Scavenger

Mornings and evenings are chilly. Autumn is here.We need fuel for the firebox.  I walked up and down the north west sloping woodland hunting for dead wood to cut and carry down. The tree tops roared quietly like distant surf at low tide, and over and far above geese honked. A luminous, numinous skyscape. Too cold now for the swallows.
I harvested from a long dead, stretched out birch storm victim. I then went home for a camera:

             

Assemblage

These cracks are bothering me. The limitations of this single woodblock bother me too ! However as a technical exercise the process is interesting and challenging. And, since experiencing a lot of satisfaction and encouragement in constructing yesterday`s sculpture/bench, I`m reminded of the liberating potential in an assemblage approach: Where can I remove bulk (and sheer weight) from the birch legs ? where and what further elements can be added ? (  having a  functional dimension ticks another of my internal boxes.)
This makes me view the above piece as possible donor-parts-potential if either the grain-splits or the subject matter defeat me in the end...

In doing, clarity will come

I`m really pleased to have incorporated the hard-won birch trunk with the ruminating and handless elm horseman figure (who, in setting forth, achieves some level of insight on his travels ). There`s a bigger piece in this but in the meantime I like that there is a birch bench in the hallway upon which laces can be tied, velcro strapped.

 I am pleased that serendipidy brought these two wooden elements together. I`m also aware that my holiday days will end tomorrow and with them, some of the capacity to fashion, dwell on and play with these objects and symbols.

 

Running Horse

The ears went; lobbed off more or less accidently but with an awareness that there was a growing touch of rat or pig about them. This irrevocable earlessness left me scunnered, so I left the woodblock and went away to pick up my daughter at the yard where I could stare at Fudge and Frankie - ruminate on how their ears met their heads, the sheer length and flexibility of them.   Hacking away again, there  now developed a similarity to Janosch`s Hase mit die schnellen schuen, but I think the wooden horse`s ears, pinned back in its running and leaping, protectively overlaying the girl`s head, will "work". I don`t mind if it doesn`t resemble a horse too much (and no doubt ears pinned back like this on a real beast signify extreme distress.....) The girl will be facing roughly forwards; straining  towards the action - hands not grasping the neck, but held outstretched on either side, giving her horse its freedom.

Oak Wood

I tried in vain to retrieve the piece of wood I cut a few months back. It is now more tightly wedged than ever, despite (or because of) my best efforts with a long improvised lever. Down again in the broadleaf woodland by the back road, tired,  I stumbled upon a hefty chunk of oak, remnant of chainsaw harvesting, and, walking around the block, wondered if this might do.

Now, as I take advantage of a stretch of free days, I wonder why I don`t have a chainsaw, because hacking out lumps of wood to get at any shape is very time-consuming. But  a girl on a horse is emerging, slowly. I think of Marino Marini`s horses and riders,  of Marc Chagall`s dream paintings, and of my daughter. 

Slowly emerging

Marc Chagall

Forest Dweller

The Bold Burn runs up parallel with the logging road a mile and, at the junction, swerves left  into marshy grassland before rising away steeply , taking its burbling with it.
Drawing breath after running  the rise I stood at the quiet junction this afternoon, staring  into a copse of spruce trees there, that wedge between the burn and the forest road. Unusually on Forestry land these are mature spruce, tall and strong. I climbed down into the copse`s heart and all was dark and silent, but for the Bold burn murmuring, the muffling floor fifty years of soft brown needles. I studied the thick trees` down-sloping branches and mapped a climb in my head. Abandoning this my eye then caught right angles in amongst the tangled diagonals; at seven feet  someone had placed a slim pole-like  branch between two trees and, rising from the needle carpet to meet it in the middle was a twenty feet long sapling trunk, stripped of branches. Together they formed a fragile, rising cross. Looking down I saw the stone circle of a camp fire, blackened with burnt branches and pine cones. Weeks, months old. Trying to make sense I envisaged a forest dweller lying flat, staring up at the looming, falling cross in some solitary rapture or torment. (Why did I think that ?)  And then, as though an archaeologist piecing together a (remarkably well preserved)  find, I saw flat stone rows either side that would have  held  waterproof sheeting down, and I heard again the burn only a few metres away; close-by for washing. But for the intruding forest road above, a traveller had created a perfect bivouac.   In my mind`s eye I saw them at night, head protruding from under their open canopy, warmed by a resinous fire, hearing owls hoot, foxes bark and being lulled to sleep by the constant  reassuring chatter of the burn.

