He showed me how to make hurdles and spar-gads, and how to loop together the bundles – this last being almost as elaborate a process as hurdle-making itself. He himself had dealt with this wood eighteen years previously, and obliquely I tried to find out his opinion of my thinning and axe-work. He found no fault with it, in fact praised it. In another man I would probably have taken this for politeness; but I thought he really did mean it, and this gave me no small pleasure.
One day, after he had given me the figures regarding the spar-gads, I asked whether he thought the labourers were happier today. He replied firmly and without hesitation – ‘No, they are not.’ He said they were not satisfied, and were less happy. He went on to say how he used to do general farm-work during the summer months and then return to the wood. He emphasized what a good time haymaking was in those days. Everyone turned out, whole families, having great tea-parties in the field: it was something everyone looked forward to, including the children. No one had to work at a desperate pace, for there were so many workers; and since there were so many workers the job was done quite as quickly as at the present day.
Such are the imponderables of progress. More wages, less jolliness, and the machines not making for less hard work but for fewer workers. The goal of life, judging by our actions, is efficiency. It is really happiness. And the great snag is that neither machines nor £.s.d. seem able to open that door.
In the old days if the agricultural labourer was not religious he was at any rate superstitious. The superstitious man is profounder than the blasé sceptic, for he is at least aware of the ‘mystery’, and it is one of the little ironies of life that the latter imagines himself superior. Today the attendance at a village church is often only three. For the most part people simply do what is ‘done’, regardless of conviction. In the old days it was not done not to go to church. Today it is hardly done to go. There is no superstition, and the attitude towards religion is one of indifference at best, and at worst, and more often, of undisguised derision. Hence – quite apart from believing this or that – the whole background of word-music from the Bible with its accompanying attitude of reverence and its sanctification of joy and sorrow, no longer informs the life of the people.
The old woodman did not belong to the generation that had lost these good things, and I knew it was safe to make a remark to him concerning the anti-religious trend of workers in general today. It pleased him, for presently he came out with a generalization of his own without any prompting from me. He glanced round the wood, and slowly and haltingly choosing his words, said: ‘If I do say to a farmer now, Look how they plants do grow; look at thik field or yourn and see how they do grow without help; there must be a wonderful God behind they plants – he would not understand I.’
‘No,’ I replied, ‘he would probably say that his overhead charges had been very heavy this year, and that he was not going to make nothing out of it, not a penny.’
‘That’s just what he would say,’ affirmed the old man.
And I told him how the foreman had looked over the wood and declared – ‘It’s only dead money.’
‘Oo ah!’ said the old man, ‘that’s the way it is now. That’s the way it is.’
Not more than a month or two had passed before he and his grandson had constructed about £40 worth of hurdles. There was something extraordinarily satisfactory about the rows of them leaning neatly one against another, or staked flat ten or more feet high – all twisted by the finger of man out of the hazel bushes, while those same bushes were engaged in sending forth new shoots for future hurdles.
It was interesting to notice how woodmen, working within a given radius for a fair length of time, generally build a comfortable shelter for themselves, against weather and as a dining-room. A few pieces of corrugated tin, two or three poles, and some straw sheaves make an excellent little room to retire into when it pours, and a cloak-room and bicycle-shed at all times. Outside the shelter, on raw winter days, a fire is lit and kept going – very pleasant at meal times. In this, as in some other respects, the woodman has the advantage over other workmen on the land. I have yet to meet the woodman willing to change his job for any other department or agricultural activity.
One day I asked the old man – ‘Do you ever wish that you had done anything else in life, been anything else?’ He did not need to pause and think over his answer, and then perhaps give a non-committal one. ‘No,’ he said firmly, ‘I do not, and the longer I live the more sure I am of that.’
At last I stood beside a contented man, one with many years upon his back, who did not feel that others had got a fairer deal out of life; who was not greedy for position, nor envious of riches, nor indifferent to the beauty that is freely given to the poor in places such as this.
I had noticed that he sometimes lay down and took a nap after dinner, and I mentioned how delightful it was to lie down and sleep in the wood. He agreed with me. ‘It’s as if thik birds do watch e,’ he said, ‘and thik trees do bend over e.’
14 A Way of Living
One of the great advantages of a woodman’s job is that in his old age if he wishes to retire on his pension, he can at the same time supplement it by peaceful and easy-going piece-work. Just such an old man came to the woods from time to time to make stakes and faggots out of my drifts. He took it easy, arriving sometime before ten and going home at about four. This filled in his day beautifully. If it came on wet he was none too pleased for ‘it don’t do,’ he said, ‘to get back too early’. But he wasn’t in the least anxious about the money element. His simple needs were perfectly well met by his pension and what he made in the wood, and his days were filled pleasantly. He had a very nice cottage down in the village, free. So had the other old woodman, a delightfully placed and good cottage – for there is no sense in supposing that the countryman is always or even usually badly off in this matter as against the townsman. (And the man who talks about ‘the disgraceful housing conditions of rural England’ should go and have a look at an Irish village!)
