Trees with trunks like narwhal tusks
with a kind of desperation I've started wandering off again. Helps the thoughts. (Not yet am I at the point of curling up gainst a moss hummock and not returning home till late. Delusions teeter but I do not need to flee.)
In this state I talk to fellow life and I am learning its shapes and patterns. Much of the forest nearby is ex-lumber-plantation, therefore consists of quick growing Pinus sylvestris in stands of different maturities, groundcover brackened orange and green, Hypnum, Thuidium, Rhytidiadelphus. Some older, bent oaks stand still. Lots of windthrows, which will regrow.
Birch is quick-growing and acid-loving, gleeful for the space where the conifers are cleared. Typically: birches drill like spears from hummocks of moss and Vaccinium myrtillus.
This was not a usual birch copse.
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See: birches left with scars and spiral form from honeysuckle-wrap corset. Mix of birch and elder+Auricularia auricula-judae of roughly approximate height, thick moss, bramble, mud, and bracken. As stated, very notably, honeysuckle run riot over the 'scape... altering me from biped to quadruped. Triplines. Almost every birch seemed squeezed by the stuff.
I haven't seen a 'scape like this before. Honeysuckle, sure, but this was an acre under its tentacles. I am curious as to why, if perhaps the commercial forestry bordering on clear-cut pasture led to prime conditions for the Lonicera.
lots of downed (snapped) branches of the elder, less of the birch. Bend or break? At what point do I go there with my branch saw to free at least the crowns of the trees from the woodbine, if ever...?
...Does the honeysuckle impede deer grazing, does it turn the copse into a nursery for saplings?
...
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