Seize the Day

In my home reside a number of odd wooden figures; some of these have birds perched atop their heads; as though both man and beast share souls.  They stand as testimony to an earlier, less busy phase of my life. 

Today, Robin held his hands aloft for a reluctant five minutes while I sketched. Then I went to the birch trunk, hefted its bulk upright and, after much rumination, painted brush strokes for shoulders and forearms.

Then I sat astride the log and, with chisel and mallet, embarked, finally, upon the figure

Woodpecker

I was running up the long, long track towards the Bold Burn`s source.The larch are in leaf. Spring green overwhelming the orange-pink like a tide coming in.  I stopped and watched a coal tit. It was halfway through its long, hot day`s urgent flitting, from sunrise to set, bush to copse, calling for a mate. One shrill note samba. In my ignorance I seemed to match a goldfinch  with a bright orange chaffinch, or were they just friends ?  Across from the stretching diagonal rise, on the valley`s far, echoing side I heard a woodpecker`s burst , like gentle machinegun fire. How many taps: 10 or 20 ? too fast to count. This bird was carving more wood than I was, came the thought. Robin and I had chipped off the prone Birch log`s bark, revealing chicken breast wood - but I still haven`t carved; too constipated with ideas; unwilling to expend the energy until guaranteed a good outcome...  Running again, I reached the top bend and drank from the burn, then moved on through shade into pinewood and boulders, startling a dark brown roe deer 50 metres ahead. 

And as I loped along images came and went like card houses rising and falling, and I realised I need to get out the chisels and just carve and saw and chip, because it`ll be in the doing that a shape will start to form; I can see it in the other curious, finished  figures around my house - why not this time around ?
But there will be a figure, hands held high , holding a creature (or being a wild creature`s perch). He`ll be running (or will have the legs of a deer), or he`ll be standing still (or dancing); rapt; attention focused on the small siskin sitting on his palms, that he`s returning to the safety of a tree branch. Though wood, he`ll have the plaster-freshness of a Marino Marini sculpture. Saturday`s the day to begin.

Seasoning wood

I`d found my seasoned log for carving; in amongst a long cluttered line of storm-damaged beech and birch trees.
I set to with Robin`s hand saw and, adapting to the slow rhythm; the ache growing in my arms, I sought diversion in my surroundings. I was sawing in a scene reminiscent of a dormant Samuel Palmer pen and ink drawing. Below me, deep-sided broadleaf-clad hills converged on a trickling brook running hidden and steeply down to the back road. Though the February sun warmed northern hills over the river, those around me were cast in shade.

Fine, pale green sawdust sprang from the beech`s gash. I`d misjudged; too green to carve yet, I surmised, (and probably too heavy to heft down the hill; full as it still was with sap). However, I was committed and sawed laboriously and, cutting finally  through the lower edge, the long, heavy trunk`s two parts slyly clenched  shut on my blade.
I managed in the end  to jiggle and slide the saw loose. Before choosing where to make the second cut I stood and stretched my legs and back. I spied an older, much deader birch trunk and knew it to be good firewood; the silver bark had uncurled itself and the round cross-section showed pale as dry straw. 
I cut a dozen four-foot lengths and lobbed them over by a tree base. They resounded off each other like ancient xylophone music.
Returning to the beech trunk I imagined the length my envisaged  figure would need, and resumed  labours.
Anticipating another weight shift I improvised wedges and supports from supple larch branches and cut pine boles. But the severed section, once freed, stuck fast. Irrevocably this time; there was no freeing it. Liberated, gravity clung it more tightly.
Again I slid and cajoled my saw loose and then, because there was nothing else for it,  cast around philosophically for another likely log. This first attempt could wait a year, by which time the section will have seasoned and loosened.
Close by, a birch tree had been struck horizontal by winds, roots to top, a couple of winter`s ago I judged. Unlike the beech, it lay over other felled trees. I roughly calculated how the constituent parts of its great weight  would lean and fall once  severed and, encouraged,  began sawing.
Success this time ! I hefted the 5 and a half foot section free and slowly transported it end over end, over heavy end, to the path`s head from where I rolled it in fan-like bursts down the trail, ( it`s circumferences being unequal).
Like a freshly caught and killed fish the birch`s beautiful white silver bark dulled in the mud. My resolve to sculpt again was sorely tried as my back strained again and again to daisy more than my own body weight towards the car.
But now I`ve found my seasoned log for carving. It lies waiting under the shed`s new awning.