Anyway, in the sphere, I found happy and contented men. Modern life is a labyrinth in which most men are lost. To find a way, a path is not easy. They had found one. Nothing elaborate about it; not the way of the Cross; not the Eightfold Path; but the way of the peasant whose wants are few. This gets them through, and I often think of them, I shall always think of them, as men who having escaped from all the escapisms of the modern world, were at peace. I used to visualize them sometimes when, on visits to London, I found myself again in the bus or under the ground. And when I got back amongst the trees again I would feel the full force of the farce of modern civilization; I would see with the clear vision of hatred the foul torrent of respectable insanity that makes the majority of men inferior to monkeys, and their works in thousands and thousands of cases absurd beyond the conception of any savage.
There were times when, sitting under the oak tree in the early morning, I felt that so much was here given that if all the millionaires of all the world came ready to do my bidding and answer my Go here or Go there, I would have nothing to say except Go away. I was in a position to use my body for a period and then my head and pen. Could I ask more than this? or seeking, find? The Rights of Man are all very well, but we shall save the social world only when we pay attention to the needs of men. To do hard agricultural work half the day and hard cultural work the other half – that for many would answer their psychological needs. But no effort is made to make that kind of thing possible. We imagine that everything will be all right if we all produce as many objects as possible and distribute them to everybody. We refuse to think of man’s Needs and go on and on thinking only of his Rights and his Pay. Never about his psychological and physiological needs – nay, never!
I could satisfy this need here, but only on condition that the whole of Europe, the whole of North America and Canada, the British Empire, Russia, China, and Japan could be engaged in warfare instead of welfare – myself only having to attend Home Guard. But there it was, I was a
ble to do it. And I shall not easily forget, even when the frost of age is on my head, how after a few hours’ work in the morning, I had earned enough to pay my rent, and in the afternoon the grocery bill. That is something that I shall never forget! And so, for a moment adopting the role of the wise councillor, I would say to any young man, or young man and woman, ambitious only for peace and sanity – Learn the craft of Forestry, enter the woods, and happiness may yet be yours.
15 Different Moods in the Wood
I can offer the above small piece of advice to anyone likely to be glad of it with a clear conscience, because any woodmen I have known always seemed to be doing well and were satisfied. But, speaking very personally, given the choice between permanent agricultural work of a general nature and forestry, I would not choose forestry – though doubtless I would often long to get back to the woods again. In this account I celebrate the pleasures of working in the wood, indeed I sing its joys. But too much hangs on the weather and the time of year. Long hours in a wood during wet or dark or heavy days, can be most melancholy. One can be elated amongst trees, even inspired again and again, in conditions such as I have already rehearsed. It is also possible, and indeed a frequent experience, to be numbed by trees. On dreary, drizzly days I often became stupefied and paralysed in mind as well as weary and lifeless in body.
I have always loved to have a View. The mountains and the sea appeal to me so strongly that I do not dare to think about them nor to mark the absence in England, save in the north, of the glen, the real glen through which the river roars. Thus I’m afraid that I am quite capable of feeling too enclosed working for long periods in an English wood. I love a view, I say, even from the field on the highest part of a farm, and to plough such a field is better than any work in the wood. Sometimes when I walked through the Chase beyond my fence, wandering along, getting lost even and wondering where I had got to, and suddenly came upon a gate leading into a cornfield washing knee-deep against the cliff of trees, I felt a great nostalgia for open spaces and clear views and the turned furrow and the glorious plough.
Thus my moods would go up and down, and as I have no axe to grind save my steel one, but only truth to tell, I shall not pretend that as a woodman I could ever be wholly satisfied. My spirits were very much influenced by the weather. In the fields, the cold, the dark, the dreary, or even the wet days make much less difference, sometimes none at all, sometimes a pleasant change. But the change from sunlight to a drizzle in the wood is a very definite thing, and makes its full effect. The kingdom of heaven is within you, it is said. No doubt there is great truth in that. But an honest man must acknowledge how often his interior is dictated by the exterior scene. Sometimes I have almost felt my heart contract at the sudden coming on of a cold darkness, and expand at the smiling beams swiftly pervading the weary, dripping scene around.
During March, April, and May the wood is the place. The sleeping trees awake. At their feet the flowers rise up and we gaze at them with absurd surprise. The birds declaim rather than sing. We stand in the midst of rejoicing life. By June the more obvious flowers have completed their act, they have had their summer, their autumn, and now are in their winter of desolation. Others are taking their place – the rock-rose, the herb-willow, the garlic, the foxglove – but the abundance has gone, and the colour blue, so rich, so varied, is seen no more save in the sky. We have become accustomed to the green of the trees. The birds are reticent.
In July a hush falls upon everything. The silence is disquieting. The silence of a wood at all times is something to reckon with; it seems to pervade one’s personality, and I seldom open my lips even to speak to my dog. In July it is a principality. In such an atmosphere ambition wilts, mental strife seems futile, the arts unreal. Filled with unease, one would gladly leave the silent and too solemn trees for a more human scene.
