Trees and Sitting Out

A walk this morning around the grounds of Croft Castle. The grey woods were very beautiful on this cold bright day, smooth trunks and early buds lit by the still-low sun. Croft is an old place with an Iron Age hillfort but it is famous for its ancient trees. There are groves of oaks five and six hundred years old, and gnarled, squat odd trees that could be older. Ancient trees defy our concept of tree beauty; they are not tall and slender, they are fat and toad-like, limbless, ripped, scarred. The trunks look like cooled lava, crusted, bubbled scars flowing downwards, creating trunks at ground level that may be forty feet in circumference. For this reason there are clear rules for measuring these trees. We have found that living in the coutryside has changed our ideas of landscape, and our interests have become more elemental; mudstones, prehistoric buildings and 'land marks', ancient trees, the routes of rivers. A good walk through groves of slender young trees alongside the stream, where we were sheltered from the breeze. It was sunny enough at lunchtime to sit outside. In western Lancashire my mother has been sitting outside ocasionally for a few weeks now, well wrapped up but enjoying the sunshine. Today we risked the breeze and had half an hour of cool sunshine with our coffee. With missing the light comes missing the warmth.