In September I was in Boston again and went back to Concord and Walden Pond that I first visited in March: ‘In 1845 Henry David Thoreau built himself a cabin in the woods beside Walden Pond in Massachusetts and started the process which led to “Walden; or, Life in the Woods” in 1854.’ In that post I talk about what Thoreau said and did, and here I’m just adding more photos and videos from September with enough of a description to identify them.
These are some of the nature pictures I took at Century Wood this summer. As a I mentioned last week, I didn’t get very much actual work done, but I did see some interesting things, including some striking fungi and various forms of damage by American Grey Squirrels. This first picture is a giant puffball, with a 50p coin for scale.
Continue reading “Summer photos from Century Wood”
I’ve done a lot of travelling this year and last month this included New York. Henry David Thoreau lived there for most of 1843, a year and a bit before he went to live in the cabin in the woods by Walden Pond that I wrote about in April. Naturally, I made time to retrace some of his steps and photograph one of the woods he probably knew.
Before we get on to my visit in August, I should explain the context. Thoreau’s mentor was Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had established himself in Thoreau’s native Concord in Massacheusetts, writing and giving popular public lectures in a world before television and film. The town of Concord had a good road to the city and port of Boston via Cambridge, the location of Harvard College. So Emerson and Thoreau were able to get around and enjoy a cosmopolitan environment, whilst living within sight of fields and woods.
I’ve not written for a while, being busy with other things. Moving house, travelling, building things for the house rather for than the wood. My visits have been to mostly to check everything is ok and to do bits of maintenance here and there. I recoated the log cabin and put more creosote on the barn. I did a bit more ride clearing, and looked for interesting things happening around me (like a giant puffball, a wasps’ nest, a woodpecker hole in a fallen tree). I expect things to pick up again now we’re moving into autumn and winter.
Yesterday I caught the Tolkien biopic which is right at the end of its release in cinemas. Without giving away any spoilers, it’s set against the latter part of his childhood, time at university, and service in the trenches of the First World War. The main themes are his relationships with his similarly-gifted school friends (the other three boys of the “TCBS” club) and his difficult pursuit of the love of his life, Edith, but there are secondary themes of his fascination with language and hints at the importance he attached to trees. It reminded me of how he influenced some of my own early treeish thoughts.
This week I came across a series of YouTube videos about off grid living by Maximus Ironthumper (he does reenactments too, including making Viking items!) He covers a lot of topics relevant to people with woodland cabins, including generating electricity, sanitation, and managing firewood.
This is an introductory video which describes his set up:
For the rest of his off grid videos, he has provided a playlist.
This week I spent a couple of hours in the early morning at Bagley Wood near Oxford. The wood has been owned by St. John’s College since the aftermath of the dissolution of the monasteries, and before that it was owned by Abingdon Abbey since 955 AD. It is managed as a nature reserve, for research, and with some areas as plantations. I took a lot of phone camera pictures, as I didn’t have my DSLR with me. I saw a few deer, Bluebells, log stacks, standing dead trees, Leyland Cypress, Oak, Hazel, Larch, and Scots Pine. There were quite a few areas of planting with tree shelters, including one with Oak that I photographed as shown below.
A reader asked me about the “woodscraft” category that some posts on the Centurywood.uk blog have. Using modern computers to communicate forces us into a world of hashtags, keywords, and categories, so that things can be sorted and found. But it turns out that this word and related terms have a surprisingly long history.
First, I should say what I mean by “woodscraft”. The About Page says it’s “living out in the woods, managing them, and making use of their produce”. The craft of woods if you like. And that’s small woodlands rather big forestry as well.
In 1845 Henry David Thoreau built himself a cabin in the woods beside Walden Pond in Massachusetts and started the process which led to “Walden; or, Life in the Woods” in 1854. This book has gone on to become a classic of American literature, held up by advocates of self-reliance, resistance to the power of the State, naturalism, and conservation; and studied by generations of school children. Even in the UK, it’s often quoted, with its mixture of philosophy and the outline of Thoreau’s efforts to lead a self-reliant life from the land around his cabin. For me, over the last ten years it’s become an increasingly valuable account of living and working in woodland, of learning and practicing woodscraft, and becoming the amateur naturalist of your own environment.
One of Century Wood’s best features is the kilometre of rides that I established in the first few years. I really neglected them in 2017/18 though, largely due to extending the central Glade and putting up the Drying Barn. But this spring I’m doing ride maintenance before it gets much harder in summer. In the wood, a big part of this work is with dead and dying branches from the plantation poplar trees which have fallen across the rides, and there is also some unstable standing deadwood here and there which isn’t ok beside the rides.
This first photo shows part of one of the rides from yesterday after clearing. You can see where I cut off some small overhanging branches, and on the extreme left where I dragged them to the ride side. Unless branches are thick enough to cut up for firewood, I always drag them to the side or off into the undergrowth to rot down over time and provide cover and habitats.
