T, H and I stand on the path over the rail bridge looking up at an ivy-smothered oak.  It’s creaking loudly and rhythmically in the wind which, while more gentle than in our recent storms, still has a degree of power behind it.

“Does that mean it’s going to fall down?” T asks.  I admit I don’t know, that you’d probably need to have a forester’s expertise to interpret the creaks. We agree that it might just be a couple of branches rubbing together.

A, their dog, is getting restless now so we make our farewells and I continue on my regular circuit.

In the gloom and mud by the tunnel mouth, I’m surprised to find the glossy yellow cup of a lesser celandine.  Richard Mabey tells us that this early spring cousin of the buttercup is thought to derives its name from the Greek word chelidon, or swallow (the bird sort).  Perhaps because it’s the flower version of a spring messenger.

I’m reminded of E.O Wilson’s elegy to nature “Mysterious and little-known organisms live within walking distance of where you sit. Splendour awaits in minute proportions.”

Wilson, a US entymologist and considered by some to be the father of bio-diversity, was spot on. I haven’t walked far in the woods today for my regular Sunday nature worship, but it’s easy to enjoy that splendour, whether in the mysterious creaking of an ancient tree or the insalubrious location of an early spring flower.