A walk in the woods
Sep. 23rd, 2009 03:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyYesterday afternoon I braved the elements - and the non-existent risk of being blown to kingdom come - and climbed Tower Hill, a small and extinct volcano not far from the City by the Sea. There are several ways to do Tower Hill: the lazy way, by driving through the park; the easy way, by following the marked paths; or the less-easy-but-still-not-particularly-difficult way, of wandering about in the forest (which is quite safe - although it's all very quiet and feels isolated, nowhere is very far from civilisation in the form of the brilliantly named Bimbledong Road). I quite like the wandering about option. Once you're into the trees, it's oddly still and timeless and the silence is alive. There's a weird feeling of being at one with nature and yet completely alien. That wasn't what I did yesterday, though. It was muddy, so I stuck to the paths.
This is the approach. The hill isn't much of a hill, but it made me puff. Even the real hikers have to stick to the path here; all that bracken is growing in squishy marshland that is ringing with the sound of frogs.
This is the view from the top of the hill to the Southern Ocean. That white metropolis shining in the middle distance is the City by the Sea.
And another view from the top of the hill: the lake and the sea. The lake has been dry the last few years, but good rain this winter has partially filled it again.
The forest. I only went a little way in, before deciding it was too wet and slippery. I'm a fair weather hiker.
You're not supposed to pick flowers and things in the park, of course, but this is cape weed, an introduced pest from South Africa that the park is trying to eliminate, so I didn't feel bad about picking one. These grew all over my primary school grounds. We called them 'butter daisies' because you could stamp the flower onto the back of your hand and leave a butter-coloured circle like an organic nightclub stamp. They've got good sturdy stems, so they were also excellent for making daisy chains to wear as wreaths and sashes and necklaces. We were so chic.
The trip to the top of the mountain was a good cardio workout; the trip down tested core stability, even on the path, because it was littered with seed pods from the sheoaks. This is the culprit. It's called a sheoak because the early Europeans setting up their colony found the wood to be a bit like oak but not as strong. Tree sexism, that's what that is.
And this is a sheoak pod (in my pink, pink hand). They're very hard and there were two small boys on the hill throwing them at each other.
When I was little, I was given a book by Ida Rentoul Outhwaite, an Australian illustrator and poet. She's not as well-known now as her Australian contemporary, May Gibbs, or her British equivalent, Cicely Mary Barker, which is a pity because she was really very good. She specialised in fairies and flowers; the paintings are fine and detailed (if a bit twee for mine), but her black and white stuff is stunning.
Anyway, the book was about a little girl who gets lost in the bush and meets all the fairies that live there. Writing wasn't Ida's strong point and most of the poems are dreadful ('we are the harbingers of spring'), but I've always liked the non-twee sheoak fairy poem:
The He Sheoak - by Ida Rentoul Outhwaite
'Why do you call me a sheoak?
I want to be a he-oak
I won't be a girl,'
Cries the knobbly imp
'Neath the branches limp
That sway and swirl.
'I'm not soft and fluffy,
I'm a little roughy,
I will be a he.
I am round and tubby,
And I'm black and grubby,
Not like a she.
'It's enough to rouse us,
Us chaps in trousers,
To throw things at you.
If we're ever men --
Just you wait till then --
Boo-hoo! Boo-hoo!'
This is the approach. The hill isn't much of a hill, but it made me puff. Even the real hikers have to stick to the path here; all that bracken is growing in squishy marshland that is ringing with the sound of frogs.
This is the view from the top of the hill to the Southern Ocean. That white metropolis shining in the middle distance is the City by the Sea.
And another view from the top of the hill: the lake and the sea. The lake has been dry the last few years, but good rain this winter has partially filled it again.
The forest. I only went a little way in, before deciding it was too wet and slippery. I'm a fair weather hiker.
You're not supposed to pick flowers and things in the park, of course, but this is cape weed, an introduced pest from South Africa that the park is trying to eliminate, so I didn't feel bad about picking one. These grew all over my primary school grounds. We called them 'butter daisies' because you could stamp the flower onto the back of your hand and leave a butter-coloured circle like an organic nightclub stamp. They've got good sturdy stems, so they were also excellent for making daisy chains to wear as wreaths and sashes and necklaces. We were so chic.
The trip to the top of the mountain was a good cardio workout; the trip down tested core stability, even on the path, because it was littered with seed pods from the sheoaks. This is the culprit. It's called a sheoak because the early Europeans setting up their colony found the wood to be a bit like oak but not as strong. Tree sexism, that's what that is.
And this is a sheoak pod (in my pink, pink hand). They're very hard and there were two small boys on the hill throwing them at each other.
When I was little, I was given a book by Ida Rentoul Outhwaite, an Australian illustrator and poet. She's not as well-known now as her Australian contemporary, May Gibbs, or her British equivalent, Cicely Mary Barker, which is a pity because she was really very good. She specialised in fairies and flowers; the paintings are fine and detailed (if a bit twee for mine), but her black and white stuff is stunning.
Anyway, the book was about a little girl who gets lost in the bush and meets all the fairies that live there. Writing wasn't Ida's strong point and most of the poems are dreadful ('we are the harbingers of spring'), but I've always liked the non-twee sheoak fairy poem:
The He Sheoak - by Ida Rentoul Outhwaite
'Why do you call me a sheoak?
I want to be a he-oak
I won't be a girl,'
Cries the knobbly imp
'Neath the branches limp
That sway and swirl.
'I'm not soft and fluffy,
I'm a little roughy,
I will be a he.
I am round and tubby,
And I'm black and grubby,
Not like a she.
'It's enough to rouse us,
Us chaps in trousers,
To throw things at you.
If we're ever men --
Just you wait till then --
Boo-hoo! Boo-hoo!'