TC Lethbridge | The Sons of TC-Lethbridge

Wild Wood

22nd Sep 2009

"Through a pilot’s eyes: over the Firth of Clyde and out - over open sea - across to Brodick Bay.

Through rising vapour from sodden pine, the navigator’s flight is measured and crossing Glenrosa over to Stronach Wood, it provides the pilot with a bird’s eye view of my world. Below, dense woodland, where I sit spellbound on exposed rock, as the roar of engines breaks my mood and I turn my gaze to the sky.

The torrential morning rain has now gone and I have broken cover into Stronach Wood and as I ascend the woodland path, steam rises from the pines and forms Brocken Spectres in the translucent, afternoon light. The waterlogged track is like a brook and cuts like an artery through dense woodland and in my mind’s eye, I imagine the land through eyes of the Neolithic - through a pilot's eyes.

welbourn TEKH - Diary Note: Isle of Arran - 14th August 1998.

NB. Click on photographs for an enlarged view.

As the Palaeolithic era drew to a close, it was the first farmers who began the process of clearing the great forests that then covered much of Britain. Their inaugural attempts to clear vast tree-covered areas for farmland was a colossal undertaking. The removal of the trees would have revealed unique landscape features that may well have been concealed in the undergrowth for millennia. Imagine battling through the wilderness and encountering natural edifices such as the conical hill of Dunnydeer in Aberdeenshire and the barrow-like edifice of Meltham Cop near Huddersfield. These natural hills still provoke awe even to this day. The veneration of hills may well have been a motive for forest clearance and this occupation would therefore have had a sacred as well as a practical purpose. During the Neolithic, the ancients were astutely aware of the psychological effects their own monuments created within the landscape. It is therefore likely, that the commitment and endeavour shown in the construction of their megalithic erections was also reflected in their clearance of the great forest.

The standing stones that we witness today are the sleletal remains of a bygone civilisation that would have utilised all available commodities to make their psychological statements upon the landscape. We know from sites like Woodhenge in Wiltshire and Stanton Drew in Somerset, that timber was also utilised in the construction of sacred buildings and shrines. The felling of trees to construct these temples would not have been indiscriminate. The clearing not only provided raw materials, but the felling of trees would also have provided opportunities for visual effects to be created in the landscape. This deforestation not only proffered extensive farmland and pasture, it also exposed concealed hills and natural features that were potential sites of veneration. During this megalithic era, the entire landscape would have been pure theatre.

With this impression in mind, the possibilities of this long lost art are infinite. Here parallels can be drawn to the renaissance gardens of Versailles and Fontainebleau and of minds such as Bernini, le Notre and Vanburgh, for they were men whose vision saw beyond the restriction of petty, man-made barriers. They, like their Neolithic counterparts, were visionaries who re-created a romantic dream of possibilities. Imagine a landscape of tree-lined processional venues leading to sacred hills, with sight lines through trees to distant mountaintops and sacred groves open to the sky.

The woods were perceived by many later cultures as the habitat to the godless and the management of woodland was therefore considered a statement of power - a control over the pagan wilderness first established during the Neolithic. Since the Age of Reason, the insensitive planting of trees, the erection of dwellings and the building of walls have created, what could only be described as ‘the blindfold effect’. These barriers have inhibited our perception of the sacred landscape. As a consequence of this culture, many of the relationships between prehistoric shrines and sacred landmarks have since been lost. This apparent indiscriminate destruction and fragmentation of the sacred landscape was, I believe, in many cases, deliberate.

The forest that covered vast areas of Europe, would have represented to Neolithic man a natural home. For here, the very essence of the great mother was apparent. In summer, the foliage provided shelter and contained an abundance of life essential to subsistence. In winter, the skeletal trees exposed the hunter to its prey and thus betrayed a starkness and vulnerability. The dualistic nature of this place was fully understood by the ancients and it was, during the time of the first settlements, that Neolithic man chose to impose himself on these areas of natural wilderness. By felling trees, he was interacting with his environment and inadvertently he had begun to enforce his authority. With this newfound influence, he no longer felt totally subordinate to nature. The deforestation provided fuel for fires, building essentials for dwellings and the raw material for monuments and temples. It was therefore understandable that the forest should be perceived as an aspect of the abundant Goddess.

To walk through a forest triggers deep primitive feelings and to be surrounded by trees far older than any living creature is a humbling experience. During a trip to Carningli - ‘the rock of angels’ in Pembrokeshire, I experienced an overwhelming appreciation of wilderness.

