While Jennie was out doing touristy things last weekend, I was exploring a different part of the Thames — heading west out to Richmond Park, one of London’s old royal parks and now a national nature reserve. Took a while to get there, but I made it. When I arrived under the vast open sky I couldn’t help but let out a little whoop of glee.
Richmond Park is, in a word, gorgeous. In an afternoon I did little more than skim half the perimeter and for someone unacquainted with English nature it was all new. There were lovely old oak forests — spacious, as oak forests are — that reminded me a little of the oak savannah of my Pinery back in Ontario. I also walked over great softly rolling swathes of grass, pale and windblown and criss-crossed with trails, that stretched out almost to the horizon where dark woods beckoned; and there were also hillsides covered with ferns which I came to realize were properly bracken, and being dry and brown made satisfying brackeny crunches when I stepped on them.
After spending my weekdays in sooty Islington what I relished most was all the smells. If you spend enough time among trees you find that each has a different smell — the distinct tang of willow, the subtle acidic scent of oak, the musty, rusty smell of dead leaves from chestnut trees — all rich and bracing. And the sharp pungent smell of rabbit spoor and deer spoor and the broader warmer smell of horse manure. (There were many people riding along the paths.)
I didn’t see any deer. Richmond Park supports a population of seven hundred or so (it really is a big park), which is carefully culled, natch; there has been deer hunting here for centuries. The old gnarled oak trees had long ago been trimmed, no branches at browsing height, and there were no telltale signs of deer overpopulation such as decimated underbrush. Or, to bring this full circle, tame, unafraid deer. The squirrels are all grey, and considerably smaller and more timid. There are also a great many ravens. In the ponds there are several kinds of fowl — mallards, a small black kind of duck, a large goosey brown kind, enormous white swans, and even Canada geese, brash and aggressive as always, biting each other’s necks in disputes over breadcrumbs and hissing at fat pigeons.
The park contains many cultivated areas, notably a garden on a hill which was originally a barrow-mound, and has a magnificent view of London. In the other direction there is a view of St. Paul’s, grey and distant through a gap in the hedge. It’s one of eight or so “protected views” of the cathedral in the city — incidentally one of the others happens to be at One Tree Hill in the park down the street from my house.
All in all, my kind of day — tromping around through the woods, and listening to Immaculate Machine on repeat.
(See more Richmond Park photos on my Flickr.)
Come for the rock, stay for the klezmer.
