The Fathomless Forest

It has seemed at times that I have come to the bottom of my responses to the Forest and its seasons and moods. Surely there can be no new emotions to have? Artistic responses and I never rule them out, but emotions - and maybe even varieties of that feeling which nature can inspire which I both hesitate to call, yet certainly nothing else fits and so - the 'spiritual'.
How wrong that was! Around the trail yesterday morning and it seemed to me that I had been mistaken to suspect that that depth had been fathomed. Could ever be fathomed. I knew that I gave my heart to this hill and this forest some time ago, and am continually dazzled by the shows it puts on, the artworks and the special effects and generally just everything that's here that a mixture of light, sun, moon, weather, season, vegetation change, moss, fungi can effect...and how they interact with the manmade artificial landscape/previous planting schemes of the Forestry Commission. I knew that it frequently had the same effect on me that people often attribute to some Class A drugs. But I thought perhaps I might have reached the point when the emotions it evoked would be familiar to me.
But this time I realized that it was all deeper and broader than even I had imagined - how to explain? - That there were veins of intensity running underneath previous responses that I was only beginning to suspect or comprehend. Like finding an underground river - of emotions and responses - to the Forest. The light that was the silvery morning light filtered though the bare but thickly woven branches to scatter the path with rays like sudden coins. And the ridge showed a view spilling away to meet clouds on the opposite hills, and a landscape mysteriously still green and red because there has been so little real cold to turn it dun and sere. The purple under the trees and bushes a warm claret burgundy, and then coming out of the wood to a gentle boudoir light, when you slump back in the chaise longue of the mind.(Well it seemed to make sense at that point.) I was tired for some reason, and trying to keep awake, but the dream-like nature of the paths aided me, as I went forward, saying to myself - awake or asleep, just keep going - and so at last came to the end of the dream and returned to the city. The city, where always outside I am looking at any available skyline to catch a sight of the Hill and the Tower. The Tower that ensures I can view the Hill and the Forest as no other than a 'dream made flesh'.

Here Again at Last...

Spring was busy and I hardly got to the hills, not least as two other members of the arts Collective I belong to were staying with me for three months! Then a lot of the summer, more of it even than last year, was spent away at the festivals, performing in new shows and putting up marquees, and seeing other parts of the country like Hay-on-Wye, Glastonbury, Cornwall, Eastnor Castle Deer Park and suchlike.
But at long last, three weeks ago now, (but there was lots of admin to catch up on, and worse, coming back to somewhere with slugs in the bathroom, pictures hanging from the walls, dust and cobwebs, and all those things that happen when you only return for a couple of days between events, to chuck one lot of stuff on the floor, and grab a load of different stuff!) but at long last, I got back to the Haldons.
I knew it was a hostage to fortune starting a blog called 'A Year in the Haldon Hills', but it was on the heels of a years where pretty much every Sunday except over the three months of the summer when even so, I managed to get there once during most fortnights, that I thought - all those skies, all those trees, seasons, changes to the paths and sculptures...they all ought to be put down somewhere, captured in some way however imperfectly...

Anyway, it's a September entry now and in October at that, but here it is. Had the cunning idea (without a day free) of getting up earlier and getting to the Forest well before 9am. It was so warm! For September (as it has been since for October) and the heat of the day had not yet begun. It was still warm enough to go dressed lightly, without sleeves, but there was mist in the valley and view from the ridge. A beautiful soft golden light fell shafting through the still livid green trees as we walked the trail. Almost no one there, we saw deer close to the path, bolt as we approached. At points, the light in many rays dazzling out from behind certain pines was simply breath-taking. 'This is what I came to see!' And of course the light was in a different direction at that time of day, and so all was new again. A couple of hours later, the heat had begun, and I was as always amazed and grateful for the coolness of the shadow and deep shade of the Forest at many parts. And left enchanted with the laser lights of the faerie discotheque, the rolling dried ice of the fog, and running deer party-goers.

Hill to Tor - Coming into the View

Yesterday was a day to collect wood, and the forest was misty with a dusting of snow, but none on the paths. The Belvedere looked much bigger, magnified by the mist, and the woods below were just lacy smudges, lines against the sky and the hill. The Challenge trail was dark and dripping, and at the top the tors of Dartmoor were barely visible.