Far, Far Away

After the birthday party I changed into running gear and left the village hall behind, back in the hamlet with the `swedish` houses and cluster of stone dwellings. I rose beyond the bare, broadleaf woodland  picking my way along the rutted drove road. I chugged past the log bothy and arrived, finally, up at the cheese well. Though the day had been sunny and warm I was now being assailed by nippy hail stones. Beyond a half-mile of bracing moorland I dived into yellows and blue-greens of countless spruce and pine and larch. After the long ascent it felt good to glide down, wrap the forest around me.

I thought about how to turn these sense-experiences of mine into sculpture.
In my home reside a number of odd wooden figures; some of these have birds perched atop their heads; as though both man and beast share souls.   They stand as testimony to an earlier, less busy phase of my life. 
As I ran down towards a stack of logs at the roadside, the air heavy with resin and engine oil, I thought on the seasoned hardwood I`d need to keep an eye out for. In our small, wooden house, shared with three growing kids, I wondered: where can I work ? How do I carve out the pockets of time ?
Suddenly to my right a valley swooped down and away south east. I stopped and watched green and brown trees rolling down its sides, following a burn`s course through Lewinshope, shaded by heavy, wet clouds.  Echoing birdsong seemed, to me, feather-light and hopeful; secluded in the glen. As I stood looking my eyes were drawn up and far beyond the immediate scene to quiet hills, picked out in bleached, pastel blue and yellow. Faded as if by time and bathed in warm sunlight. Silent ethereal hills and their sweet soundtrack.
Turning left and north I hit the trail again and was soon down amongst the shades, threading my way through stones and larch-needle carpets. I thought back to the luminous, nostalgia-feeling encounter above and was reminded of Caspar David Friedrich`s heavily symbolic paintings of trees and bleak lonely hillsides. His apparent need to contort landscape into the mind-shapes of religious dogma. I ran on.
Down where Glenmead burn joins the logging road home, I stopped and walked slowly, like a cat stalking prey. There ahead was a large bird with brilliant white markings in the top branches of a scot`s pine. I crept forward, staring at the perched figure, and, as I approached, its tail feathers dissolved into foil and the osprey became a silver bag fluttering in the wind.

Looking for Signs

One early February evening last year, G came to the house. Driving along the back road, he`d just seen an otter by the Stell burn. He saw it somewhere along the burn`s ditch-like meander from hill to river; near the Great Beech Tree where the mountain-bikers` steep descent ends.
A few weeks later, after a cold and wet drive home, following a fractious day at work, I was anticipating a cold, wet, forest run. Crossing the redbull carpark I stooped down where the Stell burn passed by and looked out for glimpses of otter. I only bothered a heron. As it cantankerously settled itself further upriver I climbed the push-up track. Up and up.
Finally, I levelled out at the logging road named Upper Plora Craig Road (on the map), or Top Campshiel Road (according to a sign). Or: Red Squirrel Road (according to me).
At this cold height the larch, pine and spruce were white with snow. Stopping I stretched, listening to ticking raindrops. Then the sun came out: a bright rainbow, and birdsong switched on ahead where warm light illuminated treetops. I searched along the canopy and studied russet cone-clusters but saw no squirrels.
Running on, northeast towards open, oddly radiant space, I came out above a white fog, filling the Tweed valley. Across from me, hills and trees shone greenly, dusted with fresh snowfall. Scots pine glowed translucent browns.
Turning back I cut down right, (shortcut through a firebreak), and came out on the lower road. I searched in vain, as I loped, for squirrel drays and pine cones gnawed to the core.

