Hello, and a Happy New Year. I truly hope that it will be, in the small things if not the big. To start the year and the day we were gifted a bright moon in a big sky.
The reason I came here, to Substack, was to engage with stimulating content and to grow my own writing habit. Four months ago I made a commitment to put down words and to show up each week. So I’ll jump at any opportunity to reinforce this. For the last few days I’ve been responding to the content and writing prompts shared by
in her wonderful #winterwritingsanctuary.You can find out about the Winter Writing Sanctuary here.
So far what I’ve written has appeared in Notes in the Substack app, and in the private Facebook Group. Today it’s a post. This isn’t because I think I’ve suddenly written something wonderful, but my essay seemed just a little long for anything else… In fact I wasn’t sure what I could write for today’s prompt - Clearing: Building a space. So I chose three words that felt like they connected to this place which I write about regularly: abscission, clearance and making space. This is the ‘90 percent’ that I wove around them. Part of writing is showing up and sharing, and I hope you may find something in here that resonates in some small way.
Abscission.
Where does the line, the layer, rest? At what point does the day, the task, become overlong? The darkness creeps in to the point that I think about shedding. And which leaf or leaves should I lose first? Am I ready to do so? Have I re-absorbed the precious compounds that I need to retain, to store, to sustain me? And what colour will I then be, at the point of leaf fall? Will I be left naked, vulnerable, when my leaf has gone? Will this process prepare me for the winter? For what is to come? Have I judged the moment right, or jumped too soon? Have I left too much, too many, behind?
And in this fallow period am I forming new buds, new growth points? Will I be ready when spring arrives? Early? Late? Have I the energy as the days lengthen, as the sunshine and light here tip me into bursting through those tightly packed parcels of line? If I rise too soon, will the frosts knock me back? And which direction shall I grow into? Towards the light? Towards the moisture? I need both to nourish me. Shall I lean into the wind, or face away from it? Which new shoots will bear fruit? Which avenues should I explore, exploit?
The soil here is friable but stony, left behind by glaciers and the rivers that they in turn fed. You can see it in the rolling of the ground, the wet marshy places, the broad valley that heads north between the hills.
Clearance
The cutting, the clearing, takes place each day. I see the lights floating in the dark, before the dawn and after dusk. Their position varies and I try to judge where they are, somewhere on the hill between sky and ground. And I wonder about the noise, and the terror. The tearing and uprooting. The apocalypse that this must seem to be for those with hooves and paws and feet and wings. The insects and the beetles, those that slide and those that slither. By the time that the sun comes up on the first day of a new year I can see machine metal glinting on the hillside, from a distance benign, but the foresters are back to again tear and cut and clear the crop. The lines of progress advance across the hillside. What now will hold the soil and slow the water in this wet winter?
Making space.
Is that what they are doing? Making space for the next rotation? Clearing away the sticks that Arwen prematurely tossed around like matchwood. These were trees that did not routinely absciss, and failed to anticipate the north wind. Will their replacements be better suited? Broadleaves that will know when the day shortens enough that it is time to let go. That holding on too tight, too long, is a mistake?
There is plenty of space under this big sky. In this broad valley. To watch the moon still high in the morning, a bright orb set against blue. To watch the creeping pink dawn bloom. To see the clouds perched on the ridge. To watch the honking lines of geese continue their indecision and fly north once again.
And on the ground, is there room for me? To put down my own roots and grow? To find the space that I need to stray from our noise and news, to brush past the grasses and the leaves, to find a small clearing among the trees or overlooking the moss, and just sit. Listen. Watch. Breathe. To find equilibrium? And quietly, to just be.
The sun has left the day, dropping behind the hill. As I begin this ending and clear words in editing, making space, the sky is again empty and blue. The frost still lies, the cold creeping in. The days have yet to appreciably lengthen, and it is not yet time to break this bud.
Thank you for reading. If you’ve enjoyed this, I’d love it if you would consider a like or a comment, a recommendation for FLOW, or a restack if you’re using the Substack app.
You’ll find my regular writing about Small Beauty Noticed on FLOW’s home page.
My photography and mixed media art live here on my website.
This does, indeed, resonate with me. Living in the Glenkens area next to a large plantation of Sitkas, I’ve witnessed the clear-cutting of whole swathes and the devastation it brings. I love how you see it from the tree’s perspective. I think that we, as a species, don’t empathise with our fellow inhabitants of Mother Earth. Beautiful words.
'Clearance' instantly takes me back to the shock of seeing old sections of the beloved forest where Tom grew up get cleared in Northumberland. Those mossy, magical worlds within worlds only exist in our collective memories and the photographs we took. Such a violent removal of so peaceful a place, wish it didn't have to be that way.
-Diana