This is a picture of a wood.
It is a very special wood.
In this wood, vampire hunters and space marines have
battled. In this wood, pirates and
mystical warriors have hunted for treasure.
There have been walks where the sun shines through the canopy making it
glow like a green and gold palace, and walks in the rain, hopping over
squelched up leaves and puddles, where the smell of the earth and of autumn are
rich in the air.
In this wood live snuffly hedgehogs, darting dragonflies,
hooting owls, flitting bats, slithery snakes, and more! It is a remnant of the great Forest of Arden,
which you may have heard of as being the setting for Shakespeare’s “As You Like
It”, a magical place full of history and discovery.
It is earmarked to be bulldozed to make way for houses.
Never again would people be able to walk through the
carpet of bluebells in the spring, or see the sparkling frost clinging to bare
branches. The birds would cease to sing,
and the air would be full of the noise of traffic and construction.
This wood and the adjacent farmland had such an impact on
me growing up; I would say that they are part of the reason I became a
writer. How can you help not to have
your imagination fired when you are running through fields watching
Sparrowhawks drift on the clear blue sky, looking for mice in the golden
stubble? Or trying to sneak up on
lizards sunbathing in the grass, but only catching a glimpse before they
scuttle away? Not surprisingly the novel
that I am writing now does have the characters spending a fair amount of time
in wood and farmland; and this is the place that inspired it.
I hope to save it.
How? I don’t
know. I’ve done all the normal things;
try to raise awareness locally, collected information about the proposal and
the history of the place, found the form to fill in, and the consultation meeting time.
Even so, I’ve been feeling a bit hopeless. I just can’t imagine it gone. Never to be again. I’ve even had nightmares where the trees are
already being torn up and concreted over.
Will the council listen?
Will they see the beauty of the land and understand how important it is
to protect it? Will they realise that it
isn’t just a bunch of trees, but a part of me, and a part of so many others who
have walked its paths? It is part of
what makes it home.
This is a local fight, so I know that not everyone can
help with this. However I do ask you to
help where you can. Look around where
you live. See the beauty. See how you can share your space with the local
wildlife.
For those of you in the UK, please take a look at the
Campaign to Protect Rural England; you don’t have to give any money, simply use
their form to send a letter to your MP, or find out about how you can take
action to save our countryside.
I hope that in the coming weeks I can make a post about
how people coming together can make a difference… I suppose all I can do now is
wait and hope.
