The Greenwood

from A Spell in the Forest – tongues in trees

My most recent book, A Spell in the Forest – tongues in trees, celebrates the life in the forest in many ways: new scientific findings, mythology and folk lore, botanical gifts from trees, poetry, and the 13 sacred trees of the old Celtic lunar calendar/alphabet, all interspersed with personal story at a time of change and transition for me. It was written largely in, and is at least partly about, the magical Forêt de Huelgoat in Brittany, not far from where I live, and drew on the yearlong course Tongues in Trees that I created a few years before. Throughout, there are half a dozen little ‘stream-of-consciousness’ pieces. I’m slipping this one in for the last day of May. It prefaces The Forest, Part 1. I hope you enjoy it.

The Greenwood

Finally you open your eyes. The meadow’s tall grasses curtain you; beyond, the blue hills rise. Emergent sun hazes their summits. You sit up. There ahead of you is the little path, and in the stone wall a small wooden gate.

You stand. Below in the valley swallows and martins skim the mist from the morning river. You stretch. The conversations of birds; the song of the water. Your hand lifts the old wooden latch. You step through. You slip into the green of the woods as into a silk dress.

The path rises gently, sprinkled with light. It’s May and the land is alight with white blossom. The wood swims with the scent of bluebells; the air is lilac with it. A thousand wild bees drone. You’re alone and it’s the first day.

In the green glade pass the ruins of the hermit’s chapel with its green dreams, the low walls grassed and blackbird-capped; the spring bubbling and chattering.

Follow the path in and out of sunlight. Oaks and ashes season the woodland; first bursts of honeysuckle; and look! – in the shade of this larch a host of goldcrests, a corona around your head.

Your feet firm on the good earth. Here there’s no need for shoes, you can shake out the creases in which you hide; the truth is as it is, all around you, spread out.

The trees thin out, a little. In the undergrowth of campion, stitchwort, bramble there are rustles of lives going about their daily cycles. A wren skitters out; a bluetit. A very young vole, the length of your top finger joint, scurries across the path, over your feet, unafraid. In the distance a woodpecker knocks.

Soon, you will arrive. The green glade in the green day; summer still to come; and you are young, you are now, you are always. The threshold waits; and its guardian; and question and response will spring and be answered simultaneously, with no words. You pass through.

And there it is – waiting all your life for you, there before questions, before answers. You knew, and forgot that you knew.

© Roselle Angwin (Moon Books 2021)