Autumn Woods, A perfect Autumn Day

This was not a classic bright, sunny and crisp Autumn day, but one of those transition days. The weather is in transition and so is nature. A walk in old woods shows who is really the boss.

Today was Autumn, a perfect Autumn day. Not bright and sunny with shafts of sunlight slicing through leaves of gold, red and bronze. Or the first frost leaving shards of ice on leaves and grass stems. But misty and cool, hazily lite by an obscured sun. Damp. Not summer, but quite Autumn. The in between time. More Autumn than summer, definitely, Autumn enough, with the promise of more to come. The earth turns another notch in her yearly cycle and Autumn clicks a bit further into place.

A walk in the woods. The best place to spend these Autumn days. We feel as if everything is shutting down, hibernation begins for much of the natural world. Life is still going on, but also signs that the short summer life is now over for many.

It has rained, rained a lot recently. The ground is full, the rivers are full. People’s houses and business’s are full of water. Today the air is full of moisture, not enough to fall as rain, but enough so that you can feel it. You get wet, well damp, in the misty air. You know what I mean.

It smells too, the air, and you can taste it. You have taste receptors in your lungs, but they only detect sour. The smell of decay is evident is everywhere. The musty smell of old vegetation turning into next years fuel supply for the plants.

I splash through the puddles on the path, kid like with joy, splashing in the rivers of last nights rain on the paths. Little islands between the little rivers for my not to dry feet. Natural water courses and dams made by the water and debris. I step carefully and play with these, making new dams and opening up new avenues for the water. But the water always wins, aided by gravity, it pushes my work aside and carries on its way. Water is soft and gentle but strong and unforgiving, we can only alter it for a while. Water will always win.

I walk up the muddy path. Turned to mud by boots and wheels, deep gloopy mud. But my path soon veers off into the deeper woods. I love this path. It still seems that many people don’t know about it, yet. I have never met any of you in here. I am both pleased and sad. I feel I need to share it with you, but not all at once.

As you leave the main path and enter the trees. The atmosphere changes. The trees bend low over the path, becoming tighter, packed together, the light slips away and is harder to find. The air feels as if it shimmers as I pass through into the trees. Pip, oblivious goes charging off, following her nose, I let her run and explore her own world.

I feel, imagine, want to believe that I have slipped through into somewhere else. I leave my world behind. Take only what I want with me, to keep me company for this section of the walk. The path narrows, indistinct in places as I follow it through the trees. I came here for the fungi and they greet me in their thousands, really there are so many.

They are on the ground, in the old discarded needles, on the old stumps, rotting logs, in the moss on the trunks and on branches. I can’t remember seeing this before. How did they get here? Spores falling from above, getting blown up or growing through the network? I am mesmerised. They are beautiful. So many shapes, colours and styles. Long stalks, almost non-existent, with translucent caps and some with fills and some without. Coloured disks balanced on thick stalks and some on thin stalks, others just the stalks, no caps, more at home in rock pools than tree stumps.

They fill me with awe, I take some pictures, but mostly I just look and observe and see the sights before me. Stand still and they start to appear, I have said this before about nature. Walk and you will see somethings, stop and look and more appear, stand for while and stop looking almost, and you will see. Be open and accepting and they will let you see them. I move on. Now settled into this place and I see.

The trees open up, I cross a small stream before the path leads me back into the trees. This part is darker, the trees close in further, today less of the poor light gets in. It is quiet here, the atmosphere changes and things turn down a notch or two. Slow down, you can feel the shift. Then they appear, this is what I have come for. Deep in the woods in the darkest part of the wood, here they live. You know the ones, the red ones, they are globes or flat large plates, bright red with spots of white, on white stems. The ones the fairies and pixies sit on. But you never quite see them. The red is bright in the gloom of the trees, they stretch away into the distance, all connected. Unable to get close, I have to observe most from a distance. In the half light, damp and decay, they stand proud and their display is magnificent.

A bit further along, a tree fell many years ago and left a gap in the canopy for the light to get through. The dark brown of old needles and decay is replaced by bright green moss. It glows and gives off light. I imagine if there was a woodland forest spirit this is the place I would meet her. She would beckon me into her cycle of light with mischievous eyes and promises of adventure and magic, would I go? Would you?

But today is not that day, she is not here, so I step into the light and soak up the green, I turn my face to sky, to the light and stretch out my arms. I feel gratitude and give thanks for this place. I step out of my dreams, out of the light and back into the gloom of the trees, lighter of step and breath. Maybe she was there. I just haven’t yet learned to see.

The path keeps on providing more fungi. I look and see and feel, I become part of the landscape. I love this place. The trees start to thin, Win Hill appears through the trees. I enter back into the real world. Shake the dreams from my eyes and leave the magic land behind. I turn back and again don’t see all the faces watching me leave.

I stay on the tree side of the fence and leave the moor for another day. Today is a tree day.

I head to where the fires were last summer. To see the changes. I have been this way many times and the changes are fascinating. But before I get there, I pass the old stumps of long cut down trees. Nature has claimed back this area for herself. The previous dead forest floor is now alive again with moss and grass, heather, brambles and bilberry. The stumps are 1-2 foot high and often have a ring or patch of mushrooms at their base and either bare wood or sporting a covering of moss and lichen. The tops are alive. A whole world on a stump. Today they have the tiny red flowers of a type of lichen fungus that is evident on many. They are fascinating.

I drop down through the trees to where the fire was. The trees black and lifeless. They used to sit in the black charred ground. Now they sit in a carpet of green moss and grass. The base of every burned tree I saw has a collection of fungi around it, or spreading out along the roots. Nature is returning. The contrast between the tress, fungi and moss is striking. And so different to last time I was here.

I stop for coffee and take time to stop and look and marvel at what a wonderful job nature has done to repair herself and her land. I know that when we humans have destroyed this planet to such an extent that we cannot live here, nature will again thrive. Nature will repair all the damage we have done and once again balance will be restored.