The passing of time


Continuing my brain-dump of photos and days out from recent months, these pictures date back to my birthday in March when we went for a wander around one of my childhood haunts, Hitchwood.

The full tale of why we were there is on our walking blog, where Beloved Other Half wrote up the visit as our contribution to the Celebrate Our Forests Day activities.

But for me it wasn’t just about activism, or a return visit to a location that the hobby of geocaching has pulled us into several times over the last few years.

It was also a trip back into a time long-gone when I camped there in the Scouts – memories of cooking dough strips and sausages over an open fire, sleeping in fern-covered bivouacs or brand-new two-person tents, tears and crippling homesickness, brittle oak twigs and papery dry leaves, wood smoke, and a sense of adventure and possibility that couldn’t even see the boundaries of the wood, let alone of life.

The place seems smaller now, and I noticed the roads and fields and houses beyond the edge of the wood as I never had before. But in the heart of it, I could still see the past staring back at me.