Autumn's End and the Veteran Oaks of Coombe Hill - To The Trees Edition #70

The year’s remnants dangle loosely. A flicker of Autumn tickled by the dusk light, awaiting that final gust to breathe them into death – the last leaves left!

Summer was a daydream, now swallowed by visions in the dark as we pass through the blackest time. For the first time in many years I have fallen through autumn and into the winter with minimal internal friction. It is a lifelong aim to meet the pouring rain and stone carved clouds with a similar sense of discovery and awe as at the meeting of spring and though I haven’t yet cracked it entirely, I do feel I am making progress!

While most trees have now succumbed to the cold, the oaks hold their gold leaf like they are fixing the season’s remaining cracks in a Japanese Kintsugi style, delicately filling the gaps with glimmering veins, before the scenery shatters entirely into a million pieces of winter. Across the flats, those willows now relieved of their leaves, reveal their bare withies ignited in bright orange flame and appear like scattered burning effigies out across the moors. Other willows still hold leaves aloft like leafy shoals flickering and shimmering in and out of twiggy canopies. The hawthorns, rid of green, now pulse in deep red with their remaining crop. This is a blurry time, where autumn’s evidence is still strewn about the place, and deep winter is yet to fully decompose its colours.

In the woods the understory comes into its own, there’s a moment, perhaps of a few days, when the low trees are holding just the right amount of leaf and colour to create finely detailed artworks in the mid air, backdropped by trunk and bear canopy, strung together by the finest thread of twigs and illuminated at a slant by the low winter sun.

At this time of the year, the fiery ball is allowed to shine into places it couldn’t previously reach, chutes of light poke through the gaps once guarded by foliage, piercing into the deepest depths of the understory. These shafts of light illuminate autumn’s end, creating a different artwork entirely to that of autumn’s beginning and middle. This is a more subtle compositional beauty. There’s a feeling of perfection about the dispersion and density of the patterns laid against the bare forest, just the correct amount of intricacy woven over the clumsy largeness of the boughs and trunks of canopy trees.

Upon the mounds of Avalon most of the beech and oaks are empty, while Grandmother lime still clings to her autumn remnants, some of which is still green and sips on the dregs of winter light. Her fresh buds drip red, revealed and raw, they await a winter’s weathering for spring’s first stirrings that will coax sap to rise again and cause scales to be prised open willingly.

Except for a special edition Winter Solstice tree walk from Middlewick <get tickets here>, the year’s outings have now finished. As I stand with Grandmother lime, I peer back with joy at the steps walked the conversations held, the songs sung and the moments gathered like foraged fruit in a basket to nourish our very souls – fuel for the overwinter fire.

Personally, this is a time for putting next year’s things in order, preparing and holding projects within my little winter bunker, readying them for spring.

While putting this year to bed, I light the first tinder of the year ahead. I nourish the buds of next year’s wishes, so they may absorb all the strength of winter, come to blossom in the spring, on their way to bear bountiful fruit in summer. Winter is already writing the plot to next year’s story.

I wish you all the best for the festive season. Tree walk gift certificates, Claycorns, and ToTheTrees calendars are available should you wish to buy your loved ones a tree themed gift. I’ll be taking a break from the newsletter in January. In the meantime, I wish you a Happy New Year and will see you for the next edition of the To TheTrees newsletter at Imbolc full moon on the 1st February 2026.

I leave you with this video that shows some of the beautiful woodland at Coombe Hill at this particularly beautiful stage of the season.

MW – 4/12/25