Everyman's Library Pocket Classics Series / Stories of Trees, Woods, and the Forest

PREFACE
 
If, on an early morning in October half-way across a dewy field, a line of trees becomes visible against the light blue sky, what would your impulse be? Perhaps it would depend on whether the wet trodden path through the grass winds away to a distant gate in a close-cut hedge, keeping well clear of the wood, or heads instead towards the scrubby elder, the brambles, field maple and blackthorn, before leading deep into the taller oaks and ashes beyond. If there were two paths, or none, the choice would be clear: on across the open fields or into the woods?

Fields have trees of their own thinning willows winding along a slow, sedge-edged river, rich brown sycamores towering above a drystone wall, a golden oak spreading over the corner of scarlet-spotted hedges. Sometimes they run beside an old orchard of mossed cottage trees or a Rectory garden dark with Scots pines and yews. A village pond might be ringed with hazel and alder, a scrap of grass where three lanes converge, covered with spiky shells and glossy nuts dropped from a huge horse chestnut. And if autumn walks lead through city streets, the peeling trunks of plane trees are rising from piles of broad, yellow, chamois-leather leaves. Park gates open between clumps of damp euonymus and privet, overlooked by tall hollies, whose upper leaves are glossy and smooth. Along a river banked with warehouses and converted mills, bare buddleia gleam with wet webs under copper sycamores catching the dawn light.

The way into the woods is different. A few steps from open space to arboreal intimacy prompt a momentary pause to taste the difference in the air. Sodden leaves muffle the sound of footsteps, allowing the stillness to fill with the clear call of birds. A slight stir among high branches signals a squirrel moving swiftly in his own element. A tiny brown shape darting from dense ivy to a nearby tangle of brambles is probably a wren. Although it s hard to tell quite what s there, everything

Preface by Fiona Stafford

JOHN LORNE CAMPBELL
Why Everyone Should Be Able to Tell a Story       
           
OVID
Orpheus’ Audience of Trees   
                
ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH
Head Tree   
                                          
WASHINGTON IRVING
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow   
             
DAPHNE DU MAURIER
The Apple Tree   
                  
SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER
Happiness 

JANE AUSTEN                                  
A Tale                             

YURI OLYESHA
Love           
                                 
D. H. LAWRENCE
The Shades of Spring           

STELLA GIBBONS
From Cold Comfort Farm

RODERICK FINLAYSON
The Totara Tree                                          

EUDORA WELTY
A Still Moment       

OVID
The Transformation of Daphne 

MICHAEL MCLAVERTY
The Road to the Shore       

DOROTHY BAKER
Summer           

JOSEPH ZOBEL
Flowers! Lovely Flowers!      

YVONNE VERA
Why Don’t You Carve Other Animals    

DAMON GALGUT
Shadows         

TOVE JANSSON

FIONA STAFFORD is a professor of English literature at Oxford University. The author of many books, including a biograph of Jane Austen, she also wrote and presented the highly acclaimed "The Meaning of Trees" for BBC Radio 3's The Essay. Her book The Long, Long Life of Trees, published by Yale University Press in 2017, was a Sunday Times Nature Book of the Year.