Art of Enquiry NEW MOON enquiry walk. 14th July 2026.
Mid-heatwave number 2.
Walking in the cool of the morning I take a curious eye to the woods for conversation we might have today.
And it seems that todays encoutering is with Chestnut. An old coppice stool dressed over in moss that shows the shape underneath of stumps of trees cut. It is surrounded by a circle of new young trees. What strikes me is the literalness of the circle of life with new growth at the edges, not the middle, not standing on or over, but from the sides. It has a kind of honouring of the space of the life once lived, of an ancestor. Stumps can live for hundreds or thousands of years like this. As a managed woodland, the head forester finds a balance between the needs of the rhythm of nature with the rhythm of the harvest to make timber for houses, furniture, fences. The trees hold the carbon absorbed from the atmosphere, a tree made into a chair does not release it, but burn it and the carbon adds to the problems of climate change. So we too find the balance between logs for the fire, wood for the table, and the honourable tree that provides, and also teaches us, if we care to ask. Coppice keeps the life going. Clear felling takes it all (another topic on how we perceive life, the body, not for today). But back to the sweet Chestnut.
Heading south, past the deeply scented pines and and a seven pack dog walker, I notice a pink fleece draped over a branch (that also is another story) and next to it, a glorious raised stump about one and a half metres high. How old must that one be, it’s like a castle? Packed with orangey-yellow earth and some flints, an array of stumps collect at the top like teenagers with swirls of young trees growing in curves as if dancing toward the light in a dense copse.
Further on another coppice stool but with a main tree still alive in the centre and the new young growth around the base. Branches encroach in each others space as you look up. This seems to be a pattern of broad trees in the middle, fanned by much younger thinner circle of trees around the edge. It is interesting that new growth, as in new ideas, possibilities, come from the edge places. Edges can feel uncomfortable, unfamiliar, between one thing and another. Some days feel like that, like all that is known is slipping away and what you are facing a dark unknowing. But in truth, I am still connected to something greater. I wonder what that is for you? (I’m writing on Substack – free to see full article:
