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.

Easter Fundraiser for CCANW

Over the weekend I was up in the Forest again, and at last there were some flowers - the red rhododendron-like tree on the path up toward the Belvedere - striking and extravagant in both height and colour. But still the land seemed sere and dun. To the perceptive eye, buds were visible on the trees, new green beginning here and there on the grass, but to me it still looked wintry and bare - as if real colour had yet to appear and flood the landscape with warmth, intensity and sudden variety.

The view from the ridge was so clear that it looked opaque at the edges, because some of the hills were so far off, and a layer of cloudy mist hung between the estuary and the hills beyond, looking like smoke squiggled onto the sky by a painter drawing a cartoon.

But I was also there to check some things with CCANW the gallery and the Ranger's Office, for a fundraiser which I and my co-performer are hosting in aid of CCANW next week, so it wasn't all losing oneself in the landscape. The performance is on Easter Monday - traditional marker of the change to Spring.

Fundraiser details; http://www.cartwheels-collective.co.uk/W%26D_Host.html

Message from the Trees

In the Haldons, through the light, now pale gold against a watercolour blue sky as Spring gets nearer, these words came to me - 'Don't bother searching for meaning - there are only two purposes in the world - one is to have fun, and the other is to be useful. They are all that matters.' By which was meant that to have fun is being happy, and to be useful is to help others achieve being happy and having fun - and that seemed to encompass everything that mattered, as to be an aid worker is to provide food and shelter and medicine to those whom you hope will again one day smile.

That's what the trees told me anyway.

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...

Quality of Light 2

This time however, the daylight was peach - as the unexpected sun lit up the emeralds of the moss, and tinted the path and tall trees with a roseate softness. The path as soon as one gets off the main quarry-like road (FC track used for logging), and the hill winds upwards, it's the Forest Lover's Path, a fantasy of soaring trees that no photograph (not even those by the wonderful professional photographers who take it) seems able to capture. In mist it looks like a film set, in summer like a painting, and an awful lot of the time, simply like some kind of dream. It had been chilly, so I wasn't expecting peach. Nearing the rhododendron tunnel (an extraordinary feature, and one which used to be feral! but is now managed and sometimes cut back, since the paths became made up and 'all weather'), the trees turned out some purple to blend with the peach into that orange/purple light that always so amazes me (and is more often to be seen on horizons or high in the sky, that in sudden moments on an enclosed path).

On the ridge, the view fell away into valley after dale after range of hills, to a glassy estuary, all burnished like a mirror - it turned in swathes from silver to gunmetal to pewter to silver again, and what was remarkable was that the clouds above did the same. They hung like vast curtains above the estuary, and shimmered silver to pewter to grey to silver again. I often say I've never the view like that before, but it does change continually. Just as the beach at Exmouth, due to the tide, the sands, the weather, is almost never the same twice, so the view from the ridge changes with the seasons and the weather in a way that sometimes leaves me surprised still to recognize familiar landmarks. It is so absolutely transformed by light, mist, shadow, and cloud. The hills can look much higher some days, on others you can see many more ranges of hills...sometimes the ploughed fields are electric in their ruby red, sometimes the forests shine green, more often a shade of blue...and in its entirety, the view is both not to be fathomed even with video, and is frequently frankly beyond any comprehensive or explanatory description. This time on the farthest hills was snow, which looked like icing above the lower hills before them which had none.

Even the Belvedere changes from snow white to ivory to cream to bone...to cotton wool-edged in mist, and from spectral nightmare to summer picnic fantasy to fairytale picturebook to a dream of some other reality to a symbolic aspect too intense to speak of freely...Not including of course its actual identities as historical building, tourist attraction, folly, viewpoint etc..

On the 'Adventure Cycle Trail', the sky turned dark - gone was the delicious sunshine. I had seen on a hill behind, a dark cloud looking like rain, and wondered if it would come our way. It did, as the cathedral of straight black pines in a long straight path came over even blacker, and white confetti fell from the sky. But it was hail, a light hail, though enough to be a mild blizzard. Kindly, the air was too warm for it to remain hail, and also kindly, being hail, it bounced off coats and so didn't make one wet. To travel through the white on black woods was a privilege of its own, and by the turn in the track where it goes to another view, it had stopped, and the sun had again graced the forest. Mind-blowing.

Later on the side of the trail after the hammock - what bliss it is to lie there staring at the sky, always thinking that much more time should be spent lying there or on grass in a favourite field under favourite trees, staring up at the sky...after that the light went silver - this time I knew it must be the trees that were mostly responsible. It was a beautifully Victorian antique silver with a hint of gilt. Pure elegance to set off the delicate filigree of the lattice-branched trees...

Qualities of Light 1

Earlier in the month, there was an intense light that can only be described as burgundy - the locus of it was at the Hawk Observatory point, where the land falls away in folds of trees, bare in the season of darkness, but with clouds of wine red coming from them. Painterly and Medieval tapestry-like, they glowed dark jewel red, and much of the path on that side of the trail also glowed with the red quality - despite the fact that the sky was gunmetal grey and many of the taller trees were silver. When I asked the painter - how would one go about depicting that burgundy light? he said maybe painting the whole canvas red first, and then painting the colours of the grey cloud and mahogany trees over it...yes, I could see that.

There were some trees on the path above the escarpment, the bark was peeling and the sun lit up the silhouettes of the trees a crimson amber. Haloes of the trees - a remarkable effect and not one I'd seen there before.

The next time it was the hills by the gate down from the Belvedere - the landscape was like so many dreams I have had - a Tolkienesque supernatural quality, the dark blues of the hills or patches of forest, the darkening sky like the threat once (in 'The Lord of the Rings') they leave the Shire for a road with who knows what about to descend. And every distant hill seems to speak of Weathertop.