It’s been heavy on writing this week and good to break out into the spring air, even if there is more of a chill today and the odd sprinkle of rain, the sky was blue and the clouds were fluffy. I found myself on the grassy knoll and some children drew my to explore the dried undergrowth in the place that used to edge the old sand quarry where the pine martins lived. The kids scrambled back to their parents and I continued along a beaten path siding the houses, it was a very different view of the Glen from here, dried Burdock and teasels tickled the sky and I looked across the hummocky ground towards Cahergal and St Joseph’s Church, across all levels of the Glen below. One of the Glen dogs scampers to catch up with its human below.
The fence skirted the path on my left as I headed East towards the upper field. I hadn’t wanted to come this way because of the recent brutal digging of the h-edges. And it was brutal. I passed a new bike thrown into the trees, I counted the rings on the sawn stumps – 25 years and then tried to enjoy the berries that grow over the ugly culvert where a slip stream slides under the North Link road.
I want to see the other side of the fence so I slide into the park of older houses and get another view across to Cahergal, some apples are blossoming here and I see a tree house made of palettes like an old window frame catching the sky, and some flaxes with last year’s giant flower stems.
I decide to do the whole job and slip into the newer houses , built in 2004 in the place of the quarry, I have in mind to see where the trees had been cut down from the other side and lumbered into the Glen, the house where L shouted up angry at the destruction and met the lies of a tree ‘surgeon’ who spluttered about permissions, I find the house, on the corner, with the only garden and the tree with its truncated fingers no longer able to reach into the sky. There were sweet kids playing in the garden. I remembered the fallen trunks on the other side felt my face tense at the parents. Beating towards me on a small tricycle I recognised the little boy in green who had been playing with his big sister by the grassy knoll and led me up the the beaten path.
I came back along the road, wanting to enter the Glen over the ditch, and I found a place without much bother. As I reached the crest of the hill I found a familiar figure coming towards me, it was N with his binoculars. We talked about roads and plans and puddles and views and found ourselves back in the valley of the Glen.