Coppice - 30th September 2011

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As a kid, I was once in the grounds of Grimsdyke on the edge of Harrow. Myself and two friends had been taken there as a treat. I guess we were seven or eight. Running wild. Exploring.

We had found a tree that had partially fallen and dared each other to climb the remains. It seemed easy. All long straight bows and thick branches. I was the least nimble of the three and struggled as my friends reached higher and higher, branches bending under their weight. But they grew bored, navigated back around me and returned to terra firma.

But I remained rigid, stuck and unmoving. Not very far from the ground, but stuck still and petrified. I couldn’t reach higher but I couldn’t retrace my steps. I didn’t dare just jump and let gravity do its stuff. I couldn’t move.

With resignation and a good degree of embarrassment, I accepted the help of my friends' mother who eventually stumbled across me. She reached up, prised me off the branch where I was stricken and lifted me back to safety.

I was ripped to shreds by my peers. Even their mother joined in. I was mortified.

So, since then, I’d been wary of trees. I left them to the birds and the leaves.

Step forward to the more recent past.

September 30. 2011.

Autumn hadn’t even threatened. Summer seemed to be endless when I found myself off work and at a loose end. I’d already been up and out, early, trying to capture a few autumnal, misty shots near Tring in Hertfordshire.

Tring.

But the weather was incredible. Clear. Bright. Warm. It was no day to waste staring out of a South Harrow living room.

Mad Bess Woods in Ruislip called.

I walked and walked in the shade of the still green leaved trees. I watched the dappling light play and pattern on the woodland floor but I was drawn to the canopy, high above me. A dozen shades of green and yellow on a pale blue backdrop. The trunks of the coppiced trees reached, stretched and crawled skyward toward the light. I was smitten.

I snapped away. Shot after shot. But nothing was quite working.

Until I sensed a tree calling me. It could hear it and feel it whispering…

“Climb me. Climb me. Climb me.”

Which is when I started to recall the incident at Grimsdyke so many years ago.

But the tree was insistent. So I listened to its croaky tree voice, accepted the dare and gave the tree a climb.

I felt alone. On a weekday afternoon, you can go an age in Ruislip Woods without seeing another soul. And so it was on that late, late September afternoon four years ago. I was alone but felt conspicuous, as I crawled to a suitable vantage point.

And from my vantage point a few feet above the ground, wedged and locked in the old coppicing cuts of a hornbeam or an oak (apologies, I am no expert), I captured the shot of the canopy that I had been searching for.

For a better resolution, follow the Flickr link, below:

Coppice - FLICKR Gallery

The tree reaching upward seems to form a tunnel guiding you/your eye to the light. Layers of coloured leaves high above appear kaleidoscopic. Other worldly. All the main, dark trunks in the image seem separate yet are all from the same tree, cut and coppiced many years ago.

I stayed in the tree for a while. In part, because I was captured by the moment. The movement of shape and colour above me. But, also, because I was revelling in breaking my idiotic and needless fear of tree climbing and wallowing in my defeat of a stupid childhood demon. But, I also remained tree bound because, in all honesty - after all these years -, I still find it far easier to scale a tree than climb back down.

I suppose that makes me a Treecreeper. Not a Nuthatch.