Church Brampton Chestnut

I have mentioned this tree before - it stands at the start of a bridleway that heads out into the fields where the copse is. It's a good sized tree and seems pretty healthy.

I'd gone for a short trot, having parked near the tree, and on the way back I saw that many tiny white bugs were sheltering from a stiff breeze on the leeward side of the tree.

That encouraged me to look at the bark - and some of it is so dark, it's more like dark scales than tree bark.

I thought of dark energy - not in the astrophysics sense, but in the sense of black humour and the heat of compost and the underground, deep earth mysteries. Morrigan and Kali. Loki and Puck. Fox and Coyote, Raven and Crow.

I thought of how our desire to enlighten everything, to bring sweetness, divorces us from this potent energy which has a place.