Some of the most powerful memories of summer come out of our childhood when we wake up on a June morning and suddenly remember that school is out and that summer stretches in front of us as endlessly as the infinities of space. Everything is different. The old routines are gone. The relentless school bus isn’t coming. The bells will be silent in silent hallways. And all the world is leafy green, and will be green, forever and ever.
~Ray Bradbury
I had a chance to work with my photographs of the Dark Hedges in Northern Ireland to try to enhance the effect this lane of trees has on the visitor. Yes, these are photoshopped, but all for a good cause — this is truly a magical place.
Sometimes on summer evenings I step
Out of my house to look at trees
Propping darkness up to the silence.
~Paul Zimmer from “A Final Affection”
It isn’t summer quite yet, but soon. It does not feel like summer here in Northern Ireland although we did see some blue skies as we traveled to the northern coast to see Giant’s Causeway and castle ruins and a collection of seaside farms and villages unlike anywhere else in the world.
But my favorite moment was walking beneath these 300+ year old beech trees, now known as “Dark Hedges”, planted as an entry way to Grace Hill mansion, the Stuart family estate. Even in their old age, they cling to one another overhead, reaching out to their neighbors and creating the filtered light beneath. There is no sign pointing the way to this road –they are simply a lane in farming country that is particularly inspiring to experience. Today a farmer was mowing hay right next to the trees, probably bemused that anyone bothers to stop and take pictures of a few old trees.
The beeches have been around long before me, and with their overarching sheltering of each other, they will be here long after. I should be more like the twists and turns of the limbs of the beeches, reaching out, leaning in and holding on for dear life, to prop up the darkness so it can’t overwhelm.
As long as there is light, even just a little, all will be well.
The Cold
How exactly good it is
to know myself
in the solitude of winter,
my body containing its own
warmth, divided from all
by the cold; and to go
separate and sure
among the trees cleanly
divided, thinking of you
perfect too in your solitude,
your life withdrawn into
your own keeping
–to be clear, poised
in perfect self-suspension
toward you, as though frozen.
And having known fully the
goodness of that, it will be
good also to melt.
~Wendell Berry
Barnstorming 