Autumn Read online

  Our history is full of stories of liberty trees, judgement trees, and trees of life and death. It’s fitting that Halloween and All Souls Day fall in autumn; two spiritual worlds overlapping, and the sense of a journey coming to an end. The vigour of summer fades and gives way to the first breath of autumn. The gold-brown-red semaphore of branch and leaf in Massy’s Wood will soon be gone, waiting for a new palette to arrive in spring. But on the exposed Hell Fire hill, the evergreens will endure through the coming cold months, a patch of colour when there is little left elsewhere. I’ll be back there this year, and every autumn, pocketing cones, listening to the wind in the trees and ignoring the devil in the Hell Fire doorway.

  Sinéad Gleeson, 2016

  Poem in October

  It was my thirtieth year to heaven

  Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood

  And the mussel pooled and the heron

  Priested shore

  The morning beckon

  With water praying and call of seagull and rook

  And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall

  Myself to set foot

  That second

  In the still sleeping town and set forth.

  My birthday began with the water-

  Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name

  Above the farms and the white horses

  And I rose

  In rainy autumn

  And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.

  High tide and the heron dived when I took the road

  Over the border

  And the gates

  Of the town closed as the town awoke.

  A springful of larks in a rolling

  Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling

  Blackbirds and the sun of October

  Summery

  On the hill’s shoulder,

  Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly

  Come in the morning where I wandered and listened

  To the rain wringing

  Wind blow cold

  In the wood faraway under me.

  Pale rain over the dwindling harbour

  And over the sea wet church the size of a snail

  With its horns through mist and the castle

  Brown as owls

  But all the gardens

  Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales

  Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.

  There could I marvel

  My birthday

  Away but the weather turned around.

  It turned away from the blithe country

  And down the other air and the blue altered sky

  Streamed again a wonder of summer

  With apples

  Pears and red currants

  And I saw in the turning so clearly a child’s

  Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother

  Through the parables

  Of sun light

  And the legends of the green chapels

  And the twice told fields of infancy

  That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.

  These were the woods the river and sea

  Where a boy

  In the listening

  Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy

  To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.

  And the mystery

  Sang alive

  Still in the water and singing birds.

  And there could I marvel my birthday

  Away but the weather turned around. And the true

  Joy of the long dead child sang burning

  In the sun.

  It was my thirtieth

  Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon

  Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.

  O may my heart’s truth

  Still be sung

  On this high hill in a year’s turning.

  Dylan Thomas, 1946

  It is a crisp autumn morning. As I take the footpath across the hills red kites fly overhead, and all around me flaming red dogwood stems blow in the wind. This hidden nature reserve – Grangelands and the Rifle Range in Buckinghamshire – is one of my favourite places to visit.

  There’s a log by the path, and when I lift it I find myself a child again, fascinated by the wildlife that awaits me. A violet ground beetle scuttles away, flashing its iridescent wing cases. A chocolate-brown centipede crosses the space previously occupied by the wood, terrorising the other invertebrates around it, which retreat into the surrounding undergrowth before I have a chance to get a good look at them. Springtails of every conceivable size and shape crawl, spring and hop around, trying to escape the predatory invertebrates that want to eat them. There are miniature Serengetis like this under most logs, if you take the time to look.

  The hills themselves seem inhospitable to insect life at this time of year so I seek shelter in the strips of beech woodland clinging to the top of the slopes. I look under another log and find a snail hunter beetle hunkered down, its long face adapted to fit into snail shells and eat what’s inside. This impressive creature squeaks if you pick it up. There is an abundance of dead wood here, from freshly fallen branches to decaying trunks. Even the structure of the decaying wood is diverse. Most of it is infected by white rot, which makes it hold water and become squidgy. Elsewhere is the hard, cubical red rot that starts from the centre of the tree; it contrasts vividly with the white fungal threads which weave together like balls of string that entwine themselves between the wood and the soil below.

  I lift up a number of logs and find little, but underneath this next one it’s damper and there are slugs, snails and worms. I watch as earthworms slowly burrow their way through the parts of the log that are so decomposed that they almost resemble soil. When I pick up one of the glossy snails the smell of garlic fills the air and clings to my fingers as I discover why some species are called garlic snails. Next is a ferocious leopard slug, which eats other slugs and always impresses me with its size and the intricate pattern of spots down its back. There are slate-grey pill woodlice which have tucked themselves into every nook and cranny, curled up into the tightest balls possible. Few can munch through their outer shell other than the tough-jawed woodlouse spiders, which feed solely upon them.

  But dead wood isn’t confined to the ground; the best dead wood is standing. There’s a gnarled old horse chestnut tree that I visit on most of my walks here, which is rich with wildlife. I find evidence of beetle larvae tunnelling their way through the wood. Before breaking out as adults, these larvae eat the fungi that break down the wood, their exit holes then supporting nesting bees and wasps for years to come. Hoverfly larvae squelch their way through the rot holes created when the tree loses a limb, and next year will emerge as the beautiful adults that float in the wind on a spring day. This ancient tree must have supported thousands of rare invertebrates in its time, and although now partly dead, it will support life for decades to come.

