Looking skyward into whitebeam Berries and fallen leaves lie on the sodden grass beneath the whitebeam. Standing beneath the tree, I look up through branches sunlit and shadowed, through red berries to the blue beyond. Listening to a blustery wind that animates the tree, setting it dancing. The fiercest gusts make the boughs creak as as the tree flexes and sways. Whitebeam is a beautiful tree and responsive to the wind. It rises behind a dry stone wall that flutes the wind through its crevices, standing sturdy and unmoved.
Eager to hear a BBC radio 4 programme, The Sussuration of Trees, I take the wind through the trees as my motif of the morning on Scout Scar. Holly is compact, a dense evergreen with waxy leaves that give a brittle sound.
My first holly is threaded through with hawthorn, intertwined, the hawthorn branches more flexuous.
A faint piping of birds almost lost to the wind in the trees. Fair-weather cumulus clouds against a back-drop of blue. Juniper and gorse hug close to the earth and only small birds sheltering within would to hear what their throngs of needles say in the wind.
My first holly is threaded through with hawthorn, intertwined, the hawthorn branches more flexuous.
A faint piping of birds almost lost to the wind in the trees. Fair-weather cumulus clouds against a back-drop of blue. Juniper and gorse hug close to the earth and only small birds sheltering within would to hear what their throngs of needles say in the wind.
The Sussuration of Trees includes a reading of Edward Thomas' poem Aspens. The poet listens to the sound of the aspen, hearing the ringing of a blacksmith's anvil, the sounds from his forge and the clink of glasses from the inn beside it. He writes shortly before the Great War and he reflects he might have heard the sound of forge and inn any time within the last fifty years, in the late 19th century. The aspen throughout time.
As I listen to the wind in the holly, in ash, oak and whitebeam I hear an ambulance siren and the sounds of Kendal Quarry. A 21st century soundscape in the distance, but close about me something more ancient.
Turning homeward, through an iron kissing -gate in the wall, there are bass notes that come out of nowhere. And are gone. Unfathomable. An elemental mystery. Who can catch the wind? Words cannot encompass it. Experience is all and it is sensational. A cold and blustery wind from the North East, with sudden gusts and pulses. The wind made visible as it thrills through the whitebeam, setting it dancing, shaking and shivering the holly, setting timbers creaking like galleons at sea. ' Shiver my timbers,' says the pirate Long John SIlver as storm-waves lift the ship high and drop it shuddering and creaking down.
I try to attribute a section of the orchestra to the wind in the trees. There are wind instruments, and percussion. And there would be strings and an Aeolian harp, if a wire fence were up here on Scout Scart. I know where to go to listen to the Aeolian harp and it's magic.
As I listen to the wind in the holly, in ash, oak and whitebeam I hear an ambulance siren and the sounds of Kendal Quarry. A 21st century soundscape in the distance, but close about me something more ancient.
Turning homeward, through an iron kissing -gate in the wall, there are bass notes that come out of nowhere. And are gone. Unfathomable. An elemental mystery. Who can catch the wind? Words cannot encompass it. Experience is all and it is sensational. A cold and blustery wind from the North East, with sudden gusts and pulses. The wind made visible as it thrills through the whitebeam, setting it dancing, shaking and shivering the holly, setting timbers creaking like galleons at sea. ' Shiver my timbers,' says the pirate Long John SIlver as storm-waves lift the ship high and drop it shuddering and creaking down.
I try to attribute a section of the orchestra to the wind in the trees. There are wind instruments, and percussion. And there would be strings and an Aeolian harp, if a wire fence were up here on Scout Scart. I know where to go to listen to the Aeolian harp and it's magic.
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