have such things to show you.”

He took a deep breath, threw cation to the wind, put his hand into the hand of this stranger, stepped over the log and off the pathway.

As he followed the girl deep into the heartland of the forest  their voices became hushed, as if the leaves drowned their sound. Now and again a light breeze would blow through the canopy where the the tops of the trees met the open sky.

He asked, “do you live here?”

She answered, “yes”.

“In the forest?”

“At Mounsey Castle.”

“You live in a castle?” He imagined something from old tales of knights and dragons.

She laughed.

“You are from the sea. I can smell the salt air on you.”

“Have you ever been there?” he asked.

“I live in the forest,” was her reply.

Trees thickened. So tall. He had never really looked at trees before. Where he lived the salt winds stunted and twisted and wove the trees. You could tell the way the wind blew by how trees grew. Even old trees were short of growth. Here they towered above.

“Don’t you long for open space?” he asked.

“There are clearings,”she said, “but no. Not really. Listen.”

They stopped. Around them the forest seemed to glow. He could feel the sun, high in the sky now, although invisible to them because the leaf canopy was so thickened. the sun’s light was softened by the huge weight of leaves. The air was so still he could hear a leaf fall, touch the earth.

“So many trees. They all look the same to me.”

“That’s because you don’t look,” she said. “The trees would say the same of people. And I would say, so many trees and each one different, unique, and so much more besides.”

She smiled, crouched down, picked up a single leaf from the ground.

“Here, holly, spiked, deep green, evergreen, bright berried, beautiful. It grows short. This one has come from that bush over there.

Here, oak, see the difference of pattern. This one two, oak, but even each leaf is different. So many of these trees here are oak. Look up. See how the leaves pattern the sky.

Here, beech, smooth, slightly glossed, smells different from oak. Like taninn. Breath it, know it. Name it.” She handed him the leaf.

“Here, hawthorn. Smaller than oak, red berried tree, planted by a songthrush.”

She passed each leaf to him and he traced its pattern with his fingers into his memory, learning the shape and the name and the sight and the scent of it. Now she would stop to show him each new thing and he began to see the wood through new eyes.

“Here, anenome. It’s seeds are carried by the wind’s hands. Here, wood sorrel, taste it, lemon.” She found a small round shell, a hole in one end.

“Here, acorn. Food for a small squirrel or bright jay. This, starmoss. So dense you can push your fingers deep into the green pillow of it and still not find  the rock on which it grows. Cool, moist. And lichen, so many different kinds of slow growing mottled lichens. You know the oak tree gives home to so many species. They are their own small universe. Moth, butterfly, bird, plant. All find a home here. All live together.”

He began to see the different patterns to the trees, the small plants that had been hidden from his eyes by his own ignorance, the ferns, the life of the forest.

Small bright green spears of leaves pushed up through the earth. “Bluebells,”she answered, before he could ask. “ In spring the ground blushes blue with their flowers and evenings scent the air with perfume and beesong. The wood is always changing.”

“Like the sea.”

“Yes. I suppose so.”

“Once,” he said, “after a few weeks of great storms I went to the beach. The sea had ripped back the sand to leave the stumps of an ancient forest standing proud. It looked as if some war had smash the trees. The whole Bay had once been a forest. This was all that was left, sleeping beneath a blanket of sand. I couldn’t imagine how it would have looked all those years ago, when it was trees, not beach. Until now. Now I can. All that life. It’s covered again now. The sea smothered it again with a weight of sand.”

She shivered as if a cold wave had washed over her.

They sat for a while beside the shallow river in a small clearing, on a fallen log.

“The best way to see is to be still,” she said.

One by one she drew his attention to the small birds that came to the clearing as the two sat, almost in silence. He had never felt so at ease with another person. No pretence, no act of showing off, just himself, curious, out of his depth, learning. He watched the wood. He watched the girl.

“Dipper,” she said,” nodding her head towards where a small brown and white bird could be seen by the water’s edge. “Don’t point at them. Wild things don’t like it when you point. They consider it rude.”

A flash of electric blue. “Kingfisher.” A branch across the river caught it in mid flight. It sat, still. He had never seen a creature so beautiful, so other worldly, in his life.

They heard a call high, high in the sky, looked up, saw only the leaves making a mosaic of the light. “Buzzard,” she smiled and then they both watched as its mate lifted from a low branch and flapped through the pathways between the trees up and up and out into the sky.

He thought of the bird they had seen that first evening, slow flapping across the sunset.

“Heron,” she answered, before he could ask. “It was a heron.”

Then “Otter. Like a river wolf. Hunting for fish.”

Minutes passed. Maybe it was hours.

He learned more names, saw animals, trees, dog roses planted in the clefts of trees by birds. He watched squirrels run across treetops leaping from branch to branch. Jay, blackbird, thrush, raven, sparrowhawk, rook, robin, blackbird, wren.

“How do you know so much?”

“I told you, I live here, have done for years.”

They sat in silence for a while longer. The air around them cooled.

“We’re waiting for something, aren’t we?”

