Back in Talaton.

I’m in the bluebell woods, a hundred year old copse sandwiched between fields on the outskirts of the village. The landowner locked the gate ten years ago, but you only need to check both ways on the road and jump over. Once you’re in, the wood is quiet. The lack of public access makes me feel selfishly secluded, even though I can see out to the fields on all sides. I know I won’t see people in here, I never have in 10 years, which makes it easier to reconvene with the woods.

The path bends and I know I’m out of sight of the road behind me. I stop and look around, my attention snagging on everything. Curled up, crispy dead leaves jitter on the low branches of a beech. Their red hue bleeds out under the bruised evening sky. When I turn, the woods are all red. Disused, understory branches of pine, the wreckage of dead bracken, all last years leaves. I never realised how much red there was in the woods. Childhood drawings of trees in green and brown misled me. There is far more red than brown in here.

Everything else is dark green. Not the lush, easy shades of summer. This is a brooding green that turns to black as soon as the sun dips behind the hills. It creeps up tree trunks in tangles of ivy, it is encased in leaves of holly and laurel,  it glows in the undergrowth as moss and fern. This winter, I have stopped focusing on the bareness of the woods, and tuned my eyes to this deeper green. It is everywhere. I realise a February woodland has its own verdancy, less radiant than July’s foliage, but just as vital.

I reach the other side of the copse, but I stay within it, leaning on the gate to the field. The land drops away into a broad valley of farmland, punctuated by thousands of oaks. It’s a grey February afternoon. Banks of cloud roll in from the ocean, carried on frail gusts of cold. There is nothing generous in that wind, no softness. It doesn’t feel like spring will be here soon although the bluebells sense it, pushing their dark, perfect shoots through the undergrowth around my feet.

I turn back into the woods. Everything has turned blue grey and blurry. I won’t linger now the colour has faded.