Blackbird Woods

A walk on the wild side

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise

Songwriters: Paul Mccartney / John Lennon

Blackbird Woods © paul john dear photography

After spending a morning of awe in the presence of ‘The Mother Tree’ at Ormiston, Anne and I had setoff for the layby where we had parked the car. As is our wont, we wandered off the route and found ourselves walking along a road that had, on our left side, remnants of the old walled gardens still in place and some delightful old stone buildings which had been converted to modern accommodations and somehow woven into the older architecture. Across the road from there was a beautiful wooded glade with a small burn running through its green heart.

As lovely as the buildings were, they were marked as private property and in all honesty the woodland’s gravity was a greater pull. We crossed the road and looked for a way down the steep bank. There wasn’t one and so we stayed on this way until it met another, larger road and we took a right, crossed a bridge and found a pathway into the woodland, we on the other side of the burn now. As we entered, we were met by two blackbirds. Three or four steps later we had encountered two more. This pattern continued the whole time we were there. Either we were being followed by the same two or the woods was awash with Blackbirds. And so it was that we named the woods.

Our hearts we already fully open after our awe filled Yew encounter and this song-filled green paradise just elevated things all over again. There is a kind of grace to be to be found in the presence of a lover in a place like this. Knowing smiles and glances. Gentle touches here and there. Laughter and awe in a delighted dance.

For she is like a song
She is like a ray of light
She is like children praying
Like harps and bells and cymbals playing
And she is like a wind
Moving, soothing, bringing joy
And here am I
Destroyed

She is so beautiful, Mike Scott

We clambered here and there and got mud on our shoes and our fingers too. I spied a wave of Foxgloves and we looked t find a pathway towards them that created as little disturbance to the wild flowers underfoot as possible. Anne was ahead of me and I stopped to snap the delicious digitalis.

And then a cry of discovery and a call for me to come quickly, as if the thing she had found might evaporate. Her childlike wonder fresh as it was all those moons ago when discovering things was new. It was of course bone. It’s a thing. We find skulls, antlers, jawbones…..or perhaps, they find us? This one we were not sure of. Two large incisors front and centre. Maybe a large rat?A rabbit or stoat? In the end we discovered that it was a hare. Fully intact and now, in the bone-yard with the deer and fox and rams outside our home in the highlands. Our diversion had brought us closer to the burn and it seemed as if the glade were shimmering now. Magic was afoot.

We crossed over and began to slip and slide our way up the opposite bank. Upon reaching higher ground we exited the woodland to find ourselves not as far along the road we came in on as we had thought and so back down the slope we went, happy to be immersed in the deep green once more.

We followed the burn a while and then spied a spot that needed closer inspection. Trees growing from stone. Over the burn again we went once more, already in a place where time had taken a holiday and there was just a shining unfolding moment to be with. More slipping and sliding. The rocks and the trees had us in their thrall.

Hopefully you can see why.

With grumbling tummies and smiles a mile wide we left our Blackbird Wood and headed home to eat and remember. What a day!

Let me bring you songs from the wood:
to make you feel much better than you could know.
Dust you down from tip to toe.
Show you how the garden grows.
Hold you steady as you go.
Join the chorus if you can:
it'll make of you an honest man.

Jethro Tull