A walk up through the quarry, with its abandoned, rusted machinery, the solitary wheelbarrow with its punctured tyre, the piles of gravel, the strange lake. The first time I went there, the lake surface was empty the next time there were 2 geese on it and today a crowd of seagulls, that flew up when I paused to look at them.
They flew up against the quarry face, each white seagull linked to its black shadow against the grey rock. I followed the track up into the forest and today with the sun shining and a peerless blue sky, I could hear birdsong and the place seemed less dark and desolate, much more friendly than the other day when it was overcast and the forest was silent.
This time I didn’t take the deer path that sloped gently downhill, but went on up the track, up a steep hill.
A couple of rooks made gentle accepting sounds, not their usual harsh caws, but more like a muted trumpet or the low notes of a clarinet. After the steep climb the path swept right and levelled out, then curved and twisted in broad swathes. Huge piles of tree trunks lay on one side of the path but they had clearly been cut down some time before, as the wood was grey and dried-out. At times the track branched off but I kept going straight ahead, slightly uphill as I could now hear the sound of wind in trees. The path was sheltered, there was no wind here, but the nearby sound of the wind meant that I was close to the top of the hill where the wind seethed and swept, and the forest would end soon.
The track comes to an end and when I look to my right, the forest has thinned enough for me to glimpse sky between the branches. So I head towards that. The spruce trees are planted very close together and their branches stick out at right angles. They are rough and spiky and catch on your skin and clothes, so I have to weave a way through them, sometimes breaking off the brittle twigs in order to pass. But I don’t have far to go before I reach the forest edge, bounded by a low wall which I easily climbed over. In front of me there was a plantation of young trees, with a high 2 metre fence round it, presumably to keep out the deer. But there is a gap between the forest wall and the fence, a narrow way where I can walk along. This is the top of the hill that can be seen above the quarry, this is the wind’s home, another world from the stillness of the forest which even this wild wind cannot penetrate.
In between the saplings of the plantation, there’s a view out over layers of hills. As I head towards the quarry a hare inside the plantation ran off in its zig-zag course and later, I saw two deer bound away. I wanted to walk to the end of the forest edge then along the top of the quarry, and take the path back down, but I reached a huge power or phone mast and there the gap between plantation and forest ended, it was completely blocked off. I went back into the forest, intending to skirt round the power mast. I was just emerging again, close to the wall, when I saw only a few meters away, in front of the power mast, where I’d gone back into the forest, a parked white van. Obviously it had arrived just in the past few minutes but I had heard nothing. I stood on the wall, to make myself visible to the driver. The shadow of the trees meant that I could not see inside and I waited to see if someone got out. No one did.
But I now felt watched. (Even if it was pure coincidence that 2 people should appear on a hilltop in the middle of nowhere.) So I went back into the sanctuary of the wood, regained the track and retraced my footsteps, downhill all the way this time. At one point I heard a noise behind me and a deer ran through the woods just a few metres away.
I couldn’t help thinking about the astonishing appearance of the van. Had the driver seen me from a distance and decided to check out this loiterer in the wood? (you are not supposed to go through the quarry but the woods are not private). And how did the van get there, with nothing but the fenced-off plantation between it and the wood? There was no access that I could see. (And yet, there must have been.)
After the deer’s disappearance, silence closed around the forest again.
Across the track leading from the forest to the quarry site there used to be high metal barrier gates at the end of a fence but these have been discarded, tossed aside, and they lie rusting on the hill slope. The fence is still there, though it ends at the track. And the warning notices pinned to the fence are still there – DANGER, they say, High Faces, Loose Rocks, Do not enter. In the distance, on a hillslope opposite, a tractor ploughs a field, followed by a troupe of seagulls.
*
Of course I had to go back ... (will be in Part 2)
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