Coneygeer Bottom

We found smoke filled stands when we arrived in the forest this morning. Forestry work never stops, you'd be surprised how much effort it takes to keep the forest looking postcard proper. The reality of the forest is that much of it is far from natural. I'm not sure what's going on here, although I think they're returning the land here to heathland...they don't usually go to such great lengths clearing and grading the land surface when preparing to replant. I could be wrong, time'll tell. Those fires will smoulder and smoke for days, today their wood-smoke smell would stay in my nostrils throughout our walk.

DDT 'Enter the Bend'

Cor blimey! This is really good, man. The fruit of a mind meld between members of psychedelic big hitters Carlton Melton and White Manna, 'Enter The Bend' by DDT (Dieter, Duvall and Taibi) is bloody marvellous! Enter the Bend is all rich organic flavours, heavy with psychedelic drones, deeply hypnotic shamanic trancey rhythms, with myriad streams of trippiness intricately woven  throughout, earthy as f*ck too. Enter the Bend picks you up and carries you off, time dissipates as you immerse yourself in the aural world DDT have crafted for our listening pleasure, the musicianship of all involved is, of course, top shelf. And, when the needle finally runs out of groove, you're left wanting more. I played it through four times in a row on receipt, and with each play I was drawn in further. It's a meditation, man. It's a quality pressing too, the vinyl comes in either a groovy splatter of ‘Multiple Greens’ (named after one of the tracks on the album) or classic black, all packaged in a sturdy sleeve and with a colour insert. Enter the Bend is surely one of the best releases of the year, check it out, it doesn't disappoint. This is the good shit, and no mistake!

Tree throw mysteries

Unexpected things you see in tree throws...a watering can. I wonder how that got there? Forestry works, or travelling folk maybe, wartime military even, there's a cluster of American World War 2 graffiti in Burley Old. Thinking about it, everything beyond soil and roots in a tree throw is unexpected really. 

Inundation

The forest's lower lying stands and open heath are inundated at the moment, the ground is sodden, saturated, every hollow, depression and channel is water filled, in fact there are areas of standing water throughout.  And as for the leafy woodland floor, well, that can not be trusted to have any substance. It took less than 10 minutes walking for my boots to become thoroughly waterlogged, after which point I found myself strangely liberated, being able to wander about this wet wonderland without a care, at one point, I even ended up thigh deep (shorts rolled up) navigating a submerged area of woodland. When the forest environment's like this it makes for interesting walking, and you'd be a fool not to take full advantage.

Christmas walk

The forest was really quiet this morning, near empty as everybody was busy cooking their Christmas dinner, not me, years ago we opted to go European and do the Christmas meal thing on Christmas eve, man, it makes Christmas day so much cooler. So I had Burley Old enclosure to myself, and as always, it was magnificent and majestic, the epitome of an English forest. A perfect place to sit a while and melt into nature.

Winter Solstice sunrise

Geoff and I set out in the dark this morning in order to reach a good vantage point to see the Winter Solstice sun rise. Our chosen spot was Holm Hill on the edge of Wilverley Plain with good clear views eastwards. Holm Hill's a nice vantage point on the edge of a promontory of higher heathland plain surrounded by on three sides by low bogland (Duck Hole, Crab Tree and Holm Hill), which I feel gives it an added something, our ancestors favoured wetland, and it's adjacent dry land. Sound carries in the early morning forest, I could hear walkers chatting on a track-way across Holm Hill Bog, and for a moment I was cowed from running through some Awen's, then I thought...what the hey.  As the sun rose I chanted, I beathed in the fresh clean morning air and it felt good. What a glorious sunrise, clear enough to see the sun itself rise above the horizon, though with enough cloud to make the sky interesting. And the light, man, the gorgeous orange hued morning light, it bathed the sparse stands and open heathland in gold. A cycle ends, a cycle begins, lets hope this one is better than the last, which, for me at least, was utterly shite. Solstice Blessings y'all.

Solstice Blessings

At Yule the Holly kings' reign is done; whilst the Oak kings' reign is just begun.
Longest night yields us longer days; the Sun reborn travels back our way.
Gather round with family and friends; now to celebrate that darkness ends.
In our hearts and beneath our feet; the seeds of futures dreams await.
Our march to spring is just begun; wassail to y'all 'till journey's done. 

Solstice blessing...flags, flax, fodder and frigg to y'all beautiful people /|\

Creek Bottom

What a difference a day makes. Normal service has been resumed.

Duck Hole

Heading towards Duck Hole Bog this morning, and to paraphrase Eric Olthwaite, ''Forest's wet today Mother, aye, very wet, even the dry bits are wet'', the forest is that wet. Still, it was glorious walking though, and a treat to walk under (nearly) blue skies.

Resistance through resilience

Resistance through resilience. As I said the other day, we're going to be under Conservative rule for at least a decade now, I reckon, or even longer.  For now, all we can do is resist, the Monbiot has the right idea, or at least is looking in the right direction...support each other, a ground up, community based resistance, building resilience. We can take inspiration in some part from nature. Take the old enclosure here, weather beaten, battered, the trees subject to endless elemental assault, and yeah, some fall, though even when slighted they still resist, remaining local features, offering support to other woodland inhabitants, floral and faunal, for decades, and as a whole the woodland endures. Visually too the woodland landscape of Burley Old reflects our own; over all our system endures, although our socio-political landscape is changed irrevocably. 

Get off my land!

Get off my land! Geoff and I came across a gang of quite fierce hogs out in Burley New enclosure this afternoon. I think they were Tamworths, to me they looked more boar-like than the other pigs we'd seen out to pannage, with long snouts and pricked up ears. Tamworths are supposed to be a docile but active breed, so maybe I misunderstood their inquisitiveness for fierceness, they were big buggers though, and so we took flight through the stands when they began running towards us. I wasn't scared or anything, you understand.

