So I put on my boots in the morning and went off out. I was in the Glen by 7 having to arrive in by the zigzag due to Sunview way not accepting visitors yet. There have been goings on in the O’Brien Orchard. I see someone has gone to the trouble to cut up many equal lengths of (fallen?) timber and made a little wooden pontoon over the mud that has been sliding through the Gothic zone since the heavy rains and all that lockdown footfall. My attention was drawn by the large wishbone
Wishbone pointed to the wooden path up through the gothic zone to Scotland or “the Mountain” as it is sometimes called. Severed ivy presents an energetic gap, hanging from above standing from below, divided, a kind of punctuation which brackets a void, the space where energy is created.
I strike on up and find more dowels embedded in the mud, this time more as if they are point rather than leading the way on up to the oak. The heath is harbouring numerous new tracks crossings and criss crossings through the bracken.
Looking down I see the hatch from above and across I see the circle that has appeared and has everyone talking, is it a fairy fort? a scar from the Glen’s Industrial past? is it a pattern of growth responding to substrate and/or emanating from some prolific mycelial underground activity? Or is it something else? Earlier this year I spotted a pattern of circles, all different in character, but these have become less evident now. A friend asks me if locals are knitting bracken into circles now. It seems unlikely as the slope is so steep one would need to be quite determined and athletic to continue with such a task….who here would be bothered?
The Alder by this part of the river is really shaking its golden catkins now. I am enthralled by the way each Alder has its own identity, this one is pure gold. The Willow with its lovely dome is home to the blackbird, I have seen them bathing here at the water’s edge, beneath her arcing branches, as well as extracting grub from the ground – hop along and pull goes the blackbird. A couple of tall Alders are hosting nests, darker elders to the golden one. And the pair of Alders sentinels to the hatch where the water is combed before it sinks n]beneath the path to the other side.
Goose grass, aka cleavers sprinkle their frog toed stars midsts the burgeoning hog weed and buttercups, levels of vegetation are rising fast now spring has sprung and soon the ground will disappear. Mama Willow protects her celandines at the bank. The Ceder bark drapes knees from within and Willow pussy paws are turning to golden flower heads. The Glen is electric with reaching branches, like the neural pathways of faeries <3