On the edge of the Weald

The ridge above the Weald

To live on the edge of a forest is to live by a path into dream, or childhood; when you were small and the legs of adults were like trees and their heads rustled with words, when the sky was oily and flowed and sparkled.

Just as we can easily conjure up the face of a grimacing wolf, staring at us from a dark window, eyes wide, teeth bared; just as we can sense against our midriff the whispered ripple of a shark in water; we enter a forest.

What remains of our own Weald was once the scrubby border of the great temperate northern European Forest. Those of us who were brought up in Britain, and who have read enough and completed a Grand Tour will overestimate our imaginative ability, supposing we can picture this Ur forest properly.

We can't, but what we can do is sense the Weald and its Silesian heart in the stories of the Grimm brothers, in older fairy tales. Forest boys and girls live in a the middle of Europe, in fairy tales. Just ask Carole J Silver and she will tell you.

It is quite difficult to see the Bailowieza, the boreal Taiga, the cloud forest of Nayarit, the Karri eucalypts, the Alpine conifer forests, the moist dipterocarp, the manglares of Tumbes, the Fatu Hiva and the Tilamook.

However, if you live in south west London you can drive, or take the bus or train to Guildford. It takes less than an hour. You may walk in Chanctbury Wood and look out from St Martha's hill over what was the Weald. Or go to Dorking and head for Box Hill, the ancient Yew grove near Ranmore common and beyond.

In Surrey the wealthy value their link up to the forest. The rich pay for it as we pay for electricity or water. And when John Clare went mad  he did not do so because he was overly sensitive, he went mad because his piped connection to life was severed.