A wood is the one fixed point in a changing world

‘Can’t see the wood for the trees’ is an old saying and a true one, not only metaphorically but literally. Nature students often look carefully at trees and know a lot about them. But they don’t notice the wood, and know nothing about its life and history. Since I began drawing trees with close attention I have tried not to fall into this error and have begun to study individual woods. In west Somerset, I have three particular favourites.

One, near the sea at West Quantoxhead, is creepily dark and spooky, ogreish, though you sometimes see a superb red deer peering at you through the gloom. This is a babes-in-the-wood place, fertile in fairytale material, and you can imagine bears and wolves living there (there are certainly plenty of foxes). My second prize wood is near the ancient hamlet of Asholt, where Coleridge almost certainly got his ‘cedarn cover’ detail for ‘Kubla Khan’.