ON one of the high hills that border the river Wye, there stands an old
cottage, perched on an outstanding bluff, with apparently no way of
approach save by airship.
Looking up at it from the river bank by the weir (the self-same weir
beside which Wordsworth sat when he wrote his famous “Lines”), you can
only glimpse the chimneys and angles of the roof, so buried is the
house in the trees that clothe the hill-slopes to a height of nearly
nine hundred feet.
The cottage is not quite at the top of the hill; behind it rise still
more woods, making the steeps in early spring a mist of purple and
brown and soft grey bursting buds, followed by pale shimmering green,
with frequent splashes of white when the hundreds of wild cherries
break into bloom.
A darker green sweeps over all with the oncoming of summer, which in
turn becomes crimson, lemon, rust-gold, bronze-green, copper and orange
in the autumn, where coppices of birch and oak, ash and beech, wild
cherry, crab apple, yew and hazel intermingle with the stately ranks of
the larch-woods that revel in the heights, and give the hills a jagged
edge against the sky.
The casual tourist who merely “does” the Wye Valley—which invariably
means scorching along the one good road the district possesses,
skirting the foot of the hills—has a clever knack of entirely
missing, as a rule, the larch-woods and the weir. Obviously, when any
self-respecting motorist finds himself on a fine road where he can
trundle along at thirty miles an hour (at the least), with seldom any
official let or hindrance, he naturally shows his friends what his car
can do! And in such circumstances it is necessary to keep the eyes
glued to the half-mile straight ahead. Even though the natives are
too virtuous to need the upkeep of many policemen, stray cattle and
slow-dragging timber-wains can be quite as upsetting as a constable;
while a landslide down the hills may precipitate huge trees across the
road any day of the year, and prove an equal hindrance.
Hence, the motorist seldom seems to have eyes to spare for anything
but the road; he takes as read the woods that climb the great green
walls towering far and yet farther above him. And as for the many weirs
he passes—who could even hear them above the hustle of a becomingly
powerful car that is hoping to boast how it covered the twenty-nine
miles from Chepstow to Ross in exactly thirty minutes! Small wonder
that such as these never see that weather-worn cottage, half-hidden
among the green.
* * * * *
But for those who are too poor, or too rich, to need to bother about
advertising their car—those who can indulge in the luxury of walking
with no fear of losing social prestige—there is, about that cottage, a
world of eternal youth that never grows old, a world that is for ever
offering new discoveries.
And from the weir in the valley to the larch-woods at the summit,
curiously insistent voices are calling. You have but to walk along the
river bank to hear them in the tumbling, swirling waters as they pour
over, and sweep around, the boulders in the river bed. And although
the only living thing you may actually see is the blue glint of a
darting kingfisher, or a heron standing sentinel on some mossed and
water-splashed rock, or a burnished swallow skimming over the surface
of the water, you know for a certainty that there is more—much more—in
the murmur of the river and the clamour of the weir than the ear can
ever classify.
Loud as it is when the tide is going down, it is not noisy—for noise
never soothes, whereas this babbling of the waters is one of the most
restful sounds the tired mind can know.
When you leave the river, and take the path that climbs up through the
woods—the path you have to search for, so overgrown is it with nut
bushes and bracken and low hanging branches of the birches—another
sense of mystery awaits you. Though the way may get easier, and the
trail a little more defined, the higher you climb, you feel you are
penetrating a new land—that you are the first ever to come this way.
And that inexplicable lure of the unknown seizes you; though you can
see nothing ahead of you but a steep rough footpath arched over by the
branches of the trees that hedge you about on either side, you are
conscious of “something” beyond the croon of the ringdoves and the
scuttle of the rabbit. It comes to you in the odour of last year’s dead
leaves under the oaks; in the pungent warm scent of the larches in the
sun. It greets you in the army of foxgloves that have monopolized the
one bit of open sky space where a few trees were uprooted in a storm;
and in the tall clump of dark blue campanula that has sprung up in
another spot where a sun-shaft falls; and in the regiments of wild
daffodils in a clearing that so far have escaped the trowel of the
spoiler.
You sense it on an early Easter day, when you pause half-way up, and
look back on a vast tracery of bare branches and twigs, pale grey where
the light strikes on them, and bursting into smiles at intervals where
the blackthorn has come out.
It speaks to you when you come upon the smooth grey bark of the
beeches, the beautifully ribbed rind of the Spanish chestnut, and the
scaly, red trunks of the pines.
You feel it at your feet when you see the brown, uncurling fern fronds;
and it pulls at your heart when you step across a brook that is
quietly talking to itself, like a happy baby, as it wanders downhill,
unconcerned and most haphazard, amid watercress and ragged robin and
creeping jenny.
When at last you emerge for a moment—breathless—from the woods, and
come upon the cottage, standing in the midst of its gay flower-patch,
you think you have solved the mystery in the sweet smell of the newly
turned earth; or that it hovers over the crimson flame of the Herb
Robert glowing all about the tops of the grey stone walls.
* * * * *
Yet it is not merely the birds and the flowers, the wood scents
and the trees that hold one as with a spell. Such things can be
catalogued; whereas there is something intangible among the wild woods,
something indefinable, beyond all material things, that makes in some
incomprehensible way for peace of mind and the mending of the soul.
And it is one of our greatest blessings that we cannot tabulate it, or
order it by the dozen from the Stores; that it cannot be “cornered” or
monopolized by the money grubber.
The healing of the hills cannot be purchased with gold. It is free to
all—yet it can only be had by individual, quiet seeking.
The Glory still burns in the Bush; the Light of God’s kindling can
never be extinguished. But sometimes we are too preoccupied to turn
aside to see the great sight; and sometimes we fail to put our shoes
from off our feet, forgetting that the place whereon we stand is holy
ground.