Birdsong

I am fond of the Elibank and Traquair forest. It does not, though, grow Douglas Firs. At Glentress they rise tall and tower over you on the car ascent to the Buzzards Nest. They have more of a canopy, the trunk`s bark is gnarled and furrowed. Their loftiness, like Giacometti figures, reaches the heavens and inhabits both earth and air.
Leaving my son with his pack of young mountain-bikers I jaunted  way up to the radio mast and beyond to the northern boundary fence. I beheld receding squares and rectangles of spruce plantation and at their edge a mutely waving windfarm.
Running again I followed the boundary trail and dropped onto "Shane McGowan", a winding, stoney mountain-bike path. Then onto "Leithen Door" and the anticipated shelter: a simple, rough wooden, semi-circular bench under a wooden roof. Facing south. Nestling amongst the trees. Like a Japanese temple along a pilgrimage route.
I sat quietly, sheltered from cold, strong winds. Respite for body and ears. I was also reminded of a bus shelter displaced from bus routes, far removed from accessible roads, engendering in me the sit-down-and-wait impulse. Looking around  I tried to align myself with the contemplative trees; to still myself. But my eyes were darting, looking for red squirrels now.
Enjoying being surrounded yet keen to move again through the green-ness I ran down to where the forest road swept  clockwise around a vast wooded ampitheatre. Last summer, at dusk, I encountered this place for the first time. Plaintive bird songs echoed and flitted across the valley`s sides, like messages. Full of delicate life and hope, it seemed to me. I closed my eyes and let sound describe the view.
This place is called Horsburgh Glen on the maps; a name that evokes nothing of its essence.
Leaving that place I ran on, forgiving the spruce plantations their geometry because framed amongst them slept translucent larches. Pink in this light. Also the firebreaks here wavered down rather than slashing straightly through the Sitka spruce.
Choosing two smooth running stones I continued up and over, into the main glen and back to our rendezvous.

Animal, Vegetable, Mineral ?

Having run the logging roads leading from Plora wood on the back road, way up to the top track  skirting Plora Craig, I felt ready to enjoy the "fruits of my labour". 

The high road was on a level and with fine views. After a moment`s stretch  I set off south east towards the Clattering path, (clackety boots on the clattering path).  I stopped and stared at a small bird, busy in high spruce branches, jabbing at a cone, its jerky movement punctuated by short calls. Black and white head, yellow breast, slate blue back: a blue tit, I think.
I wanted the purge and cleanse of a long run. I also wanted to stand and look; name the world I saw.
This is an emerging impulse; not to "own" but to claim relationship with things, through naming them: Down in the glen we have no street lighting  (and barely a road).  On clear winter evenings I`ll go out the front or back door and I`ll call the stars by name, (the few I know). Above the dark south eastern woods - Castor and Pollux, the twins in Gemini where meteor showers flare in mid December; transcending the forest`s southern gateway bright Sirius and the Orion constellation ; Betelgeuse and Rigus;   west of south flickers Aldebaran by the eye of Taurus. Turning north, above the river I`ll find and name the Great Bear and Cassiopeia, dancing agelessly around the faint, pivotal, pole star.
Recommencing my run, following the slow curve south, I suddenly cried out in pain. My right calf muscle had seized. I could not run. I rested and massaged and slapped the back of my leg. I hobbled to a stretch where a cold sun shone by the road`s edge. Despondent, still limping painfully, I decided to make my way home. The larches on my left were dark shapes in the low sunlight.
My eye was drawn fifty yards beyond to a cluster of cones in high larch branches. I hobbled  quietly now towards the dark mass, soon realising I was seeing a squirrel. Might it be red ? In that glare, I couldn`t tell and it was still too far away to be sure. I drew closer, staring upwards. A light frame, large, tufty, triangular ears. Moving under the tree I saw red in the shape; not the red/brown of larch tops but intrinsic to the animal. 
Sensing me it began to retreat, agile and quick, along and down. The tree canopy a road network. Down towards Armour Burn and Cadon Bank where I`ve seen only greys . But I`d seen it and named my first red squirrel in this forest.


                      

Fox and Hare

Same route today but this time, emerging from Taniel Wood, I stopped at a fast flowing burn to stretch and drink from cupped hands amongst the bracken and stones. I stood up from the fresh water break and felt dizzy, energy sapped, vision wavering. I stumbled on upwards along the wide, open, curving forest road. At the elbow I stopped again, shaky. I looked down to my side, (Traquair House a tiny white smudge in the distance): in the foreground floated a purple/orange haze of young larch trees and, hemmed in, old stumps poking through; remnants from the last tree harvest; and a tall thin pine trunk, left as a lookout for predatory birds. Once or twice I`ve seen buzzards launch out from this platform, like hang gliders.
As the path rose I tried to coax energy back to my body. I knew it would return so, while waiting, stumbled up a new path that rose through a fire break; might this be a new route to the upper road -  up by Kite wood and, eventually, opening out to the north ? My impulse to explore these forested hills is, in part, driven by a wish to connect these paths, make sense of them, like circuits in the brain. But no upper road. Disappointed I stood looking back at the western sky: black branches against light blues and pinks, dusk falling.

