Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees

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I wake to sunlight and traffic and the brilliant surprise of the snowy tops of the Tien Shan Mountains, the Heavenly Mountains, that form the steep backdrop to the city to the south. Juniper believed that just one or possibly two of these ‘bird apple’ seeds was lifted over the rising hills to the Tien Shan and the valley of the Ili River, most likely in the crop or faeces of a migrating bird. At St Romain en Gal in the South of France, a Roman mosaic shows the progress of the apple year, from its grafting to its harvesting. At the same time this evolutionary pressure changed it from a ‘bird’ fruit with edible seeds to a ‘mammal’ fruit with poisonous seeds. Barrie believed the Saxons must have inherited the relict orchards of sweet Roman apples and named many places after them.

Roger Deakin by Patrick Barkham The Swimmer: The Wild Life of Roger Deakin by Patrick Barkham

It is Valery who comes out, looking every inch as good, his eyes slitted against years of steppe and desert sun, shining brown skin stretched over the high cheekbones, his face benevolently lined. Let loose on a personal garden city like Letchworth, Welwyn or Hampstead Garden Suburb, I would end up with something between a shanty town and an allotment. It always seemed that our paths would cross in mutual literary-environmental circles: I would send him exhibition-opening invitations, but later hear through mutual friends that he was too busy to attend as he hurriedly worked away to finish the writing of Wildwood; and then he became ill, and died quickly. I read the catalogue with trepidation, anxious at the thought of seeing Roger's life reduced to a data-set.

He has found at least forty-seven apple place names: towns and villages such as Appleby and Appledore.

Wildwood Quotes by Roger Deakin - Goodreads Wildwood Quotes by Roger Deakin - Goodreads

Two small girls are braiding their mother’s waist-length hair, proudly brushing it for her as it shines in the sun. The bitter taste of apple pips is cyanide, and the smooth, hard, teardrop seed coat evolved as the perfect streamlined vehicle to pass intact through an animal’s guts.

In 1969 he bought the moated Suffolk farmhouse, along with 12 acres of meadows, from a local farmer who had been keeping pigs in the semi-derelict house. Some of the wedding guests dance together, while others pose for photographs, all dressed to the nines in suits and ties or bright dresses. Deakin was, in Barkham’s view, a man determined “to resist the anchor, the mooring, the still water – and the deeps”. Isa and Kuralay then turn their attention to a dense relict grove of cultivated blackcurrants, a giant variety from China lacking the toothy tartness of our native currant but a welcome addition to our gastronomic wildwood tour. Balcony rails of hazel also run along the front of the kitchen, with wooden steps to its entrance and a wicket gate to keep the dogs out.