Against a backdrop of bleak bare trees stands a solitary thorn bush: tough, resilient and yet colourful.
It is with the lofty beeches that I have identified myself. There is no shame in this: for the beech is stout, lofty and beautiful. A beech wood is a lovely place. Great boles rise like the pillars of a majestic cathedral. In summer the diffuse light beneath a beechen canopy is practically aqueous, like being underwater. Birds flit about like tiny shoals of fish.
But the beech is apt to be felled for timber. He is slow to grow and quick to be killed and burned. The thorn, however, remains through eternity: tough and attractive yet not valuable in any financial or practical sense. The thorn is an outlier of the society of trees, a niche filler, a poor cousin who thrives nonetheless because he asks less or prefers payment in alternative currency.
Better, I think, to be a thorn bush. He is smaller but more secure. Though tough he possesses rare beauty in both spring and autumn. He lives through the ages: Celt, Roman and Saxon recorded his citizenship of the lonely hills. He witnessed great things: nearby King Alfred worsted Danish invaders at Thorn Down where of course there thrive thorn bushes still. Travellers aplenty he saw: keeper of their dreams along windswept thoroughfares.
Hills roll green and inviting into the distance, smooth waves of chalk finely clad. Here at dusk lit by a low sun the downlands are especially fine: an ancient land still fresh and fair. I love this place: the land of my tribe.
Smooth slopes rise and fall like waves. The wind rushes and tumbles about them, cool and refreshing on a bright early winter day. For me autumn is over for the trees are bare. This is a joyful sunny start to the gaunt season of grey and mud, as if the Earth were granting a final dry-shod afternoon for a wanderer to cast lengthening shadows and enjoy the sight of hills softly melting into a gently rising mist.
A bright day for grief, for grieving should be a positive act neither filled with melancholy nor corrupted by self-pity.
There are good things to remember, explanations to understand, deeds to forgive, and ones own part to reconcile. Again three and four: a trinity of introspection about the departed and, standing to the side, probing self-examination of ones own deeds and omissions. There hangs a possibility to absolve the other whilst blaming oneself. Or, indeed, vice versa. My quantum of knowledge of the subject is finite since no new material is created whilst steadily one gains new information about oneself. But now I am standing in a field beyond right and wrong: that meeting place of Rumi. Uncertainty is the dwelling of the wise for they alone can bear such a place. This much I know: there is insufficient forgiveness in this world so let me generate a little more.
The trail winds on and up, hard and stony, sharp in the bitingly clear air. Rich are the colours, as befits a path of learning. Stark are the contrasts, for not every step falls beyond right and wrong. My dream of a warm inn at journey's end do not translate to this day's wanderings. That hope of a warm fire, a mug of ale and friendly company represents mere temptation: a desire to leave the journey for comfort signifying a lack of progress. Vocation leads me along the rugged way, which is my fate.
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