The route well travelled

When the nights get longer, and a weight begins to gather in the bones, walking in nature is a most restorative and agreeable activity.  There may be other reasons for such heaviness, and walking is about the best thing you can do for any of them.  Escaping the sofa, Liam and I went to Queenswoods and we walked the route I’ve walked so many times before.  Up the path to the autumn gardens, missing out the redwoods this occasion, (those trees that have stood longer than we will live), and through the vital gleam of colour with the ingenious gate closing mechanism that impresses some and befuddles others.  Through Cotteral’s Folly, a dark alleyway of looming trees I remember walking with someone long ago, with a path through the middle that darkens and deepens before emerging finally into the clearing, with the light and sense of space a contrast from the confined darkness, and the metaphor of some kind of rebirth springs to mind, with a new perspective, a new clarity.  If only. 

            Then on to the viewpoint where that idea of perspective is confirmed and you can sit watching the horizon, considering it all together with a kind of gentle blankness rather than honing in on specific things, looking at how everything is quite small and can be looked at in more detail through the viewing scope but then you lose the overall, in which all the details which add depth and richness are actually quite insubstantial.

            And after a time, a quiet return, not retracing your steps but looping round the quarry where I used to climb and scamper, past memorial benches and a monkey puzzle tree and those redwoods we didn’t have time to consider and on home.