Between the Larch-woods and the Weir

by Flora Klickmann

To those who are accustomed to agricultural scenery, where the landscape shows far expanses of pasture-land and cornfields, with wide spreading low-roofed farms clustered around with barns and ricks, our hills come as a surprise with their uneven surfaces, and the scarcity of soil in comparison with the superabundance of rock.

And even taking into consideration all the cleared spaces and small farms, the outstanding feature of the country, so far as the eye can see, is timber. This is a region of woods and coppices, with springs that bubble up at the roots of sturdy trees, protected by their thick leafage from the onslaughts of the sun. This is a land of dim grey-green mystery, of silences that make one tread with reverent awe till one is brought back to earth, by the ring of the woodman’s axe, the leisurely song of his saw, and the crish-crash of a tree as it falls.

In the course of time, the woods have to be cut; some are cut every fourteen years; others are left much longer; it all depends on the kind of tree and the purpose for which it is being grown.

But though the woods are cut periodically, it is not so devastating a process as one might imagine. For one thing, it is clean work; for another, it is surface work; and then it is all done in the open air, with hand-tools and no machinery, and it is carried out on nature’s own lines. Hence there is no underground disturbance that would prevent further growth, and no smoke of power-driven machinery pollutes the earth and air.

Yet there would be something very pathetic about the felling of the trees, as you walk over ground that has been cut, were it not for the magical display of beauty nature puts forth in such circumstances, multitudes of flowers springing into being that otherwise would not have come to birth.

At first you see but the prostrate trunks of the trees, with ivy still clinging to the bark; there they lie, with branches lopped, each surrounded by piles of small timber cut into regulation lengths for various commercial purposes; with “cords” of faggots for firing, and stacks of stuff for pea sticks and similar purposes.

Yet you are not long wandering over the newly-cleared slopes before you see things that were not evident before.

In winter you discover a red-gold carpet—too golden to be brown, too brown to be red—where lie the leaves of the beeches that you never noticed when the trees were standing.

Then, as spring breathes life into the sleeping earth, the dead leaves stir, silently, mysteriously, no human ear can detect the rustle, no human eye can see the movement, yet the leaves lift and move apart, disclosing the yellow and green, and silvery-pink of the primrose buds.