Friday 31 October 2014

Last post

The forest is layered with the ghosts of the past, symbols and monuments to the activities of different ages or to the folk who worked and wandered the woodlands, often superimposed seamlessly upon each other to the point you don't see them unless you look. I walked an old forest path today, once a broad, and probably well used, woodsmans track, it appears to have faded from memory, as have the woodsmans activities, and with infrequent use is now hard to define as even a path.  The trees in the area are old and many carry the admiralty mark, others sport graffiti from other periods, some with meaning undecipherable.  This piece of woodland was at one time transected by a fence, as too it would appear where the earlier track and ephemeral banks and ditches of even earlier activity. Now the fence too has long gone, its wire returned to the earth from whence it was mined and all but one post (that I could see) has ceased to be. The post that remains is all but indistinguishable as a post, looking more like the remains of a dead young tree, only one worked face showing it was the work of man. All this going on in one seemingly, untouched by the hand of man, piece of woodland.

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