Fresh woods ...

Both literally and metaphorically, a day of fresh woods and pastures new ... I'll start with the metaphor: 

I had a sort of doomed sense of urgency when I got up this morning, filled with the knowledge that we were about to eat the very last crust of the last loaf in the house and that it was time to christen the new bread maker that we wrestled down from the loft yesterday. The main problem was that the instruction book was different from the last in a few niggling details, not the least of which was to specify quantities in grams rather than cups. After peering irritably at the digital scales to see what unit it was in, I gave up and went back to cups with my fingers crossed (if you get me...). There was to be half a tablespoon more of salt and the same of sugar and that seemed to be that.

Dear reader, it was the best loaf I've made in over a decade. The shape is different, but it rose beautifully and stayed that way - the last machine tended to the collapsed loaf look. After lunch I promptly started another loaf, this time a white one for toast (we like different breads ...) and it too came out looking perfect. Result!

The other, literal fresh wood was the one at Ardnadam, where there is the site of a Neolithic village pegged out in a clearing, with a mossy dry stone dyke running down beside a purling burn which has a wooden bridge that has been broken for years - a main reason I've not been there recently. It's been replaced, and now there are paths to follow through woods of ancient silver birches, some fallen and growing new trees from their roots, others rotting quietly below their offspring. I was with my artist/Cursillista/church friend Paddy, and we both kept stopping to admire and photograph clumps of primroses and bright moss or massive trees with wide-spread, tortuous branch systems. There was birdsong, silence, and quite a lot of mud and it was absolutely delightful. 

A long time ago I was there with Di in the dusk of a late autumn afternoon and wrote a poem about the sort of race-memory that the Neolithic site evoked in me. I looked it up for Paddy, so I thought I'd give it another airing here:

NEOLITHIC

Walking in the early dark
Of afternoon at year’s end
I see your face transfigured by
Unearthly light, a golden glow,
Smiling at a shared recall
Of something that we never knew.
The trees crowd dark and skeletal
As if sprung from that ancient wood
Where huntsman with their dogs had gone,
Their feet soft in the golden road -
And still the bright dusk clothes us round
And time seems thin and whispers grow -
The blood sings: and shall I stay?
But darkness falls and life is now
And home elsewhere and not among
The grey stone walls beneath the trees
Where hearths lie cold and silence grows.

C.M.M. 12/05