Diary Note: 1st January 1992: Carningli, Pembrokeshire

Today I undertook a circular walk around Carningli - ‘the rock of angels’. The circumnavigation of this rugged peak was inspiring, but it was the primitive feelings unleashed in the forest below Mynydd Caregog that left on me the most lasting of impressions. Having past the inscribed standing stone of Bed Morris, I entered into the forest along the western footpath. Here, amongst the dripping trees, insecurity swept through my being.

For the first time during my years of visiting ancient sites, I found myself in unfamiliar territory. The sudden enclosure of the trees was a stark contrast to the open common land I had walked upon previously this morning. On this cold, bleak New Year’s Day, the trees provided a welcome shelter from the freezing wind ‘outside’. As I strayed deeper into the forest, the initial sense of sanctuary was replaced by one of foreboding. As the footpath curved southwards, it shielded from my vision the reassuring daylight that exposed my point of entry. Without the aid of the track I would have been lost and I strained my eyes to create alternative escape routes through the trees in the event of my umbilical path being lost to the wilderness of the forest floor.

In the depth of this forest I reached a point of no return. My path was clearly defined, but I began to experience a sense of disorientation, for I no longer had the benefit of the natural horizon to reassure me. Here, my vision was restricted and on this narrow path I became prey to anything, or anyone hidden amongst the trees.

Even though this was a relatively small, managed forest, I was humbled in its midst. It is difficult to imagine Britain enveloped in ancient woodland, an un-chartered wilderness without frontiers. Today I experienced an empathy with those that cut the inaugural paths through the green wood.

The forest is a place exploited by storytellers throughout the ages, for its sinister aspect plays on the primeval insecurities prevalent in us all. The low-budget film The Blair Witch Project is a fine example of how suspense and fear can be exploited, not through what is visible, but what is undistinguishable and occult. In the fairy story The Seven League Boots by the Brothers Grimm, a group of abandoned children wander into a wood and encounter an Ogre’s castle. The story draws from the same proverbial well as Shakespeare’s A Mid Summer Night’s Dream, where the forest becomes a representation of chaos. It is a place where the rules of order and rationality cease to exist. The historian Simon Schama states: “But if the forest is a place of terror it is also the great adjudicator. Roman rules do not apply: social station and the force of conventional law disappear down the dwindling path. Instead a form of redress takes place.”

Schama highlights the human need to control and eventually exploit such wildernesses, for to be ‘king of the forest’ elevates the individual to within touching distance of god. The tales of Robin Hood are symbolic of these deep-rooted needs and therefore, anyone canny enough to understand and utilise the greenwood for their own means, is surely a person to be idolised and revered. This green man of the trees is prevalent in world mythology and it is understandable that a flesh and blood embodiment was sought to rationalise the myth. Men such as Henry Hastings of The New Forest, Adam Hood of Sherwood and Robert Earl of Huntingdon were all names associated with the title. Some were reluctant heroes and others like Hood; deliberately exploited their association.

To understand and ultimately manipulate nature was the motivation behind the first men who planted crops. The concept of regeneration was central to those that lived close to the earth and relied upon it for their subsistence. It was this commitment to nature that led eventually to the conflict between the heathens and the later monist religions. The literalised doctrine of the monist was a corruption of the pre-existing mysteries of nature, an ambiguity encapsulated in the tales of the green wood. The German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche believed that in the forest, man was at one with nature, for he was fee from the dogma of contrived religion.

The deforestation that occurred during the Neolithic would have been a magical event. The routes cut through the trees would occasionally have opened out into clearings – groves where communities could congregate, meet and trade. It is likely that these inaugural ‘community centres’ were sites that eventually evolved into the sacred enclosures we are familiar with today. These charmed places would have been exposed and open to the elements and therefore the focus of the constituents’ attention would have been limited. Their vision would have been directed along the sightlines, created by the innovative logging, towards sacred hills, or upward to the sky. An obsession with the stars has always fuelled man’s imagination and it is therefore likely that the groves, provided opportunities for Neolithic man to see beyond the restricted periphery of his wooded environment. As vast areas of the country became deforested, the community centres that had been conceived in the groves were retained and commemorated by megaliths, or timber posts – emblematic of their living counterparts. Is it possible that stone rows, similar to the West Kennet Avenue, may once have commemorated tree-lined processional avenues that once led sacred groves now commemorated by stone circles?

welbourn TEKH - 'the town in the gravel basin' - September 2009