Today however, I was at those tors, and the walk to Haytor Rock parallel to the road (from the Widecombe to Bovey Tracey direction) was brooding with snow on one side, and thick mist shifting and changing the landscape extraordinarily from each level and bend in the road. The way up one tor had it all - ice, snow, mud, sleet and fog! Although not too much of any of them, but the fog turned me back as it seemed pointless to trudge through the sludge for no view. Turning instead toward Hay Tor, where the panoramas opened up and closed in with amazing frequency and sudden splendour or menace.
One vista was darkness and snowy slopes reaching up to where fog obscured the top (from where we'd just come). Below us the land fell away toward a sea of mist that gave way to farther views where the sunlight had been on the way to Widecombe, but was no longer. Then up ahead, dark greys alternating with luminous white or strange ragged lights at the base of the sky. The sleet turned to rain and then eased, the wind was at our backs and the mists were all the product of the swiftly melting snows and ice.
As we walked, the landscape dripping and running with thaw water, the afternoon darkened - was it getting late already, being January? No, it was the mist and the fog, black clouds above. Hound Tor was visible, sudden views of the vale, then closing in and covered soon after. When we got to the bottom of Hay Tor, the cloud base was like a great shadow which seemed to be eating up the world. Ahead, the rocks of the Tor itself loomed like intense black gates, forbidding and of incredible sharpness against all the greys and mists and gloom. Walking up the Tor, tiny pieces of ice were scattered about like confetti made of crystals, and at the top, the silhouette of my fellow walker was unreal in its dramatic effect standing black against the darkness with the black rocks to the right. As I gained the flat summit, to my amazement, everything changed, as the vale below on the other side, previously unseen, all came into view with spectacular transformation - the sun must have been shining far to the left on the snaking road which glittered like a silver thread, and ahead in the vale there was colour in the landscape, all greens and blues instead of the white and black through which we'd walked, and the sky above that particular vale was brightness and white, with hints of blue, it was like a vignette of Heaven, with just to the right, the darkness so intense and so set off by the rocks as a frame, that it undoubtedly looked like Hell. John Martin's paintings were the only metaphor I could use to describe the mind-blowing contrasts of the panorama all around - 'The Great Day of His Wrath' on one side or 'Judgement Day' on the other? It took one's breath away, and I was truly grateful to have caught such special effects of weather and Moor, on a day when one might have thought that with all the fog and mist, that one would hardly see much at all. As I turned back (having run out of time), the afternoon thinking of turning into evening, the way looking back toward Exeter and the Sea, was storm-black, punctuated by lights that only acted to accentuate the theatre of sheer menace that such a light and such a cloudscape spoke of. In a sinister failing light against that terrifying backdrop, I made my way back to the van lost in wonder. Every special effect we have is drawn from an idea first given in nature, and every horror film, every black and white photograph, every dried ice scene, every supernatural theatre production, perhaps Tolkien's Mordor all owed their origins ultimately to days such as this.
It was beyond description or compare, and I am well aware that to make the attempt is to fall short and indeed to run out of words to paint the picture. But in homage to it, I had to try. What a way to start the New Year, marvelling at the marvellous, half out of one's senses and lost in the theatre effects of the world-stage. All hail to Dartmoor.
Forgive the purple prose, I have just received a copy of Ann Radcliffe's 'Mysteries of Udolpho' for Christmas, and the novel is more poetry than prose. I had read it before, but she was a writer who helped to define the Romantic movement in terms of uniting and codifying the picturesque by writing novels as travel writing combined with classic paintings imagery in the very late 1700's. Suffice to say, it was then, a completely Radcliffian afternoon.

The Magic Paths

It was a dark day to begin with, and on the ridge there was a range of weather to be seen - in the centre of the panorama, between two hills, it looked as though volcano smoke was merging the land with the sky - somewhere far off, the rain was torrenting down...then the estuary was beaten silver, and the hills, woods and fields were deliciously clear towards the Sea...elsewhere the reds were starting to fade from the earth, the soil looking paler, and greenery was mixing with greys and purples of the trees who had lost their leaves.