Reviving now I jogged down again through long, pale grasses and green, green mosses. Then, glancing right, 50 metres away, a Roe deer, dark russet bodied, bounding into cover, thick white rump accentuating its hop. So they`re still here ! Hidden in the quiet places.
Finding the lower forest road once more I replayed the encounter: how long ? one second, two ?
Larch needles muffled my steps as I wound down, the sun`s light now a memory.
Then, before gliding down the steep tracks above the back road, I saw a fox or a hare racing across my path. I stopped and it stopped - both sizing up the other - then it dashed upwards: a large buck hare ! Maybe the "fox" I`d seen last summer...

Larch Ascending

On a friday, after work, I drove to the mountainbikers` carpark by Cadonbank wood. It was drizzly and windy and preparations were underway for a downhill competition at the weekend.
There is a good short run up and along the forest road skirting Taniel Hill. The route rises and dips amongst pine and bare larch and then veers round, describing a slow S and up a long right to join the drovers` road just above a log bothy.
At this exposed site the strong winds have broken many tree limbs and uprooted larch saplings. For them; dormant through winter, death would have been unknowing, I ruminated.
I turned and ran back down, winter darkness falling. Enveloped in the woods again I enjoyed padding on a carpet  of larch needles. The only wildlife (apart from an exploding, startled grouse) were the birds: their songs points of sound, nicking the air above me.
As I run I try to identify the trees: sitka spruce ? Norwegian..something ? Is that sapling a spruce or a pine (good to know, come Christmas) ? I`ve been like a child in the woods or an abstract artist; open to the shapes, colours and sounds but unable to name what I`ve experienced. Not a natural naturalist.
Again no deer, despite dusk rising. The trail steepens. Months before,  last summer , a fox ran ahead of me and I`ve glimpsed roe deer here. 

Interloper

I`m always looking for new routes to interesting places, chief among these being the high moorland pass along which the drovers` road travels. Since  last week`s gloomy encounter down at Elibank castle I was glad of the chance to explore an unknown-to-me path to the Minchmoor`s airy heights
Leaving our house, I took a left turn up into the forest, following the Bold burn logging road a mile or so until it turned sharply right and upwards. Soon after, climbing an abrupt left, I ran southwards again, up and up. Two mountainbikers (rare in this neck of the woods) whizzed down past me. We waved hello.  Minchmoor burn came to greet me as I pulled upwards to the crest.
I`m often looking out for deer. Usually I glimpse them crossing the forest road far in front. If I look into the deep green forest glades to left and right I never see them. My clackety running shoes, smell and general noisiness (down or upwind ) puts paid to that. In "The Wild Places" Robert MacFarlane describes  climbing high into "his" tree and, after sitting there quietly for a long time, the birds returned to it and he could observe them, be a part of them. Perhaps if I stop moving and instead sit on a cut tree bole, quietly absorbing the colours, smells, sounds surrounding me, these elusive deer will, in time, appear..but during January, resting too long on a cold stump is chilling...
I sometimes lie awake just before the break of dawn and imagine that to run in the forest now will be to merge with, rather than intrude upon, the shy wild creatures: the roe deer, badgers, foxes, as light slowly grows and birdsong fills the spaces. 
I don`t so much feel kinship with the deer of these hills and quiet, wooded tracks, but the silence and listening quality of their habitat draws me deeply; the great surging breath an acre of scots pine takes, trees as impassive as Easter Island statues.
Climbing out from the forest I reach the drovers` road , jostled by wind and light.

Back Road

Recently I had to leave my lemon-of-a-car at the local town garage as the disc brakes were grinding alarmingly. There being half an hour`s worth of light left, I walked home along the back road. 
The moon, already well risen and floating above Cadon Bank, was almost gibbous, and its yellow glow hovered above and between the high tree tops as I walked east. To my right the forest hills, to my left, fields stretching out to the Tweed, the greying single-track road the borderland. I saw and named the birch wood, the cluster of ash trees, the long, clean-limbed beech wood, the tightly packed and musty spruce plantation.

I hoped to catch a glimpse of a badger. My first and only sighting had been a few years ago, on my first long, exploratory run, far along the logging roads, high in the hills. Somewhere around Plora Craig I`d startled  one, about 15 feet away and I gather there is a Set in the hills of which this creature must have been a member.
But this day I saw no animals, just old trees in the ancient Plora woodland: mature trees standing amongst their dead and transforming parents, saplings shooting upwards in the moonshadow.
As I walked, the beginnings of the Great Bear emerged through the darkening sky, and I decided that a bright red point wasn`t Mars, being too far north and unmoving.
Finally, approaching our wooden hamlet, a soft owl hooted to my right and, walking up to the  " forest gateway" and home, the moon rose above it all.