The Grey Men of Grey Mare's Tail

It wasn't until I read Wildwood that I became aware of the existence of Green Men - the faces of leafy men carved into wood, with paganistic meanings and variations on the theme individual to each sculptor.

http://commonground.org.uk/portfolio/trees/

At Grey Mare's Tail in Dumfries and Galloway, someone has created the stone version. The Grey Man.

I'd love to know who, and why. Probably done on commission to the Forestry Commission, as part of their recreational side of Galloway Forest Park, the romantic in me instead likes the idea of an artist who just wanted to make an unobtrusive, secret statement. To carve faces into stone, and then set them in the stone walls of ruined mining buildings, noticed only by a few people wandering through and careful enough to realise that the stones aren't quite natural. A short-lived artistic statement, like Richard Long's work; faces that gradually become weathered and lichen-clad, until no longer recognisable as any different to any other rocks.

Trees, development and destruction

And so today brought another interesting conflict between my personal and professional lives, again related to that D-word... Development.

In my personal life, a diet of Roger Deakin books and dissatisfaction with the political rage for economic growth above all else has led me to be quite opposed to much of the so-called "development" that goes on. I don't mind people building on old factory sites and that kind of disused land (although I do have an issue with the type of housing put on it... monotonous, uninspired, rubber-stamp cheap housing that encourages a non-community of commuters who don't know their neighbours. But that's a different rant.)

However, I feel strongly that greenbelt land should be preserved. Let's not let our cities expand outwards whilst the inner cites die... housing estates are built that encourage car use and discourage locality and individuality. And to achieve this, precious farmland, woodland and other habitats and destroyed - permanently - whilst plenty of vacant land lies derelict. Small villages with strong senses of community and local individuality become subsumed into ever-expanding suburbs. Green space disappears, and with it that peace of mind that it brings to those using it, as well as the wildlife dependent on it.

Professionally, the bread-and-butter of the firm I work for - like that of many arboricultural firms - are development surveys. Looking at the trees on sites to be developed, deciding which should be retained and which could be lost. Basically, aiding (if not being responsible for) the development that I feel quite squeamish about.

Today found me in old agricultural land, surveying a number of hedgerows and field boundary trees. And there were some crackers - big old ash and oaks, with the dieback typical of agricultural trees and stag-headed quality, some well on their way to veteran status. There were trees with massive cavities, big enough to stand inside. Fungi were growing on an astonishing number of them, and the number of cavities and cracks that would provide invaluable habitat for many beasties was high. And the hedgerows provided interconnectivity, wildlife corridors and shelter for numerous animals.

Whilst I can give some trees status to indicate that retention is 'desirable', and in some cases 'highly desirable', I am still ultimately aiding a process that will ruin this. A developer isn't going to build around the hedgerows and these trees. Land is money, and leaving land aside for trees that, to some eyes, appear half-dead, rotten and dangerous, seems silly. And a hedgerow - they're just scrappy trees, right? No-one will miss them. Don't worry about losing those old trees, we'll plant some nice looking trees and plants on the land.

And even if some of those trees are left, many will subsequently have to go, as the introduction of a target will mean tree surgery or removal will be necessary - and so they will lose their character, if not their life. Not that it will matter much, as the habitat which they are part of will disappear, and so will the animals that rely on them. Whereas, without a target, they can be left to do exactly what they want, become hollow, drop limbs, and act as nature intended them to do - growing, living and declining on their own terms.

The knowledge that I am part of this process that, personally, I am vehemently opposed to, makes me feel quite uncomfortable. And I can't imagine I'm alone - most people in this business are in it for the love of trees and the countryside. Do any other consultants feel uncomfortable about this?

Is wasteland a waste?

Recently surveyed an old allotment site in relation to a housing development that is proposed to go on it. As housing development goes, it's not too bad - apparently, they're willing to maintain the same proportion of the site in active allotment use as there is currently, albeit different plots, which they will clean up and make suitable for use as part of the overall works on site.