Once the hills were part of the Haldon Estate - the Belvedere a focal point, the old pictures show it not surrounded by trees...was it a folly landscape? It was certainly partially constructed with artifice. And at some stage the Forestry Commission took over. In the nineteen eighties what came to be known as 'The Magic Path' sculpture trail was made and was wildly popular, and then fell into ruin and then legend. The hills were regulated with lines of Forestry Commission pines, yet wild all the same because the trackless woods and the stony roads, the mudbath 'paths' were only used by a few...And now building on the sculpture trail of the rebranded 'Forest Park' for leisure and tourism, are more and more trails. Some paths or parts of the original sculpture trail have been closed for some time, but recently, new paths have been opening all over the place. My initial thought (like many, being suspicious of change in a much loved landscape) was that there would be no woods left, if paths kept being made, especially ones parallel to one another! where one can see and hear anyone on the other path where they run alongside...But that was before I had ventured along them. Technically these new paths are cyclist's paths, but it's hard (having used the Forest when most of the time key parts of the track were ankle deep in mud, and there were only a few horse riders, green wellied folks training their gun dogs and the occasional dog walker) to feel that anywhere is off limits. I always get off the trail and keep an ear out for cyclists using these new 'adventure' trails, plunging into the mud or hanging onto a tree, to let them pass.
And some of those new paths! are not to be missed for worlds. Into a witchy wood of hanging darkness, thick black netted trees latticed together to make a thousand shadows as the land steeps away to the left. To the right, twisted trees and spectacular stumps of trees, and roots and a couple of weeks back, the fly agarics. After a dark walk where the clouds blocked out brightness and the damp woods dripped, and the brightness came from the flaming larch needles that carpeted parts of the floor...along the quieter path, the sun suddenly came out - exquisite golds shafted between the thick black branch-veils, lighting up a tree hung with hundreds of rain drops. Far below, electric green was visible - a long strip of moss was illuminated below by a shaft of light, framed perfectly by the tangles of black undergrowth and trees. Then there was light on the tops of trees that came into view, greens, remains of fiery golds...and at the juncture we crossed, to the newer part of the path that winds farther away, down from the Hawk Observatory on the hill above. And there the deep shadowed woods were alive with copper light, as ray after ray of late sun lit up the darkness like spotlights in a some dream of a sunlit sunset forest...some picture book fantasy of fairytale loveliness and nightmare intensity - a never-to-be-forgotten light that holiday brochures promise us, but really are simply a stunning moment captured by a good photographer with an expensive camera... The kind of scene you promise yourself will be yours one day when you have realised your dreams, and achieved what you set out to do...the light that seems like some symbol of beauty, success, romance, everything the heart desires...the dream light of nature in a state of perfection that could never improved upon, admired enough, nor wondered at too long or too often.
What, I wondered through the lush summer and the leafy part of Autumn, could be the use of winter? The early sunset in unearthly black forest answered me. Could any time but November have yielded quite such a surreal experience?

Later, at the Hawk viewpoint, the golden blaze of sun opened out against the gathering darkening grey, the view all glinting emeralds and blue slate, and to the right, misting blurring everything, the clarity and low sun about to be eclipsed - it was going to pour down! Down the Forest Lover's path, back to the Belvedere, and out into the last moments of rose gold and pink, before the rain came down. The Hills they did it again...perhaps these new paths are also 'magic'?

