Melting

On the hottest day of the year, I take a morning walk through the forest. The chalk and gravel path is dusty and speaks of sun and heat to come. I wander a curved path through the meadow, bristling with the dark heads of old thistles and pale grasses. Most of the flowers are gone and it is the webs that offer adornment. Particularly at this time of the morning, when the sun is still on its golden climb and there is moisture left in the ground. Orbs as big as dinner plates and close knit triangles, like hammocks on the grass. When you notice one, you see them all.

I cross the bridge over a trickling stream. There is nobody else in the forest. I am accompanied by the soft songs of birds, the gentle buzz of bee and fly, the silent dance of butterflies across dappled light. Through plantations of conifers brooding over the path. Past familiar landmarks, like the gate that leads nowhere and the valley strung with telegraph poles and wires. Delicate heather is in flower, and I find a blooming of fungi, despite the dry conditions. A huge area of forest has been cleared, opening a shattered vista that is being colonised by new growth and more webs. I cross the stream again, past a rowan flaming with berries, back to the meadow. I’m tired and hot already. Back in the cabin, we close the heavy curtains and retreat indoors.

It is early September. We had hoped for autumn. Days cool for walking, nights chill enough to light the log burner. When we heard the forecasts, we assumed there would be a few hot days at the beginning of the week, before the season felt more like it should. But the heat hasn’t broken. Despite the shade of the forest, it has been too hot to walk. Winston manages a short wander before he is panting and wobbly. We stay close to the cabin, embraced by oak, pine, birch and ash. Ivy hugs the trunks of the trees. Pine needles flutter onto the deck. We’re visited by mobs of blue, great and coal tits, a shy and ragged robin, a few chaffinches, blackbirds and a nuthatch. A treecreeper spirals up and down the trees and a woodpecker taps softly on a nearby trunk. For the first time, I hear the mew of a buzzard. It reminds me of a score of movies in which a hawk’s cry is a symbol of the unforgiving desert. I watch as a pair glide over the canopy. It seems appropriate.

A grey squirrel is like a noisy delinquent: rustling foliage, cracking seeds, dropping things onto the metal roof. He feasts on acorns and blackberries, topped up by bird food he munches while defiantly watching us. This may or may not be Steve, rescued as a baby by the site manager and named before they knew he was a she. S/he seems content to spend the day leaping between the small cluster of trees that surround us. For an hour or so in the early afternoon, we cross to the site café to have a drink in air-conditioned comfort and watch a plethora of red admirals drink from the buddleia outside. As the sun sinks, the swallows and swifts appear, high up above the trees, dancing across the sky after the midges.

That night lightning darts across the sky. There is no thunder. No rain. Just the light. Flashes faint and bright, silhouetting the trees, as though a silent piece of music is being conducted across the sky. It is the following night when bass and percussion arrive. Rain batters the leaves, like the fall and rise of applause. Thunder booms and grumbles. For hours, we’re mesmerised by the storm. It is a gloriously rowdy end to the heatwave.

We leave the forest before dawn. The paths are muddy and the landscape infused with fog. The woods appear sickly green in the headlights. A toad crawls across the road like an alien. As we leave the trees behind, the fields are spectral with mist. A sliver of moon and Venus are bright in a pastel sky. In my pocket is an acorn, a gift left on the deck by Steve or perhaps the tree itself, a reminder that the dark half of the year has arrived, but that it holds the promise of growth within it. On this enchanted morning I can believe in the possibility of autumn and all it will bring.