After a series of late autumn and early winter storms with destructive winds from every direction and lashing rain resulting in many floods, I ventured out on a clear Boxing Day morning for a walk in two of my favourite local places. In the old beechwood I found lichens still surviving on the fallen branches as mosses rose up the tree trunks while in the disused quarry, mosses marched across its tree trunk littered floor as lichens thrived on its tool-marked walls.
THE OLD BEECHWOOD
The mature beech trees had long been stripped of most of their leaves, which lay as a shining coppery wet carpet in the sun, presenting a textured canvas on which nature could work its own designs. The wind had brought down lichens, many still attached to twigs and small branches from the uppermost reaches of the trees. The debris was, of course, randomly scattered on the ground and yet somehow it seemed the winds within the woodland spaces had made arrangements that caught the sunlight and shadows, guiding them into pleasing artistic designs, at least to my eye.
Meanwhile, the mosses seemed to enjoy the perfect moisture level to advance up the beech tree trunks with a fresh green exuberance. They say that you can tell the age of trees by how high the mosses grow. I don’t know the measures, but by any scale these mature beech trees are certainly well aged.
THE DISUSED QUARRY
In the old quarry the same forces have been at work but the canvas is more varied, with oak leaves in the mix and browned-off bracken not yet quite laid flat. Again there are fallen lichens and twigs from trees within the quarry and above its rim. But here the mosses lead the way in all their delicate detail across the ground, up and over decaying logs and beside the cascade that emerges from behind the quarry wall.
In one corner of the quarry, the heavy rain and water draining from the hill behind has filled a pool at the foot of the stone faces. Here, it is hard to tell which is moss and which lichen growing on the walls and reflected in the surface of the pool; here, the sun and shade make folded curtains against the solid tool-marked rock. But looking up towards the quarry rim, it is the moss, draping its deep green and orange from the exposed and overhanging tree roots, that paints a surreal work of art upon the quarry wall.
