The rhythm of the countryside …

 From Jack Benson's Tales of Toads and Tranklements.

Scribbled in a wood within shouting distance of the Cartford Inn.

I was ambling amongst the November hedgerows when the lure of the nearby woods overcame me. It had been a damp, drizzly day. Now, late in the afternoon, the rain had stopped and the air lay so heavy with moisture that it seemed to resist my movements. Deep among the trees I wandered, my feet whispering on a floor of leafmould and rotting twigs. Here all was sodden and sombre, ranging through a hundred shades of green to the sticky brown of fungi and the boneyard hue of a fallen, rotting bough. In a clearing a single spray of pink campion shone bravely. I stood with my back to a lime tree, its bole protected by a bristling four-foot armour of brushwood. The inimitable fragrance of the woods, the smell of life, death and decay, pervaded my senses, as did the dripping, silent, absolute stillness.

I was aware that a host of unseen creatures had tracked my presence ever since I had stepped into their territory and that an uncountable array of ears and noses was monitoring my every move. Soon the first frost, followed by a scouring wind, would strip the trees bare, but today a single sycamore leaf, clattering down through the branches, could be heard 50 yards away.

I stayed, watched and listened. I've never been impressed by castles, cathedrals or stately homes, but old woods, comforting and sinister by turns, fascinate me. They have a pulse, the rhythm of the countryside. Our ancestors heard it but in our clamorous pursuit of modernity we have moved beyond earshot. The pulse still beats though, as it will when we and our odd little ways are only distant memories.

A bluetit flew over the treetops and alighted on the top of a slender birch, bringing down a deluge of stored rainwater. I awoke from my reverie. I could no longer see the pink campion. Twilight had obscured it, though the rotten branch glowed with a pale phosphorescence. Retracing my steps to the wood's edge, I walked away, leaving a thousand wild creatures to the toil and tragedy of natural living.