We are now in Autumn with cooler, darker days cheered by the leaves as they change to yellow and orange and red before they fall.  The green of the summer is chlorophyll that converts carbon dioxide to carbohydrates using the sun’s energy, so feeding the tree.  It is destroyed by low temperatures and as it fades we can see the other colours that were hidden by the green.  We have more red in the leaves when we have drier, sunnier weather. 

The layer of cells between the leaf stalk and the stem elongate and weaken with shorter days and cooler temperatures so the leaves start to fall.  It helps the trees preserve moisture, and without the leaves they need less energy to survive.  They can also handle winter storms better as winds move through their branches more easily, and the fallen leaves add nutrients to the soil.  Conifers don’t need to shed their needle-shaped leaves as they are smaller and have a waxy coating so lose less water.  The winter winds that rock the trees strengthen the roots ready for the next season.

Encounter

The wood
is not so much a place
as a presence,
each tree
holding space
under its branches

like a shelter,
the air along the paths rich
with their slow breath
and the trampled scent
of spice.

The leaves are light,
greens grading to gold
with the sun’s flicker,
softening the body
of each vista
like a pulse.

Rain is caught
by the canopy overhead
until it slides earthwards
with plops and drops
long after the rain has stopped.

One falls on my cheek
but I miss
the twirling leaf I chase,
kissing others that still cling
to their branches,
kisses soft as skin.

Bill and I live on the north-west edge of London so we have London clay under our house and in the garden which, as its name suggests, is a clay that fills the London basin.  Underneath it, and outcropping further north-west in the Chiltern hills, is chalk.  Between the two are sandy gravelly beds called the Lambeth Group.  There are other gravels nearby that the River Thames and its tributaries deposited before, during and after the last ice age when its course and the volume of water it carried were different from today.  Our ancestors, the people who lived here in Mesolithic and Neolithic times, apparently didn’t favour the clay and you find their stone tools in the sand and gravel beds, some locally where we walk our dogs.

They would have been much more aware of the different elements that made up their landscape than we are today.  The Icknield Way is a route that was old before the Romans came.  It follows the line of the chalk hills near here and extends from Dorset to Norfolk.  It gave those who travelled for trade or hunting or social/religious gatherings a route that would have been dryer than the clay and elevated with better views of the surrounding countryside.

Wherever we live, and whatever buildings or plants are covering it, under our feet are the rocks that contain the history of our planet and the history of our people.

Durlston, Dorset

Rock, solid fortress
against the sea,
jagged grey islands splitting
the covering carpet of green,
tripping the stumbling walker,
resisting the burrowing seeds,
reminding the visiting seers
that underneath the growing, greening,
trembling harvest
is the dense, unchanging face
of earth, foundation rock,
heavy and hard to shoulder
the buffeting weather,
carrying the load of life
that grows on its slopes.

Without its strength
there would be no waving grasses,
no wind-trimmed bushes,
no home for beetle and rabbit.
Because it is still, we can move,
carelessly following
the contours of its face.
If we look skin-deep at the land
we won’t discern the heart of it,
the weight of it,
that anchors us all.