Cobwebs and Toadstools

Despite having been so hot and dry over the summer there are mushrooms in the Forest, and having seen a variety of fungi this last couple of weeks, at last, on the new bike trail (far too good to only be for cyclists!) running parallel to the main trail past the 'Fibonacci Spiral') there at last was a fly agaric, the size of a sideplate. It was upturned, like a blown out umbrella, a pale red with white dots around the edges. A treat, though nothing could ever compare with the most spectacular fly agarics of the Haldons (or anywhere that I've seen, although that same season boasted some amazing one at Virginia Water in Surrey too) just off the road that runs along the main ridge. They were the size of dinner plates, big, perfectly toadstool shaped mushrooms with large clear white dots on deep even red - the sort you'd see in a fantasy film or on a pantomime stage set or in plaster as a shop window display. Truly spectacular and unforgettable...But back to the current season. Just beyond the toadstool was the kind of reason for which the path was made. A huge black cavernous thing looking like a cross between a huge boulder and a small cave - all covered in moss and thick cobwebs - it was only on getting closer and the other side of it, that I saw what it was - a tree root system of a large uprooted tree which had fallen some time ago. It had created a small natural cave of dripping twisted tendrils and matted overgrowth in dark greens. In one way it was very grotesque, but in the old sense of the word - grotto-esque. Startling, sinister, spooky, especially in the swirling mist that made a sudden and sutumnal change from the bright blue and gold.
I was impressed when I thought of the rangers of whoever designed the trails, with their knowledge of the hidden paths more like animal tracks through the forest, and all the places between the paths, and then the idea that they could bear to share some of their secrets and build a new public trail beside some of their choicest architectural treasures. I can only thank them for such public spirited generosity! I sometimes venture off into the woods of course - but there is a lot of forest up there, and I'm often pushed for time, and have to get round a circuit in two hours and so, so hadn't done more than peer down toward that particular slope thinking 'at some point, I must...' Also, of course the old path before any of the sculpture trails was practically impassable in places when it had rained at all, so the memory of that also often keeps me to the made paths.
This new path however is truly a sensation!

(This blog post written was written nearer the 20th of Sept, but only posted in Oct.)

Last Days of Summer

What a beautiful Summer it's been! And many visits to the Forest have been paid, but no blog entries as the Summer has simply been so busy. Each walk in the Haldons stolen and then on returning, it was time to pack to go off somewhere else, or catch up on neglected e-mails and admin.
Many times were spent rehearsing for shows, discussing plans, and therefore not completely giving oneself to the Forest. But today (though there are two more things that needed thinking about this week), I cleared my mind, and went around the paths often in silence, drinking in the greenery - slightly untidy for the first time since May! with the first fallen leaves, and the scents - still aromatic and smelling still of summer, but with a slight dampness telling of coming Autumn.
The Summer was intense and glorious, and many gigs meant going to allsorts of other places, but while there was no time to pay tribute in blog posts, I can testify that the Haldons kept their place and held up high when set against the staggering beauty of Shotover Hill above Oxford on the loveliest rose gold summer evening and twilight, Port Meadow with the sun setting on Oxford canal, the Thames at Laleham, ridiculously picturesque despite being so near the built up sprawl of London, all its houses and barges elegant and not ruining the views; and more appropriately, every hill with woods and a fine view encountered over the summer.
The previous time, just two days before, was the low golden light of a summer evening or an early Autumn late afternoon, a coppery light making the greens mellow and antique, rich and glinting like old wine in an old classic glass. The view from the ridge exact as a panoramic painting by Uccello. This time a cold night had edged the deep green with tiny rims of tawny - just some, but enough to scatter the paths.
That meditative quality returned, at last and it was so good to be a part of its great quiet.

The Den

An afternoon stolen again, away from festival work, between the Buddhafield (Sunday) 'festival stomach' (till this morning) and the Hatherleigh (tomorrow). Just time in the forest, absorbing the green, which STILL feels an intense treat after the long cold, dun and sere winter... Everything in full leaf, though the rhododendrons and the foxgloves that came after them are now well and truly over... The howling cold wind has gone from the Belvedere this last month or two, and the ferns have gone from unfolding fronds to towering shrubbery. Three deer were on the road today, the one that cuts the main sculpture trail in two. It's amazing how such large creatures disappear so quickly into the undergrowth, their legs like the shadows of small trees, and fur the colour of leaves in darkness.
The landscape was a mixture of green and yellow (as it had been dry for so long before the rain this last week), but much greener that it has been for the last month or more. The Den - the exquisite little 'Hansel and Gretel' house without a roof, made of solid oak on the path not far from the 'storytelling chair' has been moved from that now closed path, to 'the Hub' near the Gallery/cycle hire/cafe etc area. It's been given a tiled roof, which is a bit strange, and now is all 'civilized' with a path to it on a green and pot plants! instead of being a dark half wild thing, set in a dark clearing like a surprise. It looks more loved or cared for in a way, but less visited! More like a sculpture and less like somewhere one sits and finds and discovers and hides in... I think I preferred it in a more obscure setting, just coming across it. It came after the other sculptures (mainly made in Germany) and was made in Devon. It's a beautiful structure, made of delicious oak, smooth and solid to the touch, special to walk through like a long arch to another realm. Wonderful to sit in as though pretending it's a real house of fairytales (as many did when sited in its previous glade).
As ever, the hills cleared the mind of all the daily detritus, with their clear views of Moor on one side, and Sea on the other...

