Reflections on reflections

As the brightness of summer begins to fade, the woods around us grow ever lighter, gaining an almost fragile airiness. Windows appear in the canopy as leaves fall down into foosseling drifts below. Now there are just a few narrowly arched casements and tiny aureoles, but by November we will look through an astragal glazed door to the winter sky. Paths already seem wider and longer and the slanting low light dappling through has begun to pick out swollen rheumatic fingers of tree roots which, a few weeks before, would have gleefully grasped my legs in darkness.

Autumn is a time for chasing. Under lowering skies in the stubble fields there are hares to race and in the hedge bottoms silly young pheasants and coveys of fat partridge to tease. Walking in the woods, progress is staccato. Lyra must pause and carefully sniff, lingering under every bush, before darting off like a loon in a mad, futile pursuit. Squirrels dart from branch to branch just out of reach leaving her earthbound and yearning. As we climbed up out of the wood a few days ago I had just the sense of white in the corner of my eye and looked up to see two deer silhouettes on the brow of the hill, silently scouting us.

A trip to collect mum’s post presented a fine excuse to wander round the Haining where the still water has captured the gold of the trees with the heavy permanence of amber. Down by the Leet, around the Hirsel, heavy rains in September have set the water tumbling over the weir in a froth and ferment, and even in the quieter stretches behind the rocks and under the golf course bridge, the twins of sky and tree are fractured and distorted. It is a curious truth that the darker the reflected image, the more it reveals of the reality below the meniscus. A reflected sky dazzles and glitters, but looking down from the bridge at the dark ivy clad branches rippling between the stones, minnows appear darting in the watery leaves.

Whilst Lyra stops and snuffles for traces of squirrel, mum and I rootle for interesting mushrooms and other gifts of the season. The tiny green hedgehog case of a sweet chestnut presents a puzzle. We stare upwards, necks craned, heads rotating like rather creaky sunflowers, looking for the tree. Eventually we find it half way up the opposite banking. Was one of the squirrels playing basketball? There are delightfully poisonous translucent scarlet berries on the yews and most of the hollies are already tricked out in their Christmas best. This bodes ill for wreath making season! We compensate by gathering a bag of giant cones from the tree by the cow field.

Walking back to the car, past the section laid almost flat by Storm Arwen a couple of years ago, we see tiny leaflets curling over the tops of tree protector tubes. It will be some years before they can knock shoulder to shoulder, as it were, with the few survivors of the storm. This, mum and I conclude, is a good thing, as it will give the lanky boys, who grew poker like as they stretched to find some light amongst the densely planted conifers of yore, the chance to stretch out, breath and finally develop a little girth. On the other side of the path, in the beech wood, even though I know that over fifty huge trees fell, the storm seems to have left not even a ripple.