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.