Spring at Last

At long last the trees are coming into leaf in more than a nascent way - the sudden clouds of bright lime green made the Forest electric in parts, with a vital green fire. At the Hawk Observatory, the trees that spent the winter as burgundy or purple or claret, and finally a grey-brown, had come alive at last, and were peridot green. The stark beauty of the path to the Belvedere, where all the hills had been framed and foregrounded in an intense latticework of branches and graceful silhouettes of trees, like a canvas lashed and shot through with an overlayer of paint marks like cracks or threads, giving it a violence, was transformed by clouds of pale viridian... And everywhere the landscape was softened, all the harsh shapes and bleak colours becoming blurred at the edges, and richer in tone and shade.

The view from the Ridge seemed brighter, darker, clearer. The view from the Observatory even more so - so many more details visible in the clear air. Rather than greys or pale blues or olive greens, the hills were deeper sea blues, the greens more velvet, the purples in the hills not the branches.

It came - after the cold five months of winter - like a miracle. And I saw every flower and new flush of green with a wonder as if I hadn't seen many Springs before. No wonder they used to worship the Spring as a God.

Co-ordinates of a Metaphysical Map

The forest was looking majestic again despite the complete absence of leaves still, although some buds were visible. The snow on distant hills of Dartmoor looked like spilt paint on the land canvas, dripping downward toward the grey-blues of the hills without snow.

It struck me as I looked out at the ridge over the constantly transforming scape that part of why the forest is so special is because of its peculiar position. It looks one way to Dartmoor, and the high tors with their rocky stacks, and all the treasures both hidden and evident. Yet to the south it looks to the estuary and to the Sea, to another ceaselessly shimmeringly changeable placeless place - Exmouth beach and cliffs, the sensational coastal path running before, through and beyond them. And yet above on the hill, stands the Belvedere. From many parts of Exeter lying in the dale below, that tower itself is visible. And so in some way, more than geographical or topographical, the Forest lies at the heart of the landscape, connecting these powerful places that pull so many toward them in a way that seems almost spiritual in a Kandinsky-like sense. As if it was the centre of a soul compass where the arrow or gnomon has its turning point, where it can point in any of the key directions. Or am I waxing too lyrical? Yet whether swinging on the hammock looking up at the sky, or hypnotized by the views or lost in some storybook of a wooded path, the Forest exerts its power.

Even when rehearsing for a performance or going through a workshop plan, the Forest startles you. Today it was the green sky that lay between the wine fields, the dark mint woods, the watery blue hills and the navy-grey clouds. The turquoise horizon so un-blue that it was instead the lime green one sees in paintings...

Secrets of the Forest

I think of the friends who I have brought here to share this path and the friends who I have not. Mel looking with a willow artist's eye at the shelters, Jo with his wood artist's eye appraising the sculptures, both always thinking of what and how they would do things differently, admiring and mentally augmenting in turn, imagining how they would have done it...Si through a wasted landscape after it had been cleared looking like the moon...and others.

The light is again looking the colour of pale copper summerlight, but it seems misplaced amongst the dark browns, rusts, intense mahoganies and darknesses of the winter forest. The beautiful tiles that remain are all broken. Those tiles! On the path off the ridge with the view that extends for miles, to the sea and all hills of distant counties...on that path, between the arched seats like upturned boat or a whale's ribcage (where we storytellers once finished a storytelling walk with the end of an abridged Epic of Gilgamesh) and the sculpture of a giant hanging xylophone-like structure, just off the path - were the tiles...Beautiful and striking, and (bizarrely, but the magic of this forest IS just that - inexplicable), despite being wholly artifice, they fitted exactly with the Haldon spirit once uncovered.

