Summoning

The light in the woods is disconcerting. The angle of the sun in September and the flashing strangeness of migraine vision. I see and don't see. It's all too bright or too dark. Birds are fluttering silhouettes. Trees tower. The ground veers sickeningly between washed out and murky.

And yet it is better here. The shade instead of full sun. The birds I hear... goldcrests, blue and great tits, robins, treecreepers, crows, wood pigeons. A squirrel clambers up a fallen branch. Two muntjac hop lazily over a felled tree. The scent of carrion wafts and I try to find a body. I don't. But I see where a magpie was eaten by a sparrowhawk, I assume.

At times, the birds go silent. All of them. I wait. And they resume... gradually. I have no idea what happened.

In the wood, I see where rabbits have dug under an oak.

In the fields, before I do some yoga, to try to ease the muscular tension that comes with these headaches, I climb the Sun Summoner. I get up higher than I have in any other tree. I am trembling with excitement.

By my head, a hole, in which some bird nested, leaving a wing feather.

Below, resting on two branches, one of the vast limbs that fell years ago and has rotted in its airborne position.

I don't stay long. I don't know why. I descend easily, by a different route. Once on the ground, I feel exhilarated. I turn to the tree and give thanks, then ask, "Can you help me to make sense of things?" And the tree laughs, tells me I always ask too much, want too much. I should be satisfied with what I have experienced - that brief absence of fear.