For a more deadly silence go to a pine wood. One day in June when I had wandered farther into the Chase I came to a pine plantation. I stepped out of the privet-choked pathway into its darkness. I walked there without making the slightest noise, for there is no floor, no man-made carpet so soft and yielding to the tread as these massed needles. There was not a speck of green on this ground. I felt awe in the silence. No bird sang, nor wing flapped, nor rabbit scuttled, nor stick cracked. I was enclosed and submerged in a silence like a substance. It was broken occasionally by a squall of wind heard above in the branches of the pines, that wild, watery, bare-beached, oceanic sound that even at the height of summer has no summer in it, and beats against the heart and calls to mind man’s endless tale of tempest and of wrong.
Standing there in the darkness of this fir wood, I looked towards the edge and saw the greenery beyond. It had become a bright green light and I thought the sun must have come out. Yet the sun had not come out, the sky was very cloudy. But from in there that undergrowth immediately outside did shine strongly like a green light. Also in the middle of this plantation there was a pool of green – owing to a break in the trees. Where the light could penetrate, the green had formed – chiefly moss and dog’s mercury, a little pool that stopped immediately at the end of the open space.
I was hardly wrong, I reflected, in imagining that I was looking out upon green lights. For that is what I was looking at. The light from heaven shone upon the ground and the plants received it, and – by virtue of chlorophyll, we say – turned it into green substance. That undergrowth is light made visible: it is light made tangible.
Cheered by the thought of this radiant miracle, I emerged from the shade of the sombre aisles and pushed my way home through the tangible pieces of sunshine that blocked my path.
16 The Scavengers of Corruption
One day in July I was cutting down a very large and thick-stemmed hazel bush. It had been left alone for so many years that the stool was full of holes and cups and soft, dry-leaved hiding-places. I had cut away about a dozen of the branches and had lifted my axe to strike another, when my eye was caught by something in one of those recesses of the stool. Five small yellow flowers, fresh and strange, stood erect amidst a little bed of dry leaves. They quivered as if blown gently by a breeze. But there was no breeze: and looking closer I saw that they were not flowers; they were five wide open beaks of new-born birds.
Abandoning my axe I knelt down and peered into this nest thus placed so low. The beaks closed and I saw simply the creatures, sightless, no eyes yet opened, no feathers to cover them save here and there a patch of furry stuff on the red flesh. They could not see but they could hear, and when I made a noise all the beaks opened wide again, quivering and giving the impression that they were really shouting an appeal for food, though their voices could not reach me. Then their beaks closed and the pitiful, hideous little bodies sank down into the nest once more. Pathetic beyond measure. Fatally forced into Being. Trembling symbols of the sheer affliction of life, the pure burden of birth.
Those open beaks had looked like flowers for a moment. Yet how different is a flower from an animal in the matter of food. The beaks shouted in mute agonizing appeal for one thing only – the death of another that they might live. Here in this tiny nook in England, as in the roughest jungles of the world, the Law must be fulfilled – thy life or my life. No doubt this proves that death is nothing to worry about and that we are all members of one another in the completest sense; nevertheless man turns away from the animals and from himself and gazes with relief upon the trees and the flowers. They are alive. They multiply in numbers, they increase in strength. Yet, though they may struggle together for light, they never hunt, never prey upon others, never eat themselves. Alive, radiant, yet free from our Order and our Law – eating only the air, only the earth.
I left the stool of this hazel without cutting any more branches, so that the birds might rest in peace. When I went again I saw a robin feeding them with a worm – though I couldn’t get close enough to see what her scheme of distribution was amongst five. So they were evidently young robins, born at this strange hour of late July. But next t
ime I came the nest was empty. The chicks had gone and did not return. Their home had been opened by me to the dangers of the wood, and so no doubt, before their time, they had perished that some other creature might not perish.
On my way home I picked up a dead bird. Having just gazed into the cradle of life, I felt a desire to take home the dead body and watch with like attention the activities of this poor discarded garment that was now the cloth of death. I put it in a basin and left it in a shed. Returning after a week, I found it had come to life again. It was breathing heavily. Its tongue popped in and out of its beak, its eyes flashed, and it made a grinding noise. This surprised me; but I then saw that the tongue was really a white worm, the flashing eye a white worm, while the body heaved owing to the squirming activity of the pack of worms inside the corpse.
To find the explanation of this we need go no farther than the female bluebottle on the point of laying her eggs. She prefers to lay them in meat, in a hole in the meat, which will serve as cradle and as food. For this purpose she finds nothing so good as dead birds. The procedure is as follows. She approaches the corpse and makes straight for the beak. If it is tightly closed she will go to the eye-sockets, but if it is open she thrusts her egg-conducting tube, her oviduct, into the hole and proceeds to lay her eggs, an operation which, allowing for rests from labour, may take two hours – after which she goes away and dies. The bird’s beak has now been packed pretty full, the tongue and throat being white with layers of eggs. Here they remain for two days, after which time they are transformed into maggots, who then descend down the throat of the bird.
I made my examination several days after they had gone down there and had been composing themselves while decomposing the bird. Indeed they had so completely taken possession that the whole body heaved about, and some of these white, squirming maggots, like small spaghetti, had returned to the throat and also entered the eye-sockets. Already the body had lost much of its weight, for death is heavy and life is light.
The Worm Forgives the Plough Page 35
