So
goes the maxim of conscripted soldiers down the centuries. But that’s advice
for dealing with those who have authority over you and for situations where you
have no choice about being there!
There
were fifteen of us who made it to the Waytown Cross car park, variously
equipped with tools to make a start on attracting the right kind of life to the
woodland’s pond. It’s artificial, and the problem is that for most of the year
there isn’t enough run-off from the hills to allow it to flow and refresh
itself.
But
of what is in the pond, what grows by it, what is drawn to it and what you do
about it, I know little. I listened and began to understand a bit more from those
with an emerging expertise. Different people with different skills to share,
for the benefit of all - strangely the ratio of women to men was 2:1.
Most
of those present knew each other better than I knew them. But I could see
enough to know that there must be hundreds of stories they could tell of what
leads them to come along and the unlikely connections that make it possible.
And you only need to have one thing in common, a desire to be there.
Of
course the best kind of volunteering is when you find yourself stepping forward
because you know you are the best person for the job, knowing that as part of a
team your companions will act for you in other situations that they understand
better - then there is no sacrifice at all.
Minutes
after picking me up in the morning, Verity had set a pace for the day that
never let up, bounding through ASDA in search of long matches for lighting a
lantern trail to the bonfire at the beacon quarry that evening. On the run, our
conversation is of how to generate income rather than rely on grants, of a
business plan, and the transport problem for any user of the woodland who
doesn’t have access to a car.
But
I’m a guy in a hurry too, a ‘step slow’ perhaps - and definitely fed up with
being late for my own life - but drawn on by her, I get younger by the minute!
And
the pay-off for our efforts came just as it was beginning to get dark. First,
arriving back at the quarry, Simon was there before us and pointed out an
orange sunset, after what had been an overcast day. Then V and I set off to
light the lanterns we’d made earlier and planted at intervals on the route to
the car park. Would they work, would the rain come before they had a chance to
work? Just as it was really getting dark we heard visitor’s cars arriving, and
still with a couple left to light, I turned around and realised it was going to
work.
Once
others appeared to have finished arriving, we headed off back up the hill for
the last time. The effect in the forest was mystical and magical - though we
had created it ourselves! Suddenly my distant past was no longer ‘a foreign
country’. Around the last bend there was, coming at me through the trees,
Simon’s own flaming skyline. Just for a moment it was as if the nightmare of
the last twenty-one years had never happened.
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