  Ryan Clark, 2016

  Last Week in October

  The trees are undressing, and fling in many places –

  On the gray road, the roof, the window-sill –

  Their radiant robes and ribbons and yellow laces;

  A leaf each second so is flung at will,

  Here, there, another and another, still and still.

  A spider’s web has caught one while downcoming,

  That stays there dangling when the rest pass on;

  Like a suspended criminal hangs he, mumming

  In golden garb, while one yet green, high yon,

  Trembles, as fearing such a fate for himself anon.

  Thomas Hardy, published 1928

  November

  Nov. 3.

  Men sow wheat: but the land-springs break out in some of the Hartley malm-fields. [Upper Greensand rock.]

  Nov. 5.

  Gossamer abounds. Vast dew lies on the grass all
day, even in the sun.

  Nov. 8.

  Planted 3 quarters of an hundred more of cabbages to stand the winter: dug-up potatoes; those in the garden large, & fine, those in the meadow small, & rotting.

  Nov. 10.

  On this day Brother Benjamin quitted South Lambeth, & came to reside at His House at Mareland.

  Nov. 12.

  Planted in the garden 2 codling-trees, 2 damson-trees, & 22 goose-berry trees, sent me by Bror T. W.

  Nov. 13.

  Mr Ed. White & man brought a good fine young white poplar from his out-let at Newton, & planted it at ye top of Parsons’s, slip behind the bench; where it will be ornamental.

  Nov. 15.

  Timothy comes out.

  Nov. 17.

  Baker’s hill is planted all over with horse-beans, which are grown four or five inches high. They were probably sown by jays; & spring up thro’ the grass, or moss. Many were planted there last year, but not in such abundance as now.

  Nov. 19.

  Water-cresses come in.

  Nov. 21.

  Sent 3 bantam fowls to Miss Reb. White at Mare-land, a cock & two pullets.

  Nov. 22.

  Timothy comes forth.

  Nov. 24.

  Saw a squirrel in Baker’s Hill: it was very tame. This was probably what Thomas called a pole-cat [See 28 Oct. supra.]

  Nov. 26.

  Timothy hides.

  Nov. 29.

  This dry weather enables men to bring in loads of turf, not much damaged: while scores of loads of peat lie rotting in the Forest.

  Dec. 1.

  Thomas started a hare, which lay in her form under a cabbage, in the midst of my garden. It has begun to eat the tops of my pinks in many places. The landsprings, which began to appear, are much abated.

  Dec. 2.

  This dry fit has proved of vast advantage to the kingdom, & by drying & draining the fallows, will occasion the growing of wheat on many hundred of acres of wet, & flooded land, that were deemed to be in a desperate state, & incapable of being seeded this season.

  Dec. 4.

  Timothy is gone under a tuft of long grass, but is not yet buried in the ground.

  Dec. 5

  Timothy appears, & flies come-out.

  Dec. 7.

  Took down the urns, & shut up the alcove.

  Reverend Gilbert White, The Naturalist’s Journal, 1792

  Dusk is already filling the wood. Across the valley some Duracell jackdaws yap, and yap.

  There was a storm last night. The floor of the wood is a chaos of crashed branches and downed trunks: a Norse god’s idea of Pick-up-Sticks. Among the fallen is the beech-by-the-stile, the one I touch every day as I pass.

  Touched. Past tense.

  Gothic architects likely got their inspiration for cathedral columns from beech. Certainly the beech-by-the-stile supported the sky.

  You think of wood, the stuff, as something warm, domestic; it’s the dining table, the parquet floor, the rolling pin. But beech trees are as stone-cold hard as pillars.

  I was always the supplicant when I greeted the stile beech. It was a reverent touch I gave, not a matey slap on the back.

  I look up through the vertiginous gap she left. (Yes, to my mind she was the queen of this four-acre woodland realm.) There is a hole in the roof of the wood. There is a hole in my day.

  But onwards. Time and light are failing. I follow the faint ink line of the path as it squiggles between the dulled obstacles of beech, sweet chestnut, hornbeam. A single stick, hidden under the wet sponge of leaves, snaps; the cannon ‘boom’ around the vast empty chamber of the wood sends pigeons clattering through the tops of the trees.

  The naked trees. Every last leaf was stripped off in the storm. In twenty years I cannot remember such a violent undressing. (It was a north, Viking gale.)

  Walking quicker now. Dog-trot. To my left, glimpsed between passing trunks, a finger-smear of dying sun.

  The more the blindness, the greater the sense of smell. Ah, the full autumn Bisto bouquet comes powering to the nose: mouldering leaves, decaying mushrooms, rusting earth.

  I’m just skirting the little dingle, where the yellow marsh marigolds bloom in spring, when the woodcock explodes from under my foot. An avian IED. I shout out unmanfully in the silence. Luckily, in a wood on the far edge of Herefordshire there is no one to hear me scream.

