23 Winter Scenes; The Calamity
I looked forward during the day to my superb evening fires in the winter months. It is not often very cold in a wood even when it is biting outside, in fact the difference in temperature on the same day in the wood as against the field, is sometimes phenomenal. Nevertheless there were spells when my hands were too cold to grip the axe and the wind so keen that no amount of work served to make me warm. At such times I wanted to get away from the wood – though not into any other agricultural job.
Often it was merely damp, windless, and dreary. At such times I felt curiously lonely amongst the trees, in a pleasantly sad sort of way. The silence was so melancholy, the mystery of the trees and the dark undergrowth so great, that I felt exiled from truth as well as from mankind. I used to grope my way in explorations into the deeper darkness beyond my immediate position, peering round with something of the expectancy and the fear of a man in a haunted house.
I frequently came upon fresh samples of fallen trunks lying on the ground in various stages of decomposition: there were some great hulks whose outer crust was as soft as earth, and whose inner caverns, on being exposed by the bill-hook, revealed curious insects curled up here and there in holes evidently intended as dormitories for the winter. That was one type, but there was another I almost preferred – the long trunk, sunk low, covered with moss and leafage, becoming indistinguishable from the ground as it tapered to what was once its top. I had one favourite of this kind. It was considerably long: the thickest end was like a mound, and it gradually tapered on getting smaller and smaller until it became level with the ground, and only the freshness of the moss showed me where the ‘wood’ was. And if I walked along upon this strange rise, it was exactly as if I were walking upon something as soft as a mountain swamp.
The moss was deep and clear upon these barks. It was also laid across the whole floor of the wood. In the winter one becomes conscious of this new glory. When the spring flowers are long forgotten and the new series is in hidden preparation out of sight and of thought; when the bracken that rose so high and green has browned and fallen down; when the herb-willow has posted its final envelope of seed; when the latest storm has removed the last leaves from tree and bush; when the long, low kingdom of dog’s mercury has disappeared – then the ground is not bare, it is not desolate: it shines again with a new growth; we enter the reign of moss. This is one of the sweetest and dearest of all plants. We think of it in the mass and speak of winding mossy ways, as so we should; but if we look close we see that it is a network of the most delicate little fronds whose massed formations give us the soft, deep carpet. It is not seen during the summer, and where we do discern it, it is parched and poor; but in the chill of winter when all other life is in abeyance this is in the ascendant, the floor of the earth is cushioned and all the scars of mortality are bandaged and made blessed.
During the short winter days I sometimes arrived in the wood while the moon was still the only light, and day had not yet broken in. At this hour, before the particular beam of the sun had changed the scene, the atmosphere was expectant. Nature appeared to be listening carefully for something and was evidently awaiting some great event. I did not dare say a word, even to cough. Objects which in the light of day were animated only with the life of plants, became informed with the life of beasts, so that mere bushes looked like tigers about to spring. When the day broke in at last it did not do so slowly as it is supposed to do in these climes, there came a moment when the darkness began to lighten up quite steadily and swiftly. The moon started to go out as if someone were turning down a lamp rather gingerly, and the light of the hidden sun illuminated the scene almost at the rate of theatrical lights slowly bathing a stage that had been in darkness. At other times, arriving on a misty morning, I found that the wood was of immense size, receding into the distance on all sides as if it were boundless in space and belonging to any Age. The boles of the trees, erect in the mist, were as thin and pale as the pencillings in a Chinese drawing. They had no strength or substance: it would have been easy to rub them all out of the picture. As the day advanced and the sun rose to cancel the morning mist, the scene shifted. The Present Day came back again, the wood occupied a given number of acres, the trees were hard and firm once more. Then the afternoon sun was turned upon them, and they held the light, they stopped it and took it upon themselves, each a shining post, while the wind blew and the strange, unhappy hours passed by – for even in a wood at this time of the day, more so in a wood than elsewhere when the wind blows unceasingly, all solitary men are perplexed and feel the motion of infelicity.