Before that, the path went under the arched seat and then wound about in a pretty story-book coil into the distance and beside a stream until it turned to both the giant rattle sculpture (now elsewhere) and the lovely keyboard xylophone (probably my favourite noise of the musical sculptures, the permanent ones along the trails organized by the Forestry Commission) - before finally meeting with the flat broad bridlepath/quarry-esque road. But then, lovely as that path was, with a fabulous tree all black and twisted and a genuine 'moment' in its own right to the left, and all the bracken and reeds' oranges in Autumn, the constant interest in the ever-changing stream, muddy or flowing, high or a trickle...the rise and then fall of the twining path...the stumps and silver birches that were characteristic of that path alone...it was closed. Closing a path currently means making it into a ribbon of gravel ridges, and shutting it off with a hurdle fence or other impediment. And so the sculptures were moved, and a new path was made.

The new path - in place of skirting heathland and being open, runs through dark trees in Narnian woodland, and the twists and turns come from another storybook tale. On the right before the pipe-like sculpture and after the hanging 'mask', was uncovered and made visible, just in the earth, exquisite octagonal tiles, terracotta colour, fitted together in a classic pattern interlocked by small square tiles of the same material. At first (last year) the section of some old path (from the fantasy of a folly landscape mentioned in a previous blog) made from them was to be seen. What delight! How charmed it was to find this fragment of a castle forecourt in the enchanted forest! Or so fancy made it seem. Heavy and well made, a magic path paved its way randomly through the forest, found only by the making of another different kind of path...all overhung by trees. For a short while I just enjoyed them, thinking of what else must once have been there, of why the original path had been built, of 'The Beginner's Way' (also called the Magic Path, much talked of but of which little remains, built years ago by the first? public art commissioned artist of the Hills, Jamie McCullough) and whether he had found and been inspired by them?

Then some were taken from the earth, piled up anyhow. And then they began to disappear. If I had thought it was the FC, taking them to restore them or to remake what there had been of the unexpected found court or whatever it was, then that would have been fine...but it didn't look like that. The path came into worse and worse disrepair - from looking like something just uncovered, but otherwise untouched and preserved, it came to look like a building site - the path prised open, stacked, and worst of all, broken. It was hateful, (and probably just as well I wasn't writing this blog then), as all the order and beauty was sacked. I don't know whether by policy or if it was simply raided by vandals or antique dealers. (The picture above is from last July when it was recently uncovered.)

Now only broken tiles remain, no good to anyone, just an echo to show how it must have and did once look.

What was their history? Why were they there, to what did they lead or of what were they a part? What parties were held by them or over them? What merry words spoken? I point out where they were to those I bring here.

The Thaw

Having been up to Dartmoor the day before, it meant that one knew that the ice and snow must have melted at last. As last year, Telegraph Hill had been closed, the road that leads to the Haldon Hills from the east.

Up on Dartmoor, the landscape had been monochrome, and the roads turning to streams with borders of slush, as the suddenness of 7 degrees hit the frozen tors and moor. Around Widecombe there had been a shifting mist, sometimes turning to fog as huge amounts of melt water evaporated into the air. Stopping at Haytor Rock, on the way it been snowy, on the way back, huge patches of green showed new streams everywhere. The sheer amount of water meant that surely it would be sinking mud? No, the ground was hard, as if still frozen solid. Walking up the hill merely meant avoiding the many streams. At the top, as there was everywhere, a swathe of snow remained. It was untouched in many places, truly deep and crisp! and with a backdrop of the stone cliff. It was definitely snowball time! The crystal pure snow making wonderful instant compacted shapes. The fog lifted and drifted, darkening, and incredibly, within half an hour, the ground that had been firm turned to the mush that one had thought that much water should do. Boots splashed at every seemingly green patch of ground, and began to sink, where before they had not.

Up on Haldon ridge, it had melted almost entirely. The heaps of dirty snow were just where it had been piled to clear the roads. The paths were muddy, naturally, the adventure trail more of a stream, but the light was like a photographic studio. At a heady 10 degrees celsius, the Forest felt positively balmy in comparison to the previous wintry conditions, and many of the trees were livid green with mosses. Single dew drops hung from delicate branches in the thaw, and some of the barks of the thinner trees and saplings felt so mouldy and damp that they would imprint to the touch. They were shedding bark from the frosts, renewing themselves, perhaps?

