Burley Old

These views from the gate show you how the forest is changing, top one's the 30th March, the one below is today. Bit by bit the canopy unfurls, ushering the season of dappled light, by far the best kind of light. The enclosure's gates are all now fixed open to allow the ponies seasonal access to the woodland. I do love this woodland, it's the one I've visited the most, for 30 years or so, and I still visit it most frequently. It's wonderfully rewarding visiting a place so frequently, you get to have a deeper relationship with it, understand it more, know it more, you notice the subtle changes as well as the bigger events, and know when others have been there. You know the wood and the wood knows you. I was thinking how it's like a living memory album, I see a tree and it holds a memory, another holds another, and so on, of times and people which come to life in my minds eye. It's not just my memories stored here either, others roam these woods, and to them it's theirs, just like to me it's mine. I get to glimpse their memories too. I see their shelters and dens, I see their art, I've scoured the trees for graffiti, and there's plenty to be found, from the Admiralty marks of old, through a cluster of American wartime graffiti made by those on their way to the beaches in 44', to the usual initials, declarations of love, band names and miscellanea. The wood is steeped in histories. I do love this woodland.