Instead of going to Devon, I went to Leicestershire and visited two woods: Prior's Coppice and Launde Big Wood. I got lost on my way to the latter but was gifted the sight of a hare.
The hare, strangely, when it departed, ran into the garden of the house at the end of the track - loping confidently through the open garden gate. This reminded me of Chloe Dalton's book.
I did manage to gain some insights from the trees in the first wood.
The role of imagination. One has to try to imaginatively inhabit the other - but it's a critical-imaginative process, as you have to try to imagine a different book and different motivations. Speculation without information is just an activity of sel-centred wish fulfillment. Retaining a certain scepticism and a lot of humility is crucial.
Birds are not creatures of the air. Just as land animals take the sea with them onto land, birds take the earth with them into flight. We are all immersed in water and minerals and sun.
Bodies grow into the world together. This was the insight gained in the video below.
In the first wood, I saw many toppled ashes. Ash die-back has hit this area hard. The trees were in the process of re-becoming earth.
However, both woods were in a better state than many I know locally. They are semi-natural ancient woodlands and so some of the old ground flora remains. It thrives because in both woods they shoot the deer. I could tell there were deer in the woods– tracks and scrapes– but they had not munched the new growth to oblivion as at the Reserve.
Again, I don't like shooting deer. But I do like woods being able to regenerate. Especially given the increased precarity in which trees, plants, invertebrates and small wild creatures seek to live.
By the way.... hare today, gone tomorrow... geddit?
Yes, I geddit 😉 Good post.