A weight lifted

I went to bed last night seething, angry at a country I saw as populated by a majority who'd shown themselves to be xenophobic and bigoted, myopic and wilfully ignorant *****, happy to celebrate their own craptitude. The exit polls had come in and it suggested a landslide for the conservatives, even after 10 years of ideological austerity, swathing cuts to public services, the associated suffering and 10's of thousands dead as a consequence.  Angry that so many had voted for a leader who shown himself to be a racist, a misogynist, a homophobic, a serial adulterer, a man sacked three time for lying...twice in political office, and arguably the worst Foreign Secretary this country has ever known. Angry that with the light of truth so thoroughly illuminating all the filthy lying corners of the Brexit argument, when every pro had withered and dissipated in that light, even then my country voted for the thing they now must have known was a lie, in an act of national suicide.  As I say, I was seething, although most of all I was frightened by the prospect of another 5 or 10 years of Conservative attacks, hardships, and what I knew would be coming for many of us. 

Although this morning I awoke to feelings of complete tranquillity and inner calm, as if a huge weight had been lifted from me...I felt freed. To be honest, I was taken aback, so striking and incongruous were these feelings in light of my outlook last night. It dawned on me that the one thing that was different from last night was that I'd relinquished hope, or more to the point...relinquished false hope. I've long seen hope as a dangerous and debilitating thing if not based in reality, and I'd allowed myself to be drawn into hoping for something, that in my heart of hearts, I knew was never going to happen, no matter how much I wanted it too.  I like Jeremy Corbyn, he's man of principle whose political record and long history of support for those who needed support spoke for itself. I agreed with him that we needed a new type of political discourse, I liked many of his policy propositions, and believe he'd have made a great peace time Prime Minister, and therein lies the rub, we're at ideological war and the enemy has the (politico) media industrial complex behind it, the most powerful of weapons. In my opinion Jeremy and the party's policy of non-engagement, of not coming out fighting, was a mistake, allowing the government and predominantly right wing media to salt the ground ensuring the seeds of Labour's messages would never took root, let a lone flourished. I knew there was never a chance of Labour winning, and yet I let myself hope, subconsciously (and consciously if I'm honest) knowing that was hope without a solid foundation. Well, I'm only human.

This quote resonated...''Whoever has nothing to hope, let him despair of nothing'', (Seneca, stoic philosopher 4BC to AD65).

Decembers Full Moon

An interesting Moon for our interesting times.

Solid Oak

This young Oak surveys his wintry kingdom. The Oak couldn't have picked a more exposed site. Up on the cusp of Spy Holms plain, above the open wet heath of Clayhill Bottom and the Brockenhurst Burley road, facing the strong prevailing westerly winds square on...that's a tough gig, right there.  Respect.

Burley Old hermitage

Burley Old is filled with man made curios, probably the longest serving and most enigmatic is one I know as the 'Hermitage'. It's been a feature of Burley Old for as long as I can remember, over 30 years, I think. I named it the Hermitage for it's proportions, it's a fair size, very well constructed and maintained (whether by the same person I don't know), although it only has a very small space inside it, only enough for one person to sit. It reminded me of a wooden interpretation of those beehive huts you find in Ireland, which I believe were types of hermitage. It's an ambition of mine to spend the night sat in the 'Hermitage' ... I've just not had the bottle yet. It's a weird old wood.  

Shooting plaforms

Wooden shooting platforms are a common sight throughout the forest, they've traditionally been used to 'manage' the deer populations, although I'm not sure whether they get much use these days. The deer populations have grown dramatically over the last decade or so. These are well solid structures, sturdy, remaining functional for many years, when they do require replacing they're rebuilt in the same areas, although they tend not to rebuild them on the same spot. I wonder if that's as the deer get wise, and pass that knowledge on to the youngers, taking alternative tracks. What I do know is that they're great spots to chill. Their elevated nature makes them first class observation positions (obviously), good places to set up with a flask, a snack, and to blend into the woods...watch and listen.

Bind Runes?

These look like Runes or maybe Bind Runes? I'll have to do some investigating.

A mystery resolved

I've long wondered about the creators of Burley Old's man-made oddities, what are their creations about...if anything more than follies, and non more so that the bounded clearing, which I've hypothesized about. Well, today I met the guy who created it and it wasn't created for any of the reasons I'd hypothesized. I thought there was something pagan about it, what with the 'offerings' which appeared to be left at points in the wheel, I was wrong, the offering/date relationship was purely coincidental. The clearing had developed over several years, and had begun by clearing debris which had fallen from the giant Douglas Fir into a subordinate Beech, and evolved over the years via a series of whims and observational changes to the well defined feature you'd see today. He asked if I was the person who'd left the Beltane blessing in the clearing, ''yes'' I said, he thanked me and we shook hands. He was a nice guy, friendly, he'd been walking these stands for 60 years (25 years longer than I), he had all sorts of knowledge, and you can never learn enough. We chatted about the changes we'd seen over the years, of the structures we'd seen raised and fall, both enthusiastic about the wood we frequented. Earlier in the year we'd both seen the Fox cub in the huge hollowed Beech, the guy had been feeding it, thinking is was going hungry, I told him I'd seen a freshly killed Woodpecker in there, he laughed. It was nice to meet someone who clearly loved this tract of land as I did, and I wondered how many more of us there are. Which put me in mind of an old Freak Brothers strip. 

Stag Brake

The small wooded clump of Stag Brake in its wet heathland setting.