However, it raised a bigger issue in my mind. Which is - when is a site wasteland, in need of development as it is just underused, and when is it nature reclaiming what it had lost years before?

It was certainly an interesting place to wander and wonder in. About a third of the site was still in cultivation, with the rest having been left to go to waste about 20 or more years ago. Apart from the fact that I thought allotments were in short supply (and, admittedly, the selfish annoyance that people don't use them when many people, including myself, would love one), it was also an interesting slideshow into what happens to land left for twenty-odd years.

A scrub woodland was forming, with plenty of ash, birch, sycamore, hawthorn and the like spreading in from trees already present on the site and well as adjacent to it. There were scattered large poplars, willows and huge old hawthorns, in varying states of collapsing - yet in no way useless because of it. Brambles were choking every bit of ground they could cover (note to self: must get a billhook for such survey jobs). But most exciting were the remnants of what grew before - mature apple trees, once pruned into a neat and fruitful state but now going feral; branches going wherever they pleased, and yet still laden with fruit. Plum and cherry trees growing side-by-side with their thorny wild relative. A pioneer woodland coincidentally involving the growing trend for woodland gardening. And hidden away here and there - the remains of old huts, now with leaking rusted roofs and rotting timber. How long ago were they in use, busy with people sowing seeds in trays in early spring, warmed by a small fire in the corner?

Which makes me think - is this land truly abandoned, wasted, ripe for development because other the plots are just empty, useless space? Or is it an ecological experiment, combining the cultivated with the untamed, a boost for biodiversity in the middle of urban areas? Imagine such an area becoming a wild park, the antidote to manicured lawns and lollipop trees; somewhere where children play hide-and-seek or capture the flag, and foragers climb fruit trees with pockets increasingly laden with apples or clamber through collapsed trunks collecting oyster mushrooms.

However, on such an overcrowded island can we afford the luxury of 'allowing' such land to revert back to some semblance of nature? (Is it 'allowing' - who gave us the right to dictate such terms?) Should we leave urban, ignored areas to re-wild whilst claiming greenbelt land to "develop"? Which is more important to conserve, which has more value ecologically, and which is socially, economically, politically a better option? As always, no easy answer - but worth some thinking about.

In consultation

Ardkinglas Woodland Garden

Occasionally I lose sight of why I started to blog. In fact, why did I start to blog? Partly to blab on and on about trees and woodlands and my love of all things arboreal. That hasn't stopped. But also just on the off-chance, the slight possibility, that there is someone out there in a similar position to the one I was in (namely, wanting to get into this sector without quite being sure of what options are available) and might stumble across this collection of ramshackle vaguely-related posts whilst looking for inspiration on the world wide web.

So I've started a new job recently and I'm back into the arboriculture sector, this time as a consultant. I found in my previous job as a warden, doing practical forestry work, that I was getting frustrated with the lack of thought required. It seems that the jobs I wanted to do when I started out, where it involves it all - practical work, management planning, ecology, education - are slowly disappearing. Councils are a good example - more and more, there are now rangers to do community work, practical teams to do hands-on work, and ecology teams do surveying. And although I loved - and still sometimes long for - those sunny, clear, frosty mornings in the woods with a saw in my hands, more and more I wanted to be making decisions about how trees are managed. And that's not really an option when you're out doing the practical work. Perhaps I would have been content to do practical work a few more years if I'd been doing it in nicer sites (more coppicing, woodland crafts and dry-stone walling instead of litter picking, strimming and watching the very infrequent interesting jobs be contracted out), and for more of a conservation charity than a forestry organisation, but even so the wholesome fun aspect of practical hands-on work has to be balanced with the yearning to learn and apply more.

So I applied for a job as a consultant arboriculturalist, down in my home county of Yorkshire. The job looked interesting - all about trees, that's a winner; I'd get to be using my brain (one of my favourite aspects of my warden job, albeit an infrequent one, was the safety inspections I did); and a few aspects of my personal life had changed so a fresh start away from Glasgow would do me good. And, astonishingly, I got hired.

