For The Trees

It’s the company of these old trees I’m seeking as I drive westwards from Exeter. The road skirts fields of ruddy soil ablaze with morning sun. Narrowing, it channels me between hedgerows before dropping me down a green tunnel. Branches arch overhead, the hill steepens and the air through my open window suddenly smells of mushrooms, bark and mulch. I’m descending into the Teign valley on the northeast edge of Dartmoor, one of the largest areas of semi-ancient forest in Devon.

On the map this stretch of the valley is a long green swathe. From Castle Drogo in the west to Steps Bridge 10km to the east, the wood is continuous and varied. In some places the trees are just as they’ve always been; in others, where plantations were once worked, native species have given way to conifers. A dozen different names annotate the wood, and the histories of its parts have diverged over the centuries. But this is set to change. In 2014 The National Trust and The Woodland Trust bought 825 acres of the woods and work has begun to protect and restore them. Already, 45km of new walking trails have been opened, and conifers are being thinned to encourage the return of native broadleaf species. As this work continues, the separate histories will once again pleach together under a new,
collective name – Fingle Woods.

These days it’s only birdsong that serenades visitors. The sound of woodpeckers, chaffinches and whitethroats ring in the trees, while wagtails and dippers reign beside the Teign, patrolling its banks and weirs. In the shallows dippers plough through the water tracking fish like fat little torpedoes. Darting away from my approach they fly to the mossy rocks by the shore or perch above the rapids. I want to train my lens on them but they are too wary,  so I sit with my back to a beech stump on the riverbank and wait, camera ready. Above me the canopy is constantly changing its shape and shade. I lean back and watch. Its motion, at first random, seems to take on the movement of breaking waves as the wind flexes the boughs back and forth.

The rhythm of the seasons is marked by bigger changes in the woods; each has its own beauty and wonder. Summer beneath the trees is fragrant and lavish, the canopy fizzing with oxygen and the complication of a million greens on a million leaves outstretched for sunlight. Autumn re-clothes the wood in the colours of fruition and ripeness. It is the season of mushroom hunts, scuffled leaves and smoking bonfires. The woods in winter are more austere in their beauty, unroofed and open like a sleeping ruin. But not everything is dormant; tawny owls call in courtship, foxes, badgers and otters leave their tracks in the snow. Life endures. It will still be cold when the first buds swell, before the sun bears down undisputed from dawn ‘til dusk, warming the ground and waking the bulbs of snowdrops, bluebells and wild daffodils. In spring, everything seems to happen at once. Plants and animals speculate to accumulate, spending saved energy in a race to generate more.

The rhythm of the seasons is marked by bigger changes in the woods; each has its own beauty and wonder. Likewise, the dippers’ energy seems relentless. But, thanks to my stillness, they begin to move closer. Through the lens I can see their clean white bibs and rusty bellies. Behind me something swishes and I turn to catch a nuthatch swinging upside-down like a trapeze artist, picking at catkins on an alder branch. Then a pair of happy spaniels bound into the river and the birds are gone. I decide to move on too, shouldering my camera and heading upstream.

Inside the wood I had no real sense of its scale but from up here I begin to appreciate its size. Trees stretch as far as I can see eastwards making it only too easy to imagine the woods are endless. And in 7,000 BC, when the English Channel was still a wooded saltmarsh, they practically were. Back then, a vast, primeval wildwood extended across the whole of the south of Britain and over a connecting land bridge, Doggerland, into Europe. This land bridge was responsible for our native species of flora and fauna first arriving here; seeds and spores spread across it from the continent before the almighty flood that created the English Channel cut off this island for good.

Around the same time as the flood, Mesolithic tribes began to clear the first swathes of British forest, a process that has steadily continued ever since, leaving us with precious few surviving remnants of the great forest that once dominated Europe. But those few survivors are not all that remains: ghosts of those felled trees still haunt our landscape and our language. We continue to live among the trees, at least nominally. 82,000 British postal addresses are “groves”, another 50,000 feature “oak”. You might say that, despite root and branch change, we’re not out of the woods yet. Place-names, turns of phrase and fables, these are our memorials to the woodlands of the past.

Although largely  deforested as a population, our connection to woods still runs deep. It is historical, cultural and personal, ingrained from millennia of habitation, dependency and usage. Trees have warmed, sheltered, nurtured and armed us. Who could forget Robin Hood and Sherwood; the proud, stout oak hearts of the Royal Navy and the yew bows that won the day at Agincourt? Given the depth of these roots it’s little wonder that government plans to sell off Forestry Commission land in 2012 were met with such outrage. The debate stirred in people a profound sense of still belonging to woodland with many feeling that the nation’s forests should be a birthright – open to all and priceless.

Leaving Sharp Tor I walk to join the bridleway that cuts back towards Fingle Bridge. At the edge of the oaks, amongst the brambles, something catches my eye: a cone of twigs and leaf litter gently scintillating in a shaft of light, almost as though it was on fire. It’s only when I’m close enough to touch the meter-wide-mound that I can make out the source of the movement and glimmer: tens of thousands of mahogany-red wood ants working to build their nest. Their movement is mesmerising. It is a constant dance of busyness that might seem like utter chaos were it not for the sense of purpose each ant conveys as part of a harmonious whole. I lean my ear close to the pile. The sound I hear is like the faint click-click of a vast and unimaginably complex machine, tirelessly calculating an endless algorithm.

At the end of the bridleway The Fingle Bridge Inn has a different kind of buzz. Pints and cream teas are being enjoyed on a terrace beside the river while dogs and children roam freely. One Labrador is being reunited with her owner after tagging along with the wrong set of kids: “Is this one yours?” Someone asks. “She jumped into our boot!”  It’s mid-afternoon and I get the feeling that everyone is drifting home after long walks, pub-lunches and hide-and-seek in the trees.

My hiding and seeking is done too. I’m back where I began, but I’m also somewhere different. I set off where all of us set off far too often: preoccupied by the complications of life, but I’ve finished somewhere else. Time with trees does that to you, moving you into a calmer headspace. The beneficial effect of nature immersion on mental health has been well documented. It forms the basis of Shinrin Yoku – which translates as forest bathing – a therapeutic practice that grew in Japan in the 1980’s and is now practiced worldwide. As more and more studies conclude that trees can be healers, it may not be long before a walk in the woods is available on prescription to be
taken whenever required.