These were days when a hot drink was the very thing in the course of the morning, and I never forgot to bring out my thermos-flask. Its cap was broken, lacking which I generally brought a china cup with me. But sometimes I forgot this item. However, I had a remedy when this happened. At this time of the year many more varieties of fungi attracted my attention. There was one species which particularly appealed to me. It was pale yellow and shaped like a large wine-glass. On the occasions when I forgot to bring out my cup I simply plucked one of these stalked cups made of fungus, filled it from my thermos-flask, and thus had my drink in comfort.
It was not possible to do much work in the intense cold nor in heavy rain. When it rained slightly it was quite all right, and many a time when I should have had to seek shelter if in the fields, I could carry on in the wood without a raincoat. But a continuously wet day made it impossible (especially earlier in the year when the leaves were still on the trees, for then your stroke brought down a great deal of extra water upon you) for the axe then became too slippery to hold. When it snowed my work stopped immediately, of course. I have often referred here to the silences peculiar to the woodman’s life; but is there any silence so deep and rare as that bestowed by snow? Whether in a wood, or outside, it is a wonderful thing in our machine age to find the world in the morning ankle-deep in snow. Then the unwonted silence that falls upon our life is truly magnificent; and when the snow has been really heavy making all lanes and many roads impassable, the sense of isolation in our silence carries us right back to the days when communication even between villages was scarce and chequered. One heavy fall of snow in the country, and modern civilization is silenced!
These winter scenes are related in my mind with another scene, more human and more sad. Reggie occasionally came across from his part of the estate to see me. I think of a certain Friday when I heard him call my name (he used my Christian name), and appeared coming through the trees with his dog and his gun, which he often carried. He had some agricultural extra clothing-coupons to give me, and brought a paper for me to sign. And we fell into conversation about this and that, his early life in Devon, the present life here, the wages young boys got nowadays and what they did with the money, his rank of Corporal in the Home Guard, and so on. He draped himself against a tree as usual, his remarkable flaxen hair, his brown face, and workman’s clothes fitting into the surroundings perfectly and, indeed, beautifully. Thus we stood and talked upon the general affairs of life, amongst the friendly trees, well cornered from the rough traffic of the world, far away from the great battles that were then being fought, insensible in this leafy harbour to the noise and rumour of the field, secure from calamity and the sudden dart of death, or so it seemed. Presently he went away. He called to his little genteel black dog, and disappeared through the trees out of my sight, and went across a field towards the scene of his death. For he was never to return along these ways nor would that voice be heard in the woods any more. Later in the afternoon there was a dreadful explosion, louder and more earth-shaking than others I had heard in the neighbourhood, due to the practising soldiery. This explosion was not made by the army. Reggie had picked up a bomb which he imagined was quite harmless. He had brought it back to his shed. He thought it was a smoke-bomb of some sort and decided to examine its interior. Finding it difficult to dismantle, he took a hammer and began to tap it. The boys, who were standing near, becam
e frightened and tried to dissuade him; but he sat there bending over the bomb, tapping at it. It exploded, blowing his hands off and killing him – the boys escaping death, but not injury.
The whole village shuddered at this meaningless tragedy. The catastrophe of our time was focused upon the body of this one man, cut down suddenly in the midst of abounding life.
24 Farewell to the Wood
In the company of flowers we know happiness. In the company of trees we are able to think, they foster meditation. Trees are very intellectual. There is nowhere on earth we can think so well as in a thin wood resting against a tree. Such at least is my experience, and it is the ultimate memory that I shall carry away from this place. For in parting I know that the greatest wrench of all is in connection with the old oak tree (under which or in the vicinity of which I have written this account). It is not easy to say farewell to it; not easy to pass from the best spot in the whole world between the hours of eight and ten in the morning during May and August. For, as I have said, that is the time when the sun rested upon my seat.