She answered him with a smile.

A wren flew up, perched in her hair. He began to understand.

The sun made long shadows through the trees. He felt a sense of peace fill his heart, his mind.

A herd of deer came down to the river to drink, wild and beautiful and now they passed so close to the two he could have reached out to touch. The stag looked straight at him. He felt its challenge, assured the creature he meant no harm, looked away.

“The trees. They talk to you don’t they?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Trees don’t have a mouth with which to speak. Their language is not one of words. Trees speak with their whole being. Beneath the ground they talk with the myriad of fungus that share the earth with them. Their language is not like yours. Their language is chemical. To hear it you have to chose to listen. It is visual. It’s in the way they grow, the bend of a branch in the wind, the patterns of leaves. What you might call a ‘sentence’ can take a week to say. Their sense of ‘time’ as you would call it is different to yours. It is hard to explane, so far from the arrogance of self serving human speech.

Trees have their own ‘culture’ but perhaps culture is too poor a word for what they have. Humans could be part of it, if they would only open their minds to see.

Their language is bark, branch, leaf, root. Human words are not enough, not rich enough, they work on only one level, one dimension. Here, let me show you.”

She reached out and held his hand. “Listen.” Peace. An open mind. An open heart. And then the language came. No. Not a language. Images. He couldn’t describe it, stopped trying to, lived it, felt it, root, branch, blood and bone. The language of trees.

And then they came. Out from the forest, down from the sky. He stepped forward, a great stag with antlers that seemed to be made from the very forest, twisted with branches and leaves, delicate, beautiful. Down from the sky, an eagle. Yes. An eagle. But with feathers that blushed bright green like starmoss. Leaves where feathers should be.

Still holding his hand she stood to greet them, leading him forward. He heard them, heard them speak, these ancient forest gods, not with words of human speech, something richer, the language of leaves, the language of trees. And they told him of forests, the great forests that had covered the land in a time that was only a blink of the eye ago if you lived in deep time, as they did. They showed him how people had cut back the forest, how ancient trees had fallen prey to greed, cleared away for timber, for war, for housing and farming. They told him how great forests that spread over the land became reduced to small islands of trees, where wild creatures still dwelled, fallow deer, martin, birds, lizards, snakes, all manner of wild things. They showed him what the life of a tree was, the urgent, full, beautiful life of a tree and all that lived within, beneath, above and about it. And then they showed him how the land would look if man continued, how it was not just the animals who would suffer, but mankind itself.

He began to understand the life of the wood, the forest, belonging, everything.

And then they were gone.

The two stood alone in the forest.

He was exhausted.

Twilight.

She led him back through the darkening forest and owls showed them the path, and bats and moths.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I am the forest,” she said. “Listen, look. There was a time when these woods ran with wolves, when bears walked the land.”

Around him, on either side of the path, guiding them onwards he felt the ghosts of wolves, grey in the twilight, hunting.

“Time changes things,” she said. “You know that. You have seen the wood beneath the waves. But things are changing fast now. Too fast. Too many people fail to hear the forest speak, the voices of trees. Humans are losing their way, too busy, trapped in their screens, cars, work and worry. It’s like an illness, a disease. They are forgetting the names of things. We need people to speak for us, to see us, to know and understand the real value of things, before it is too late. We need them to see us, name us.”

They were back now at the place he had found her.

“You know the way back from here. Just up the track to the house.”

He could see the lights of the windows glowing through the trees.

He was weary. So weary.

“This is where you live?”

“Yes. Mounsey Castle.”

“Who are you? What are you?”

“You don’t need to ask, you know. Tomorrow, let us walk more. You have so much yet to learn.”

“And after? When I go home? I’ll not see you again?”

“I live here,” she answered. “Now go. Rest. Tomorrow.”

She turned from him and began to walk up the hill, through the trees and he found himself with his feet on the track heading for the house. An owl called, was answered. He stopped and turned to wave, lifting his hand. She was gone. But through the trees at the brow of the hill he caught a glimpse of a white hare sitting, watching him walk away, up the track.

“Tomorrow”, he thought, yes. Tomorrow.”

Jackiemorris_TreeChampions_small

3 responses to “Heartwood”

  1. Bernie Bell says:

    Jackie, Jackie, Jackie…..Jackie, Jackie, Jackie.
    I’ve sent this out to EVERYONE!
    And you share – you share, that’s the thing about you…you don’t just do it – you share.
    May all the Gods there are, Ancient and Modern, love you for it.
    And they do.
    “Come away , O human child!
    To the waters and the wild
    With a faery, hand in hand,
    For the world’s more full of weeping than you
    can understand.” – W.B. Yeats

  2. Els says:

    Ahhhhh love this proud stag with his tree-like antlers 😉

  3. Gwen says:

    Hey Jackie, I had a copy of your Heartwood story form the Tree charter magazine and would like to use if for a storytelling session. The only thing is that I don;t have the full story. Would you mind sending me a copy asap (before end of this week) please? Thanks a lot.

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