As we drive along the bumpy track to get to the woods, the dyke that swoops down the adjacent field and up the other side greets us like a smile. It’s the day after the latest storm, and as we get out, tightening our boots against the cloying mud, Mum and I debate how many trees will be down following the wild winds that swept East Lothian.
We take the lower path that bends down towards the long lake and immediately see a few skinny trees as the first casualties. The narrow path is gnarled by roots – we dodge them and the occasional larger tree that has fallen – but is too covered with thick mosses to be a result of this most recent storm.
Weather races across the sky; stringy white clouds are chased away by watery sunshine, replaced by foreboding grey clouds minutes later. There’s a gaggle of mallards and a pair of swans getting buffeted in the usually calm lake, which has small whitecaps racing across it. Leafless branches sweep downwards, as if the trees themselves are bending to drink.
As rain starts to sound on the evergreen Scots pines and Douglas firs, we speed up but are distracted by fluting birdsong, pale green catkins and scalloped fungi growing on calloused bark. Glimpsed through the trees on the opposite bank, the field that borders the woodland is barren and brown in comparison with the russet leaves, orangey fungi and delicate lichen.
We reach the higher, flatter path and start the second part of our circular walk. It’s raining harder now, so that, when we see a largeish bird in the trees above us, I think it’s a buzzard but can’t be sure. There are no other birds about – it’s still too windy.
It’s been a remarkably active storm season for the UK and Ireland. I send a silent wish of survival to the woodland that provides a haven for me and so many others, human and non-human, in a largely deforested landscape.
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