Into the pine woods

a walk in the life of a winter lover

Would you like to take a little walk with me? I’d love you to join me as I wander through the pine woods. There’s much to show you and I hope it offers you some peaceful distraction.

The pine woods are part of an ancient woodland, not far from where I live. Oaks, hornbeams and aspens live alongside Scots Pines and yews. The woods look beautiful to me all year round, but it’s right now as we head into winter that they seem to become otherworldly, alive with more than just branches.

There are dense areas of pines, where the light levels drop significantly if you walk through, and the only way to move through them is to zigzag, shoulders leading, whilst being embraced by branches of soft needles and the scent of fresh, resinous sap. It’s a smell that my lungs long for and I inhale as deeply as I can for as long as I can. I gently squeeze my hands along the tips of the fronds to keep some of the woody perfume with me as we carry on with our walk. With fingertips that smell of winter, I am calm.

It feels soft underfoot, each step cushioned by layers of needles and moss and I can still see a few mushrooms poking up through the soil. I’d love to know what they are, and I make a mental note to look them up later.

I can taste the moisture still suspended in the air after heavy rainfall, it’s tinged with damp earth and lichen.

I always feel a deep longing to make a home in the pine woods. I am a winter person. I feel more regulated in the colder half of the year.

Tiny fir trees less than a foot high push up through the leaves and mud, and there are so many pine cones. Some open, some closed. I think of the sheer number of seeds scattered over the woodland floor, free from their protective caskets and I imagine a walker’s footsteps pushing the pine seeds into the earth, not having any idea that they may have just sown the beginnings of a tree as they continue on their path. In this particular part of the pine wood—edged by copper-coloured bracken and half a mile away from the plantation—the natural order of wildlife has taken over. Conifers have sprouted any old way, thankfully without a human hand to guide them into straight lines and symmetry. An abandonment of uniformity. I love these patches of natural wild, where nature takes back ownership of the land.

It’s been a blustery day, but I have still heard the woodpecker’s keeking call through the rustle of the tree tops.

The woolly grey daylight that gave us a few hours of walking time has begun to fade, and so we slowly head back before the gloaming wraps us up in here overnight.

Thank you for joining me.