So now, two and a half years after that Basic Tree Survey & Inspection course that got me all fired up about tree surveying and the whole sector, I've ended up a consultant. A very different role to those which I've done before. It's in the private sector, as opposed to charities and public sector - so I need to think about clients, not just the trees. This will take some compromising, as I'm naturally tree-focused ("it's dangerous? Move the target. It's hollow? Keep it, good habitat") and depending on the situation, a client might have different desires to mine. But hopefully I can stick to my principles and still do a good job - after all, we're hired to inform people about decisions relating to trees. It'll be a challenge, but I'm glad to have made it to being in a position to influence how trees are managed, as opposed to being out there doing the practical work and wondering why some quite shaky decisions are being taken by those up high!

Full circle - the meaning of place

A landscape, an anchor point, a place with meaning and memories that far exceed the sum of its soil, sand and sea. 600 odd acres of woodland, park and shoreline that have changed my life forever. A farewell today, to the place that will remain, evolve, change, continue to exist as if I have never been there, whilst I carry it with me.

A dark day, with torrential rain; the atmosphere itself inexplicably but vividly reminding me of the countless times before that I had wandered those paths, rain dripping from the trees, or sun beating down, or snow coating all. The weather was a fitting tribute to the mournful feeling of roaming a place that became home, that became more than a home, and yet somewhere I am slowly becoming a stranger to. Sitting in the courtyard outside "my" old cottage - now renovated, lacking its interior rustic charm. I'll cling onto my experience of it instead, the bumbling insects, noisy mice, peeling paint. I was a stranger there in what was my garden; it's a picnic spot, and anyone looking in would have seen two people taking a seat, not knowing the parties we'd had there years previously, and what it meant to be sat there once more for old times sake

This place, this small slice of history and manufactured countryside, brought me up north. It, and the woman I met there, kept me in the area; even when eventually living on the other side of Scotland, it still had a hold on my life. It is tightly bound with the friendships, the love and the loss, the beginning of a chain reaction that has always felt slightly surreal. Improbably, she was there today too; a second of eye contact, before it was broken by awkwardness, pain and pride, both pretending we hadn't noticed each other. Fifteen minutes later, stood in the spot where I first said those three special words - the start and the end, both at this place. It could be no other way; we met there, we lived and loved there, and now, our last sighting of each other is there.

The trees, too, constant reminders. Adam and Eve, still majestic; I touched Eve's healing wound, the dried resin smooth over the rough of her trunk. I squeezed the fibres of the redwoods, thinking of the treecreepers hiding in old branch wounds. That small, but for some reason memorable, pruning wound on a turkey oak - I remember quite clearly doing that. I guess I've had my own little lasting impact on the place after all. The gnarled sycamores, beeches and turkey oaks that we scrambled around in on a fine winter afternoon, and many other times between. The copper beech that saw some of my earliest attempts at tree climbing with ropes. The turkey oak by the path, with its lowest branches perfectly placed for sitting on - and rubbed smooth by the countless visitors taking this opportunity. The time tree, now inexplicably without its eye-catching platform around it - just a large beech in the woods now, nothing to mark it out as different, nothing to catch the attention and fire the curiosity of visitors. I instantly think of a photo of myself, standing on the now-absent platform with beer in hand, now impossible to re-create. It was here where a passion for woodlands and trees developed and made me re-think what I wanted from life; in a way, the woods and trees here are responsible for me leaving to pursue that passion.

The love-heart shaped outcrop of rocks into the ocean - though today looking more like a meaningless triangle, neither the tide nor my emotions being at the right ebb to convert it into a romantic sign. In a strange twist of fate, I stopped at the spot where we had first kissed, and on the shore below two sets of footprints could be seen coming together from separate sources, walking side-by-side before diverging off again in the distance. It's as if the beach knew, remembered, and communicated. Despite the rain I stopped at my favourite point, above Port Carrick, where we had whistled to seals and where, as the rocks, sea and sand all merged into black one summer twilight I finally saw that elusive otter, just discernible from the dark closing in as it clambered over rocks, slid into the sea and swam away across the bay. The same spot where that beautiful black/white photograph was taking, now hidden away from view but still taken out and studied at times, having become a melancholic reminder of person, time and space.

