The old apple tree in our garden continues to wake up after winter despite having nearly fallen over and being propped up by an old chair. Every year it produces delicious cooking apples, and every May it produces beautiful blossom.
Photo: Mike Howe
This evening a light rain is falling, the raindrops glistening on the dark green leaves…..
Photo: Mike Howe
The trees antiquity is given away by the presence of the lichens growing on the branches and twigs…
Photo: Mike Howe
We don’t prune it or interfere with it in anyway because it is always so productive, hopefully it will live on for years to come….
The bluebell woods are one of the most beautiful sights in spring. I was walking and talking with colleagues the other day and as we were exchanging long-range thoughts we entered this wood – everybody stopped talking….
Imagine if you will a high cliff, or a sheer wall on a mountain side, and you get the idea behind this music. It was originally imagined whilst reading “The Shining Mountain”, the incredible and enthralling account of British climbers Joe Tasker and Pete Boardman’s famous ascent of Changabang, a 22,500 foot mountain in the Himalayas of India, in 1976.
Boardman and Tasker climbed the great West Wall using revolutionary climbing techniques, which included sleeping in hammocks suspended from the sheer face with a drop of thousands of feet below them. It took 25 days to complete the climb, a climb that many at the time thought impossible.
A little nearer to home (for me anyway) there are some magnificent cliffs with a sheer drop to the sea below, where peregrine falcons, and large colonies of seabirds nest in spring, and where, standing at the top, it is quite difficult to catch your breath, such is the exhilaration. Pwll Deri is one of those places, as is this beautiful arch and stack further to the south.
Photo: Mike Alexander
The music was intended to capture the drama and majesty of places like this wherever they may be found. But also the sadness I felt whilst reading of Boardman and Taskers subsequent adventure, to climb the North-East ridge of Everest, another route that had never been done at the time. The rest of the expedition were out of the reckoning due to exhaustion, but Boardman and Tasker attempted to complete the ascent on their own. They were last seen alive by their comrades as tiny specks on the ridge before they disappeared into the cloud and were gone forever.
It’s a skylark nest, with four beautiful, tiny eggs in it. Skylarks are birds of open grasslands and they build their nests on the ground, often producing 2 or 3 broods per year. The nests are incredibly hard to find because they are so well concealed from predators.
Photo: Mike Howe
Skylark numbers have plummeted in the UK by over 90% in the past 50 years as our traditional hay meadows have been replaced by much more intensively managed grasslands that are mown for silage 2 or 3 times a year – the mowing destroys the nests, and so the populations of skylarks and other grassland species have declined rapidly.
This place is different though. This nest is one of around 60 that can be found on a dis-used World War II airfield near St Davids in West Wales. The grassland is managed just like an old fashioned hay meadow, with grazing by cattle in the winter, and hay making in late summer, and with no inputs of chemical fertilisers.
The airfield was once a place where the great Halifax bombers flew to patrol along the Atlantic coast and where thousands of service men and women were housed.
These days the airfield is a place of tranquility and calm and home to wild flowers, butterflies and skylarks.
Photo: Mike Howe
I have met and talked with some of the men who flew from here at the height of the war, and they couldn’t be happier that this is now a place of peace and where wildlife can thrive. It seems like a wonderful way to honour and remember those that died on both sides, a place of vibrant and colourful life and peaceful quiet.
I don’t know about you but sometimes I get incredibly sad, and today is one of those days. I know why, I could go into it and explain it, but I don’t need to for my sake, and anyway you would be bored reading about it. No honestly you would, it’s really not very interesting.
In recent years, however, one of the great and surprising benefits of being sad (or happy, or morbid, or awestruck), and for which I am truly grateful (although I’m not sure to whom), is that I have developed an ability to write music about how I feel, which has lead to all of the other interesting things that sometimes happen in my life.
So in recognition of how I feel today, and probably will tomorrow, but probably won’t a day or two after that, here is a song I wrote whilst feeling very sad indeed. I hope you like it (in a recognising the emotion sort of way and not in a making you sad sort of way, I wouldn’t want to do that to you) 🙂
By the way, does anybody know whether or not I should be allowing pingbacks and trackbacks on this post? I have absolutely no idea what they are. Thanks and enjoy the sad music 🙂
The weather on the Pembrokeshire coast has suddenly turned beautifully sunny and warm. The sea is sparkling and flat as a pancake, so for the first time since last September we got the kayaks out and went for a little paddle.
Photo: Mike Howe
Kayaking gives you such a different perspective on the landscape and seascape around you. This sea cave cannot be seen from the surrounding cliffs, and as well as being very beautiful, it is also a special place for another reason which I will elaborate on later.
Photo: Mike Howe
And with 186 miles of coastline to choose from, all we need is a half decent summer for the first time in years and we’ll be out there exploring once again, I’ll even get the fishing lines out.
I once had the great pleasure of wandering around an old wooden church in the state of Mississippi and was able to really feel and smell its history. It was quite a humbling experience in many ways, and it certainly penetrated deep inside me, so that many years later, when I had developed the ability, I wrote a piece of music about it and included it on my fourth album Heading West.
I was particularly gratified that the esteemed music reviewer Kathy Parsons wrote of the track…..“Old Wooden House suggests a time-worn structure that has seen better days and holds generations of precious memories of days gone by.” I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Here’s a little video that I put together featuring the beautiful photographs of Walker Evans and Bernard M Baruch, which I felt illustrated the kind of building that it is/was, I hope you like it.
I mentioned in my post “The Old Road to Nowhere” earlier this month that I would be doing more conservation management planning work at a magnificent place in North Wales this week, and so I have. It’s a place called Dolmelynllyn (I can’t even begin to explain here how you should pronounce that, you need to hear it) and I wanted to share with you one of the best features of the estate – the magnificent Rhaeadr Ddu waterfalls (The Black Falls), and once again I am very lucky to have Mike Alexanders photographs for the purpose (the 2 Mikes work closely on a lot of these projects!).
Photo: Mike Alexander
The impressive falls have a drop of around 60 feet and take their name from the slab of black rock over which the water cascades. They are surrounded by our version of a rain forest, the Atlantic Oakwoods.
Photo: Mike Alexander – Wilsons Filmy Fern
The relatively warm, wet microclimate has provided perfect conditions for some of the rarest ferns, mosses and lichens in the whole of the UK, making this an internationally important site for nature conservation. The woods are also fabulous habitat for the relatively rare lesser horseshoe and brown long-eared bats.
Photo: Mike Alexander – Lichens growing on trees
The seasons bring changes to the waterfalls, from gentle, deeply relaxing summer flows to raging torrents in the heavy rains of autumn, to the occasional deep freeze of winter….
Photo: Mike AlexanderPhoto: Mike AlexanderPhoto: Mike Alexander
If you keep climbing up the winding path alongside the falls, and make your way up through the woodland, you eventually come up on top where you are rewarded with a wonderful view of the whole estate.
Photo: Mike Alexander
I hope that the work we are doing here will ensure that it remains intact and beautiful for thousands of people to enjoy into the future, and for the special wildlife to continue to thrive.
This is a simple song about those times in your life when it feels like someone who is very dear to you is always close, inside you almost, no matter where you are…..
Mike Howe 