thebeginningofitall

My Peugeot groaned in second gear, the steep incline of Nuthanger proving as testing as it is on my calves on my trusty Trek 1800 or a name something like that.  The break through the trees that overhang the road revealed Ladle Hill, quite a spectacle, an ancient avenue of beech giving way to a beautiful nothingness in either direction, to the left a horizontal flat plateau extending toward Kinsgclere and to the right the anicent hummocking burial mounds of our Celtic cousins.

Taking all this in this afternoon I realised what a special place in my heart this area holds, deeply ingrained in who I am, its been the shaping of me, growing up here the beauty of the landscape has always been inherrent but I feel each day as I learn and understand to read it more its hold on me only gets stronger.  I may move away soon perhaps far, far away or perhaps merely a short distance, maybe for a while or perhaps for a long while either way I know one day it’ll call me back.

As I bundled bunches of Hawthorn berries from our native Crataegus into my container on Watership Down and a stones throw from one of my father’s childhood homes I didn’t feel what I was doing was special, I’ve done it many times before and so have many, many before me but I felt pleased that I was doing it all the same, satisfied in fact that I myself in my lifetime already haven’t been shortsighted enough to forego the wonders and abundance of nature and it’s larder.

Sadly for many this year’s apple crops have been low, stone fruit such as plums and gages have come in meagre quantities but our cultivated and native thorns have been laiden with fruit this year, current weather forecasts predicting a bleak winter  leads me to the old saying ‘many haws, many snaws’ a suggestion of the severity of the subsequent winter, but what would I know.