Woods have a magnetic quality. Folk tales tell of being drawn into woods with their conflicting sense of refuge and menace – Robin Hood and Babes in The Wood. Trees with their superficial similarity become a maze; thickets emit disembodied rustlings and cracklings; tracks peter out.
Even the smallest woods offer the pleasures of exploration. Trees shed their similarity and become individual characters with the wounds, wrinkles and weathering of age. Branches create reticulated patterns against the sky. The sun creates contrasting islands light and shade.
The Beechwoods are in effect a beech hanger – ‘hanger’, a small wood on steeply sloping land. But in this case the land is not steeply sloping so the wood is almost absorbed into the landscape. Photographing the interior of the wood is easy; capturing the whole wood it its setting is much more difficult.
Photos: The Beechwoods, Cambridge, December 2016