I was a very out-doorsy child, and spent much of my free time running around in fields and amongst forests, playing adventure games or winning hide-and-seek by climbing high into the trees. When my friends moved away and I got too old for such things, I started taking regular walks in a nearby forest. And so, that is what prompted the two short pieces I wrote below. Set a month apart, these almost diary-like entries reflect on the way the same place can be so vastly different in such a short space of time.
As we are now firmly in autumn and steadily on our way to winter, I thought it might be nice to bring some summer freshness back into our lives, while the summer is still not too far behind in our memories.
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| Trees in late afternoon (Hazlehead Park) - taken by author |
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It took going to university and spending term time away from home to fully appreciate the forests and walks that surround where I grew up. Now, while on holiday between semesters, I walk almost daily through Hazlehead Park in Aberdeen. It’s my haven for long walks, an activity that helps me think and process life.
Equipped with my trusty headphones and a podcast, I take the same route every time I visit. Passing by fields with horses, one of which currently holds a piebald mare and her month old foal, I take the road to a beaten-up carpark filled with mud and potholes that makes me grateful I never have to drive there. This is where Den Wood forest starts.
A mix of evergreen and deciduous trees create a frozen lightning storm of branches overhead, glowing a near luminous green during the summer months. The birds, mostly robins, blackbirds, crows, and the occasional chattering magpie, accompany the faint rustling of foliage. It is a pleasant additional ambiance to the rambling human voices in my ears. I consider it a lucky day when I hear horse hooves too, and look out for the riders atop their magnificent beasts, hoping that I will catch a glimpse of them coming my way. The forest reminds me how to breathe, how to be still, and inspires me to write, all while I get mud on my shoes.
The centre of Hazlehead park itself is, on weekends, a cacophony of children’s voices. I'm grateful my headphones can block out the noise, as although I enjoy knowing that they are happy running and playing, their screams of joy can be overwhelming. In early summer, the rhododendron bushes around the perimeter of the play-area blossom into pinks, whites and reds so bright that I have to squint to appreciate them properly as I take pictures of bees feeding on pollen.
The remainder of the park is a combination of forest and golf-course, punctuated by birdsong and the occasional deafening thwack of a golf club. The most beautiful trees grow here, and although arranged in a sparse row, their spindly arms reach over the path in a protective manner. In winter, when the sun sets early, I use afternoon walks to appreciate the shapes of bare trees, and marvel at how their silhouettes are outlined against an orange and blue sky.
I suppose the biggest charm of this park is the fact that it is never the same. Seasonally, the plant life and wildlife change so often I can’t ever have the same walking experience twice. Socially, the people always change, if it’s a sunny day there are more families and golfers, but on wet days many golfers thankfully choose to stay away. It’s most peaceful just after it has rained, with echoes of rainfall dancing amongst the trees.
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| The trees of Den Wood - taken by author |
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Den Wood has seen me grow up without ever asking to. It’s an ancient library: trunks like bookshelf legs, supporting tomes of leaves. I compact a year of study into a few short months. Reaching towards young budding leaves, unfurled summer leaves, dry orange leaves, skeletal traces of leaves, absorbing the living truth of an alien world. It always mutters something, with a creaking old voice or a breezy whisper, but I’ll never understand it fully.
When it used to snow more during winter, I’d get kitted out in blue wellies with yellow socks and trudge through icing sugar. My nose would run and form an ice-rink on my upper lip. My hands, stuffed into small pink woollen gloves, would welcome the chill tiptoeing up my arms. And we’d walk, walk, walk. My legs heavy. Wellies like concrete. In my boredom I’d imagine the forest made from chocolate, and I, a fondant figurine, walked in stop-motion.
It takes me an hour to walk the forest now, and I usually do it alone.
No longer a place of fantasy, I see it for what it is. After every storm, there are new branches to step over, covering the path in brown, blue and green. After every storm, I clamber over trees turned on their side, bark marbled with texture or moss. A man-made storm of trucks and chainsaws invaded last month, piling corpses of trees in mass graves along the sides of the car park. I never know if thinning out forests is a good thing or not.
It’s been a few days since Floris ransacked the library, tearing up books and toppling shelves in anger or frustration I can never quite tell. She was ruthless, and traces of her linger within intimidating puffs of wind. Den Wood, like an abandoned building, echoes with skin-crawling silence.
We walk hand in hand, our fingers like entwined branches. You tell me it's your favourite place to go when you visit, and every evening we come here to talk. It’s a healthy activity, we get our recommended intake of fresh air and steps. It makes me feel responsible, like the adult my birthday commands me to be. Our trainers crunch on the loose stones they never managed to cover with concrete. Twigs crack and leaves rustle with autumn that isn’t here yet. The evening light fills the spaces between trees with yellow and pink and it's dark enough for my sunglasses to hang disused from my neck.
Shhhh. I freeze in my tracks. My eyes wide. Breath held. I shush you so that I can listen.
Hoo-Hoo. A melancholy melody appears in the darkness of the library’s eaves. I strain my eyes, strain my ears. Hoo-hoo. Again, I’m not dreaming. Hoo-hoo. It’s like someone is speaking into a mug, the outside left coarse and unglazed. Hoo-hoo. Can a bird sound earthy?
Too-wit, toooo-wit. Hoo-hoooo. Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo. Too-wit. Too-wit!!
They flutter, they shriek. My skin crawls with wonder. The library has new visitors who share their knowledge with their young. The leaves are diligent scribes, they write it down for the next curious visitor.
Too-wit. I didn’t know owls could speak like this. I didn’t know owls could speak like this and let us listen. Hoo-hoo. I didn’t know I could walk beneath their evergreen home and they would keep talking.
I want to tell the family, shhhhhh, no talking in a library. But they reply hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo, too-wit, and silence us instead.
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| Sunset near Den Wood - taken by author |
By Mariya (they/them)