Many of the most picturesque twists of roots and apoplectically writhen stumps were backlit with a soft dark light, their viridian greens sharply contrasting the with dark greys and browns and rusts of the January forest hollows. On the ridge, so much water vapour came off the pines that they looked as if they were smoking with a chill damp fire. The mist after thaw again.

On the path off the ridge that joins with the bridle path again, past the part where broken tiles (many tales of those!) lie recalling that lost folly landscape (that I have a fantasy was there), was a tiny palisade fence made of thin logs to the right. I went over to it - and it marked the top of a steep dip. Below in a beautiful shallow bowl of the forest, was an exquisite electric green tree, short, with its bare arms open in the shape of a many-fingered hand. There it was, the centre of a small fort, the ramparts defended with logs, the drawbridge the little palisade. A new feature - one of the amazing things about the Haldon Hills is not that they change so dramatically with light and shade, season, weather, time of day, but that there is always some new feature to be seen, whether by nature, an arts project connected to the Gallery, CCANW, or the Forestry Commission or - well, who knows? On one tree on the same path, there's a piece of bark hung up - which looks, whether by chance or design, exactly like a mask.

And then the day darkened - the cloud had come over the hill at last, and it began to spit a light rain. Back just in time before the heavier rains began...

The Forest in Dark December Mist

The Haldon Hills are like a dream. The main difference being that in the Haldon Hills, any attempt to go to the lavatory is generally successful.

I half expected the paths to be all mud and mist. But this is the Haldon Hills and the Forest paths, so of course it was always going to be more than that. The path begins (where I join it) not far from the Belvedere, and so we took that road first, through the black ironwork gate, and past the picturesque bridge, seemingly part of some lost folly landscape. The road wound up toward the strange white apparition, just like a nightmare (rather than its usual fairytale), the ivory of the tower gaining in snowy intensity as one got nearer, until it resolved into the familiar tower. Familiar? Could anything in that light, all ill-defined and white on white look familiar? No, and yet of course I knew the tower's name. Lawrence Castle or the Haldon Belvedere. A light was on over the door, making it even more dream/nightmare-like.

After that, we returned to the main road and turned into the bridle way. And then the climb up to the right begins, and one enters - as if the Belvedere hadn't introduced it already - into another world. The pines soared into the mist, darker than other heavy mists I'd seen. There was no view on the ridge, but it didn't matter, as the whole path from the crocodile (carved log in the ditch) past the summerhouse ('play sculpture') had passed in a beautiful dream, the soft edges and surreal tones of light and shade muffling all awareness of chill or mud. Trance in movement rather than winter walk.

It was too muddy to go on the 'adventure cycle trail' path which had turned into a stream, so instead, we took the track (more a forestry commission road) which turns to the 'Butterfly Trail', and loops up to the Hawk Observation space.

The darkness of the thick mist through the pines here was not heavenly (like the beginning of the high path from the bridleway that climbs above the escarpment) but demonic. The gloom dripped between the forest trees darkening into perspectives that looked like evil things from old folktales were lurking there.

Where we crossed the Dartmoor-esque bridge, the water was foaming it had been so wet. Further on where another stream crossed under the road in a pipe, we saw foam banked up in a pile - it was frothy - and bizarrely, warm to the touch. More like whipped milk on coffee than bubbles in a bath. It dissolved like kindly soft ice on the skin.

Passing a huge stump covered in vivid moss and electric ferns, perhaps those ferns which were sheltered or near a lot of water didn't need to turn to orange bracken like most of the ferns? But the stump, so architectural and leaning on a sudden steep curve of land was so devastatingly eye-catching, the greens so sharp against the white gallery-walls of mist, that nature was showing how it alone was the inspiration both for amazing installations and floral decoration for big events (think the designer Daniel Ost).

Back down the hill, words for colour failed to detail or describe the thousand shades of dark burgundy pastel grey, and all the livid darknesses toned to pastel by the mist. At the end my boots were wet and spoke of mud, but having walked through a dried ice dream of cloud and a thousand paintings of tones and shadows, or rather a thousand old black and white film stills hand tinted with unreal pastels, I could say nothing of mud. I had hardly seen it.