Sometimes I could wish that my love of the sun were less genuine. How often I have felt compelled to alter my plans for the day’s work because the sun unexpectedly came out to shine against my special tree or on some other favourite spot! I have been about to do a portion of thinning marked out as the minimum for the morning, when, the sun coming out, I have abandoned my schedule in order to seize, if only for a few cloud-chequered intervals, the gift of the sun at that hour, in that blessed place. I have had to turn back for the same reason, while on my way into the neighbouring town to get some much-needed things. The sun deflects me from my courses. I mention this as the kind of psychological fact that holds a certain interest, since we scarcely allow enough for the part such things play in the destinies of men. I often wonder at anyone accepting the Materialistic Conception of History. Many people, after Marx, began to say that circumstances are the cause of any given life. But since circumstances can be inside one as well as outside, the dictum holds little absolute meaning. Put two men in front of me, equal in talent, similar in circumstance, one loving, the other indifferent to the sun, and I will roughly outline their careers. The man who really loved the sun would miss vital appointments, fumble momentous opportunities: the other would forge ahead. No self-made rich industrialist has ever loved the sun. Such a man may well benefit mankind, it is not to be denied. But also, that other man, in receiving into himself that warmth and that light, may perchance give back something to his fellows, tell something of what he has felt, what he has known, illuminate the darkness of the exiled, even raise up the parched and withering hearts of men. Let me then take a knife and inscribe upon the ancient oak these words – INDECISIVE, FOOLISH, SELFISH, LAZY: A MAN MAY BE ALL THAT AND WORSE, AND YET BE A BENEFACTOR OF THE WORLD, IF HE BUT LOVE TO SIT IN THE SUN LEANING AGAINST A TREE!
Having inscribed those words, I must take my leave. I shall return to this spot. It will remain the same tomorrow as today. When I return I will step back in time. I will step out of time. For one of the things that has struck me most about this wood, or of any sequestered wood known to me, is that having turned off from your road and entered the wood, you have really gone through a gate which now is closed behind you, and your ordinary world is shut out with all its noise and sorrow and care. Once inside, you seem to have stepped out of the flow of civilized time and to have entered into the peace of the ever-juvenile eternities of earth. The road along which you have come may be in a lonely rural retreat; but it belongs to your century and as you go along it you are in the atmosphere of that century. You enter the wood – and you might just as well be in the Middle Ages. When I hear people speak of the Dark Ages, I remind myself how in those days the sun shone in just the same way as it does now, and the flowers glittered in woods where there was no difference from what we see today. Outside we think our way back into the past, trying to picture the village then, the lie of the land, the agricultural equipment. Inside the wood we are in the past as well as in the present. Perhaps the time will come when people will speak of these days as the Black Ages or the Darker Ages; if so let them then turn and read my words here and remember that the sun shone upon us even as upon them, that the trees looked the same in the glory of his light, and that at this time also you could side-step into happiness and peace.
Thus I attempt to say farewell, as I look around at this secluded scene. I look across at my sun-dial, wondering if that will be still there when I come again. For in the actual prosaic matter of knowing the hour of day I had no watch and worked outside the whole clock-world and dwelt far from the frame of mind of the BBC announcer who says ‘It is just coming up to half a minute to eight’. But I did not quite dispense with a clock. I used the lofty, golden time-piece of the sun and a tree which cast a clear, clean shadow with its trunk. At exactly twelve o’clock I stuck a stick in the shadow-line. Thus I always knew when it was twelve so long as the clock was unclouded. I put in other sticks for other hours, and so could tell the time of day within half an hour.
I look across at the growing and maturing trees now free from all entanglements. I had come to a wild entanglement, and now, as far as I can see in any direction, a free plantation meets my eye, accomplished by the labour of my hands alone. Nothing that I have ever done has given me more satisfaction than this, nor shall I hope to find again so great a happiness. Realizing something of what the work meant to me, and perhaps truthfully saying that he was very pleased with the result, Rolf entered this area of about twelve acres, in the books of the Estate, as COLLIS PIECE, and by that name it is now known. Thus then do I achieve what had never occurred to me could conceivably happen, that a piece of English earth and forest would carry my name into the future. Nobody is ever likely to confer upon me Honours or Titles or City Freedoms, nor will any Monument be raised to perpetuate and repeat my name. But this plot of earth will do it, these trees will do it: in the summer they will glitter and shine for me, and in the winter, mourn.
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Copyright © John Stewart Collis 1973, 2001
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While Following the Plough first published in 1946 by Jonathan Cape. Down to Earth first published in 1947 by Jonathan Cape. First published together as The Worm Forgives the Plough by Charles Knight in 1973
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The Worm Forgives the Plough Page 39
