Haze has settled on the fields by the river, a reminder of the world outside this valley. Pollution from Europe and Saharan sand has been carried up here on southern winds. It adds to the drowsy feeling of early afternoon, along with the lazy sound of wood pigeons, two silent buzzards circling above and a song thrush singing from a wooded bank. There’s the pineapple scent of gorse and the bleating of lambs.
I am sitting beneath an alder, its bulbous base making a hard cushion, its trunk an easy backrest. It is one of a scattered group of veteran trees growing around the edge of a boggy patch where the grass is vivid green and heart-shaped kingcup leaves are unfurling. The trunk of the alder is ridged and creviced, throwing shadows across its cracked surface. There are celandines by my feet, gleaming yellow flowers with green backed petals held open to the sun.
Over the past couple of months I have been drawing these characterful trees. My sketchpad has filled with details of catkins, cones, patterns of bark, growths of burr, and the lichens and mosses that live on these old trees. I spend more time looking at the alders than at the hand holding the pen.
My stillness has made birds unafraid. A kestrel has used these trees as a lookout post, long-tailed tits flitted between them, a woodpecker tap-tapped on a furrowed branch.
This wood pasture habitat evolved from a balance between farming and trees grown for wood. A forest of bitten-off shoots at their base show how sheep and rabbits have fashioned the lumps and bumps.
Trunks bulge in calloused growths, clumped like accretions of candle wax, distorted into knuckles, their surfaces knobbly or punctuated by woodworm holes. Slime moulds, resembling gobbets of marshmallow, shine white against rotten wood.
Bats and birds nest in dark holes. It’s the light shade of the alders that lets grass and wildflowers flourish, the equilibrium between grazing and trees giving wood pasture its beauty and distinctiveness.