This place, that for some will be just a boring place of work, or where they walk their dogs of an evening; this place, so mundane to some, will always be with me. It will always mean something I can't explain; more than just a country park, a visitor attraction, it is to me an embodiment of an adventure, a once-in-a-lifetime experience that then kept going, dipping in and out of my life over three and a half years. For all it is passive, a collection of habitats and organisms and people, it has played a large part in shaping and moulding me; and leaving this afternoon, possibly for the last time, the feeling was one of finality, of a chapter ending, of the adventure being over.

Woodland stewardship?

Over the summer the organisation I work for (renowned as being at the forefront of forest and woodland management) took on a new site, again in an urban and deprived area. The idea was to do work to improve access and tidy it up, so that people will use it and in theory become happier through greenspace use.

Our first job was to go and cut a path line through the woods - a 2m wide strip with all vegetation out of it. Whilst still quite destructive, we did it sensitively to wind around interesting trees and create nice curves to the path. At the end, with a bit of tidying up (e.g. stumps cut to the ground, herbaceous plants mown, etc) it looked like quite a nice path, and one that would be easy enough to walk on as is.

Whilst on annual leave, the works started. Apparently my colleagues were called in to cut more trees out of the way; these guys weren't with us when we did the initial work, so had no idea of the trees we were retaining and views we were trying to create. Then the contractors laid a 2m wide strip of asphalt-type material (I'm no civil engineer so can't say exactly), with about a 1.5m wide massive ditch on one side, and the spoil from excavation dumped the other side.

The result? A ridiculously wide, hard, completely artificial and out of place footpath through the woods, with a huge raw ditch to one side with severed roots of the trees right on the edge of the ditch exposed. Tree safety issues in the future..? And the trees on the other side of the path, covered with about 30cm or so of spoil above the depth at which they've rooted - again, the trees will die on their feet. The rubbish exposed by digging is still lying there next to the path.

Why oh why are we, supposedly the benchmark for the industry, treating the woods like this? Poor tree management on either side of the new footpath, with spoil heaps round them or damaged root systems. After this organisation provides training on urban woodland planning, with the emphasis on softer landscaping and features that blend in with the surrounding woodland, the managers who have attended this training decide the opposite. And spend more money on creating nasty, over-engineered features. We're here for tree and woodland health first and foremost. A small, simple track cut through the woods would suffice. If that's not enough, then a stone-built track like most nature reserve areas have would still be smaller, lighter and less intrusive. But it's hard to describe just how out of place this footpath is.

The woodland feels somewhat ruined now. An intrusive, artificial path, damaged trees to either side, and over-engineered features that have to fit a specification apparently required (instead of rustic, simple benches made from greenwood?) all take away from the mystique and wild atmosphere the woods once had. I must admit, I feel somewhat ashamed to be part of the organisation who decided that this is woodland management.

Log rocket stove

Having seen the idea in the Living Woods magazine, I made and trialled a rocket stove from a larch log. It's pretty simple - essentially boring an L shaped chimney through the log, so that a fire can be lit inside and cooked on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_stove

As you'd imagine, setting a fire in a log makes the thing non-reusable, but then the whole point is that it slowly burns from the inside out and so not only do you have a cooker, but you also have a camp-fire for the rest of the evening.

I lit the fire inside with the usual tinder/kindling and fed it for a little while, propping the mess tin up on two larger blocks of kindling to allow for easy air flow through the chimney. The flame was almost too intense at times and it wasn't long until I could stop feeding the stove with kindling, as the log itself had lit.

It took about three hours to burn through, during which the chimney slowly expanded in size as the fire burnt, and the pattern it made inside the log as darkness fell was wonderful. In the end the walls fell in and it became a smaller pile of burning wood on the base, still with ferocious heat, that we eventually had to put out before bedtime.