41.

NOVEMBER 3rd.


I walk today round and up the backside of my little mountain. In England I would be hearing and seeing the northern thrushes such as redwings and fieldfares, but they don`t come this far south, it seems. Instead there are blackbirds on the copses of tangled rowan, feeding on the garnet berries. Several of them together, which is unusual, alarm calling or tutting as I approach and flying off in different directions.

Because I set off in the afternoon, in order to catch the best of the autumn light, I am passing beneath the sunlit, brilliant yellow undersides of the oak leaves, the gold of the field maples and the lemon of the hazels and alongside the ancient, twisting chestnut trunks with fat bellies of swirls and knots. One car passes me in the rising lane and then I veer off onto the sodden path, which is absolutely carpeted with layers and years of accumulated leaves, the top layer is a pallette of multicolour, like a woven rag rug, deep and thick and shining.

It’s not a long trek I’m doing but a winding, steep one which takes about an hour to achieve. I can look down on the plateau, glimpse my garden, quite obvious amongst the standard patchwork colours of the other fields, and I can eventually look down on the wood’s canopy. Far up, on the peaks, there is good snow, glinting blue and orange. I aim to be back before dusk, which falls early, nowadays.

It is neither Wednesday or the weekend, so I’m safe from the hunter’s bullets. Local, weekly papers record the accidental woundings and occasional fatalities of this season of rampage. Of humans and dogs, that is.. The prey are rarely mentioned unless they are of record size. There is a silence which is not quite silence..It`s a varied, differentiated kind of silence and I find I`m listening to it. As I walk I’m thinking how many resentful eyes are watching me from inside the forest! What shall I do if I come face to face with a boar? It’s unlikely but not unknown. There are sounds of snapping twigs to make my heart skip for a second and two doe cross some distance in front of me, leaping the ditch.

When I descend, keeping an eye on the violet grey and dimming light, there is a real ambient chill. Definitely a frost to night. It was a lovely 17 degrees at midday.