There is
a lovely Scots word, "stravaig", which means to wander without
purpose. The natural history writer Robert Macfarlane calls such a wanderer a
"Meanderthal". I neither stravaig, not am I a Meanderthal. I love to
have a purpose and a destination when I walk. More often than not, I carry a
heavy load with which to do things; cameras, tape measures, collecting
equipment, binoculars, rifle.
Each walk
must be a journey. A successful journey should have an element of discovery.
That's what makes it an adventure. Adventures are about discovery. You don't
have adventures until you feel the thrill, the wonder of seeing something new
or spectacular, something that stands out in your memory, something you talk about
and recall with friends.
I have always found
that the natural world thrills me more deeply, touches me more profoundly, than
anything else. Natural discoveries can be small, happenstance encounters. Last
week I watched a raven performing a display flight over the chalk hills near my
home. I heard it’s deep croak “prruuk”,
and looked up to see it flip over upside down, then roll back again. It dipped
and rose again, effortlessly surfing the great green wave of the downland escarpment.
Or they can be more dramatic, profound encounters such as the journey I made
last year to photograph tigers in Maharashtra’s Tadoba-Andhari National Park.
 |
| Raven |
Lou and I often go out
with the express purpose of a certain discovery: to find otter signs, to see
the great bustards on Salisbury Plain or visit some hidden coombe in the folds
of the hills. These purposeful walks are some of the best, they combine the art
of the hunter with the hopeful expectation of the naturalist: I have a set
purpose but am also open to a joyful serendipitous encounter that
will divert me from my mission, leading to revelation and inspiration.
This is one of the
great things about hunting for ancient and veteran trees. I know that I will
meet a remarkable tree; that I will measure it, photograph it and know it. I
also know that these trees hold many secrets. They have holes where bats live,
mammals burrow around the roots and fungi gradually hollow their centres. So
any meeting with an ancient tree holds the promise of meeting one of it's close
family that will supply me with the joy of a surprise encounter.
 |
| Two trees, an ash and a willow, entangled one in another. |
I remember meeting a
wonderful ash tree in the Glyn Valley, Cornwall. It was a huge old tree
standing near an old mill site. When the corn mill was working in the Nineteenth
Century, the tree would have been quite venerable even then. When I encountered
it, the top had blown out years before and new stems had sprouted up from it’s
bole. The original trunk of the tree had hollowed out and I squeezed inside it
to see what I could find. As I had suspected, it harboured bats and owls as
evidenced by their distinctive droppings. But to my great delight I saw that
the tree had started to grown internal roots. From high above my head, roots
had sprouted and were writhing down through the rotting carcass of the old
tree: the rejuvenated stems were feeding on the decaying remains of the
original tree, extracting and recycling nutrients that it had first acquired in
the previous century.