  Once, woodcock were common. Some still nest locally, over on Ewyas Harold Common, but this was an autumn migrant, borne on the November gale.

  When God made the dumpy woodcock He was in the same whimsical frame of mind as when He cobbled up the platypus. Although the size of a hand, the woodcock has an improbable 3-inch stiletto stuck on its face. The bird books label the woodcock’s brown-and-white, flecked-and-striped plumage as an example of ‘crypsis’; ‘magick’ would be closer to the mark. Only the curlew, snipe and nightjar possess more effective camouflage. Woodcock are seamless with their surroundings. They are the leaf blown through the beech grove, the shimmer in the larch. And the rotten elder stump beside the path.

  Softly, softly now.

  I take the right fork through the birch and reach the pond, with its year-weary, spavined reeds.

  No wild duck tonight. The only tenant around is the moorhen; she paddles away, invisible on the black surface except for the travelling, replicating V of her bow wave.

  What’s in a name? An archaeology of meaning. This is Pond Wood, named for its medieval piscatorial pool. Except for some fat abboty carp, the fish are long gone. For the last two hundred years the pool has been a drinking resource for thirsty cattle, mine included.

  I pause for a minute, until the woodland air fades to pure TV monotone grey. With all colour gone, there are only degrees of shadow, of nuance, of insolidity.

  The wolf-light.

  I can hear the cattle moving; the crackle of branches under hooves, the slow drum beat of moving, massive beasts. It is some sound, I tell you; it is the sound of aurochs in wildwood.

  There they are, out in the towers of oak, four longhorn cows, prehistoric shapes plodding up to the top of the wood. To the sanctuary of high ground. There they will lie in a ragged circle watching for the sabre-toothed tigers of bovine nightmares.

  Longhorns have proper bicycle-handlebar horns. Longhorns, indeed. They come from the old time, and are no strangers to death amid the trees.

  And I am the killer in the wood. A few, shallow, regularising breaths . . . I press off the safety catch of the Baikal .410 shotgun, and slip into the noise shadow of the cattle. When I was a child I read BB’s Brendon Chase, his adventure story about the Hensman boys who lived feral in the forest, shooting for the pot. This is Brendon Chase for grown-ups. And why not? I manage the wood for wildlife; should not wildlife in return provide me with a meal?

  The cattle shuffle under the ballerina-arm of the Dead Oak, on which rests the silhouette of a cock pheasant . . .

  The flash-blast of the shotgun rips the wood apart. The cattle trumpet alarms. The tawny owl cries out.

  The pheasant plunges head first, tail streaming behind. A black comet falling to earth.

  In the poker game of life and death we all have our tics. The pheasant had roosted on the same branch for a month, each night dropping his white guano onto the ground.

  As I pick up the pheasant, a gap comes in the clouds. The north star shines brightly, more brightly than usual.

  John Lewis-Stempel, 2016

  The fox appears out of nowhere. One moment Darsham Marshes is ours alone and the next it is his – slinking over the saturated ground with a fluidity matched only by the movement of his shoulders.

  The sun has been Scandinavian-low all day but now it is creeping closer towards the treeline. Wave after wave of autumnal light breaks over a Suffolk landscape criss-crossed by the dark veins of dykes, adding golden fire to the big dog fox’s flame-red coat.

  My wife and I hardly dare to breathe. Although the fox is some distance away we can clearly see his broad head
and the distinctive vulpine mask of his face. His neck is already cloaked in a thick mane of winter fur.

  I realise with a shock that this is probably the first time I have really seen a fox. There have, of course, been previous encounters. But whether skittering across a road away from headlights or standing with burning yellow eyes on my old Brighton rubbish bin, these were always meetings where I had rudely blundered into the fox’s routine – had crashed in on nature – and been rewarded with only the briefest glimpse of russet red and a disappearing rump.

  This is different. We had been waiting for the barn owls who regularly ghost across this marsh to hunt and, as such, we had been still, silent, and relatively hidden from view. But also, I notice with relief, we are upwind and there’s little chance the fox will catch the scent of the goose-pimpled and muddy tourists loitering in his terrain.

  The fox is now skirting down a hedge heading for a copse about 100 metres away. He looks confident, relaxed even, ignoring the ratcheting call of a blackbird and the bovine stares coming from the cattle that graze this marsh.

  Then suddenly, as if a whistle has been blown, he stops. Ears twitching he drops into a half crouch, his white-tagged brush held straight behind him. At first I think he has somehow sensed us; has heard our whispered adulation, our Goretex rustle or the plastic pop of a binocular lens cap. But then he’s off again, still looking ahead at the same patch of trees, trotting with assurance and stealth over the marsh and out of view.

  We grin excitedly at each other and instinctively move to follow him, to continue to be part of his world. But the path around the wetland is heavy going. The cattle here clearly hate getting their feet wet too and their passage has churned much of the track into shin-deep mud. In places they have left pot-like casts of their lower legs.