Oh Humphrey Head, what a delight!

Alix, Andy, Annette, Jean, Jeni, Pip, Sanjive, Sioelan

For our route around Humphrey Head we started at the Education Centre and wandered through Humphrey Head Wood to emerge out through the gate and along the undulating grassy field to the point. There we took a good look around the sea-bound rocky edges that poke out into the muddy sands of Morecambe Bay and returned up over the grassy track that rises higher and closer to the western cliff edge, giving wonderful views around the peninsulas and up beyond the fells and hills. It was a lovely calm and cool day.

There was much ruffled ground in the woods; badgers we thought and their poop too in carefully dug latrines. The wild garlic and celandine are beginning to peep through, gentle greens taking shape from the brown earth and lords and ladies with their intricately pattered leaf edges confidently showing forth. We listened to birdsong and shared a story of the chaffinch whose song, it is said, changes when it is about to rain. 

We saw fossils in the limestone rocks unearthed by an upended tree. Moss and lichen tucked into nooks and crannies of weathered bark. A clutch, or is it a coven of hawthorns give a wonderful sense of some sort of otherness in a suspended dance, clustered together, perhaps to keep others out, or hold some close. The bark of one tree seemed different, rubbed and softened perhaps by cattle, darkened to stand out among the rest. Some of us hugged these trees, pressing ears close to the rough bark. 

Our conversations shared delights of food, tasting and textures and the intricate nature of Japanese cuisine. The joy of preservation and of fermenting - sourdough, sauerkraut and kimchi lead to discussions of what people might bring to the Jacob's Join on 12th March. 

The cows were noticeably missing, as much as the wind was too. 

We shared poems of woods and trees and open spaces ...

The Man in the Wilderness, Anon

The man in the wilderness asked of me

How many strawberries grow in the sea?

I answered him as I thought good,

As many red herrings as grow in the wood.

The Fence, by Christian Morgenstern (translated by R.F.C. Hull)

There was a fence with space you

Could look through if you wanted to.

An architect who saw this thing

Stood there one summer evening,

Took out the spaces with great care

And built a castle in the air.

The fence was utterly dumbfounded:

Each post stood there with nothing round it.

A sight most terrible to see.

(They charged it with indecency.)

The architect then ran away

To Afric- or Americ-ay.

Sea to the West, by Norman Nicholson

When the sea’s to the west

The evenings are one dazzle –

You can find no sign of water.

Sun upflows the horizon;

Waves of shine

Heave, crest, fracture,

Explode on the shore;

The wide day burns.

In the incandescent mantle of the air.

Once, fifteen,

I would lean on handlebars,

Staring into the flare,

Blinded by looking,

Letting the gutterings and sykes of light

Flood into my skull.

Then, on the stroke of bedtime,

I’d turn to the town,

Cycle past purpling dykes

To a brown drizzle

Where black-scum shadows

Stagnated between backyard walls.

I pulled the warm dark over my head

Like an eiderdown.

Yet in that final stare when I

(Five times, perhaps, fifteen)

Creak protesting away –

The sea to the west,

The land darkening –

Let my eyes at the last be blinded

Not by the dark

But by the dazzle.

Damaged, by Donald Adamson

There's not a single tree in the wood

that isn't damaged.

Yet they grow tall and old

and when at last they fall they are noticed

not by their malformations

but by their absence, sudden blue

astonishments of sky.

Being is its own achieving.

The fabric of things

mends in spans accomplished and the joy

of particular wounds. Do not ask to be cured

nor pass your parcel of injuries

to others. You were damaged, let yourself

be changed, and grow, and live.

Logs to Burn, from Punch

"Logs to burn, logs to burn,

Logs to save the coal a turn"

Here's a word to make you wise

When you hear the woodman's cries;

Never heed his usual tale

That he has splendid logs for sale,

But read these lines and really learn

The proper kind of logs to burn.

Oak logs will warm you well

  If they're old and dry;

Larch logs of pine woods smell.

  But the sparks will fly.

Beech logs for Christmas-time.

  Yew logs heat well;

  "Scotch" logs it is a crime

  For anyone to sell.

Birch logs will burn too fast,

  Chestnut scarce at all;

Hawthorn logs are good to last

  If cut in the fall.

Holly logs will burn like wax,

  You should burn them green;

Elm logs like smouldering flax,

  No flame to be seen.

Pear logs and apple logs,

  They will scent your room;

Cherry logs across the dogs

  Smell like flowers in bloom.

But ash logs, all smooth and grey,

  Burn them green or old;

Buy up all that come your way,

They're worth their weight in gold.